Framing the Dialogue

I am driving to meeting and listening to Glenn Beck go on and on about the end of our country as we know it.  This is really heavy stuff and I am getting more and more depressed and it is all that I can do not to drive headlong into a bridge abutment lest my head explode.  But I listen and I learn.  I think that Glenn’s next book should be titled “Not For the Squeamish.”

I finish my meeting and happen to pass a Costco on my way back to the office so I stop in for a very inexpensive and good lunch.  Before I eat, however, I take a spin around the store.  As I passed the book isle, a rather large book caught my eye. Country Wisdom & Know-How is subtitled “Everything You Need to Know to Live Off the Land” and this grabbed my attention.  I know that it sounds a little extreme as I live in the suburbs, but it seemed like a practical book to have around…just in case.

This was not a book that I sat down and read cover to cover.  I did page through the book to look at the “8,167 useful skills and step-by-step instructions” to take an inventory of its offerings.  This book is NOT a Man VS Wild primer as it cover varied topics from attracting birds, to cooking with tofu, to quilting basics, to recipes for home remedies, to sharpening tools, to building a cold frame. 

In Country Wisdom, storey publications packs a lot of information.  The book is just what the title implies, a basic guide to help you do the type of activities that folks who live in the country learned from their elders.  I am not about to build a chicken coop to start collecting eggs (I am pretty sure that there is an ordinance against it), but building a cold frame is now on my summer project list.

I do not know if I will ever have to butcher a cow and hopefully will not have to disinfect water using chlorine bleach, but if I ever need those skills, this book has it covered. 

I might, however, be interested in taking a deer apart if they keep eating my fruit trees!