May 11 2008 - a Blog-sharing interlude….

I’m relatively new to Blogging, and am learning a lot from the kind people who have found my site through other websites and blogs and have left comments and directions to other places. Last week I was tagged by Gillie whose Blog at http://www.skybluepink.typepad.com is full of lovely things to cook and make, warmly and generously written and all illustrated with beautiful photographs from her home and garden and the surrounding countryside. She asked me to take part in a “meme”  (don’t know why it is called this) which has been great fun, and gives me the opportunity to plug a great book and spread the word about some other Blogs I enjoy. 

The exercise asks you to pick up the nearest book set in a foreign country and do the following:

1) Open page 123

2) Find the fifth sentence.

3) Post the next three sentences.

4) Tag five people and acknowledge who tagged you.

So this is the book excerpt - from “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” by Barbara Kingsolver, one of my favourite American writers. You may know her from her novels – The Poisonwood Bible, The Bean Trees, Pigs in Heaven and Prodigal Summer, but her writing is rooted in her background as a biologist – she sees nature with a poet’s eye but a scientist’s knowledge. She is a keen ecologist and this fantastically readable book charts her family’s move from Arizona to a farm in the southern Appalachians, and their efforts to eat only locally-produced food for an entire year, growing and rearing much of ihemselves. Each member of the family is allowed one non-local luxury (coffee, chocolate etc) and the book is packed with recipes, anecdotes and growing tips.

 

“Local food is a handshake deal in a community gathering place. It involves farmers with first names, who show up week after week. It eand an open-door policy on the fields, where neighbourhood buyers are welcome to have a look, and pick their own food from the vine. Local is famers growing trust.”

I am sending it to:

Yarnstorm http://www.yarnstorm.blogs.com - the first Blog I ever found, and still one of my absolute favourites, with its feel-good tone, inspiring ideas and lovely pictures of a creative family life. Maybe you already know it. The author, Jane Brocket, has also written a superb book The Gentle Art of Domesticity (Hodder & Stoughton).

Earth and Tree www.earth-and-tree.blogspot.com - this is a lovely site which I have just discovered, charting the author’s efforts to live a more “natural and earth-centred life”. She also has another lovely Blog called hedgewitch with lots of stuff about the history and folklore around herbs and how to grow and use them.

Three Beautiful Things www.threebeautifulthings.blogspot.com -  The author simply lists three lovely things that have happened to her each day, and her entries are an essay in economy and lyricism. I do this whenever I can in a notebook and have found that engendering a sense of gratitude for what I have can be a great path to happiness…

Money and Sofia www.monkeyandsofia.blogspot.com - I met the couple who run this site many years ago when they lived the good life in rural Yorkshire. Since then they have travelled in a customized camper van to Portugal where they spent a few years looking for the ideal house and site and are now in Canada. In summer they grow their own organic fruit and veg; in winter they make the most amazing felt toys, knitted socks and other goodies that have revolutionized my present-giving.

Liivian Talossa www.liiviantalossa.blogspot.com- I do not speak a word of Finnish, and nor do you have to in order to enjoy this lovely site, with its stunning and sensitive photographs of a sensitively lived and observed life. Lots of lovely Northern light and nature.

Hope you enjoy this interlude!

Back to the eco-house railway carriages next time… With more pictures.

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