The Simple Life

I have lived a life tossed from one extreme to the other. From the sophisticated life in Europe to the bare-bones opposite on a self-sufficient farm in Northern California. The memoir I present to you is a story about the latter. It tells of the skills my husband and I learned in order to provide for ourselves and our two young boys, and the hard and never-ending work that accomplished that. For nine years I cooked on a woodstove, made all our bread, learned the finer arts of making cheese and preserving fruits and vegetables, of tanning hides, of raising then slaughtering and butchering animals. We became involved in the politics of the area and I started an environmental organization which took on the U.S. government, a lumber giant, and Southern Pacific Railroad. We also homeschooled our boys for three of those years.

But it is also the story of the people we met – from a millionairess to dope growers, from loggers to ranchers, from old-timers to the hippy arrivals, from the successful to those plagued by bad luck. It is filled with humorous anecdotes of our efforts and the characters we knew.