January Reading

We're still in holiday mode over here; my new contract doesn't start until this week and the Russian's place of employment takes an extended break every year at this time so he doesn't go back to work til Thurs. Since we only spent one day doing holiday stuff with my family this year, we've had lots of time at home. Time for cleaning and reorganizing, but also lots of leisure time, for movie watching and sleeping late, games and puzzles and for me, reading. Of course being underemployed also means a serious lack of funds too so any opportunity to acquire reading materials at no cost is an added bonus. So I was delighted to find out about the proliference of free ebooks that are available from many different sources.

I had already discovered that our library system has many titles available as digital or ebooks and you don't need a separate device to take advantage of these. All you need  is an active library card and and an ereader program on your computer. My choice of ereader software is Adobe Digital Editions which you can download for free here:

If you aren't in Canada, the Adobe website will redirect you to the appropriate download link.

Ebooks from the library don't stay on your computer so be sure to read them in the allotted time (3 weeks for ours).

You can use Adobe DE ereader to access titles from other sources as well! Kobo has a large library of free ebooks and all you need to do to access these is register for a free account. Once your account is set up, you chose a book, add it to your library on the Kobo site and click on the button that says Download EPUB and it will open automatically in DE!

If you're a fan of Amazon.com, you can also sign up for a free Kindle account. Amazon often offers ebook titles for free or small cost, however you must have the Kindle software installed on your computer to take advantage of these. Again the registration and software is free and once you have an account you also have access to their Cloud feature which gives you 5 G of free online storage!

You can download the software here for PC or here for Mac

Once you've installed one or both of these, check out Story Fresh Picks and sign up for their free monthly newsletter. Every month they offer a free ebook and many more titles for a very low cost. I personally recommend ordering Niki Jabbour's book The Year Round Vegetable Gardener for a mere $2.99 - I reviewed it here and it was my favourite gardening book of last year. Thanks to this book I'm still harvesting fresh greens in January, and if you can't be gardening, you might as well be reading about it!

Book Review Friday

While it hasn't exactly been wintery around here, there's still more days than not when it's much nicer to stay warm and dry indoors, which that gives me plenty of opportunity for catching up on reading. Lately I've been devouring books like there's no tomorrow and coincidentally, quite a few of them have been about the possibility of there being no tomorrow.

Post apocalyptic fiction is a fairly popular genre these days. TEOTWAWKI is subject that is on a lot of people's minds and as much as I claim to not believe wholeheartedly in theories like Peak Oil, I obviously can't help but think we all would be better off if we were a little more prepared for whatever possible disaster may strike. So I understand why I and others like me are drawn to these stories- we want to see how other people imagine what life would be like and how humanity would survive if the worst did happen. The problem for me with most stories of this genre is that they tend to fall into one of two plot lines; either the entire story is too devoted to conflict (wars with rival gangs/armies, way too detailed information about weapons- the worst of these was written by a woman and I've managed to forget both her name and the title thankfully) or they become personal fantasies with obvious sexual overtones-(James Kunstler, I'm looking at you.) I had high hopes for Dies the Fire ( part one of the Emberverse series) by S.M. Stirling, but it sadly ends up falling into both traps. The first part of the book reads like a library list of people with the skills we'd need to survive (the ones who will survive are ex-marines and Renaissance Faire/historical re-enactment actors? If so I hope to die in the first wave!) The second part spends way too much time detailing how to make and use bows, swords and chain mail while building towards the stereotypical battle between the good (lead by a Celtic musician/Wiccan priestess), and the bad- bike gangs and criminals led by a generic psychotic genius. By the time the actual conflict peaked in part three I cared so little about any of these people that I was secretly hoping for total annihilation. Where's a tsunami when you need one?
Don't get me wrong, I realize that you need some kind of conflict to make a story interesting, otherwise it just reads like a how-to manual but it would be nice if it didn't always deteriorate into good versus evil. With all the technology gone, wouldn't man vs nature be enough of a conflict to make for an interesting read? Or even some rogue pigs or vampire cats for added drama? On that thought I'll head back to non fiction so we can all be better prepared for the zombie apocalypse, solar flare or whatever disaster awaits us .

The good folks at Thomas Allen and Son sent me a few new titles to have a look at and these are the ones I was particularly impressed with.

Frugavore; How to Grow Organic,Buy Local, Waste Nothing and Eat Well, by Arabelle Forge. By the title alone you can guess this book was right up my alley. At first it seemed like I'm already doing pretty much everything she writes about so it felt a bit like preaching to the choir. But when I got to the section on meat however, I found the info on curing bacon which was something I'd wanted to try, and then I found the recipe for marrow on toast, oh yum! It also has a great section on baking with sourdough, another thing Id like to try, and some really great info and recipes for home dairy. Overall this book is full of great knowledge and advice as well as really useful recipes, great for beginners and old hands alike!

Small Green Roofs: Low-Tech Options for Greener Living, by Nigel Dunnett, Dusty Gedge, John Little, and Edmund C. Snodgrass. If you've ever thought about having a green roof but don't have the access or the means to build one on your home, consider a small green roof on your garage! Or your porch roof, your tool shed, or even a birdhouse! This book is full of great ideas, beautiful photos and over 40 detailed plans on how to convert just about any roof or flat surface into a potential growing space. Many of the projects in this book are located in Sheffield, England- I wish I would have read this book prior to my visit there last summer- but are adaptable to anywhere. I wonder how my landlord would feel about a green roof on the sunporch?



The Year Round Vegetable Gardener by Niki Jabbour. My first thought when I saw this book was that she likely lives some place warm like California or Australia but then I noticed snow in some of the photos! I was delighted to realize she's actually from Halifax (Nova Scotia) which gets a heck of a lot colder than here, not to mention the freak weather patterns like hurricanes. The book is beautifully laid out with great photos of things like people digging parsnips out from under the snow. The information is logically organized and includes lists of seed varieties that are good for cold weather and/or short growing seasons. There's even a wonderful chart that lists the amount of daylight hours on Dec 21 (winter solstice) by region (North American). I've been using for suggestions of cold weather crops which I can start right now inside our greenhouse at work!

From my stack of library books, I've a couple favourites as well, historical of course, one fiction and one non.

Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague is a fictionalized tale based on Eyam, an actual town in England during the the time of the black plague. According to history the plague came to this small village in 1666 and since it was already somewhat isolated in the hills of Derbyshire, the residents agreed to quarantine themselves to prevent the disease from spreading further. Told through the eyes of Anna Firth, the fictional house maid to the Rector and his wife, and incorporating some of the actual details known of the events of that year, the book is a moving portrayal of life in the time of the black death.

The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie. Wendy Mcclure went looking for remnants of the life and journeys of Laura Ingalls Wilder and along the way found more and less that she'd hoped for. Reading this book made me remember all over again how much I loved the Little House books and how much they still affect me today. I need to go reread them and see if I figure out how to make a button lamp!




And that's just the tip of the iceburg that is my reading pile. I hope to make Book Review Fridays a regular thing and I'd love it if you posted some of your favourites and suggestions here, because in my version of the zombie apocalypse, it's the librarians who are going to survive TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it)!

Surviving January

It's probably a bit early to be posting about the winter blahs since here in Toronto we've barely even had any winter yet. In fact it was balmy 7 degrees C yesterday and today is looking to be even warmer- yes that's laundry on the line! But it's been mostly grey and bleak for what feels like months already and even sunny days seem too short. It's so easy to slip into a funk when all I feel like doing is reading or watching movies, and even getting dressed seems like too much effort. In my defence I did receive a lot of great books for Christmas, including these beautiful clothbound editions of classic novels that the Russian gave me!

In the video dept I have my dear friend Kate to blame for my latest addiction- Downton Abbey is a beautiful period piece set in England in the early 1900's and I've been devouring the first season which I was able to download entirely along with a Christmas special. I was also delighted to discover that Season 2 begins airing on PBS this Sunday at 9pm!

I never did get around to doing a year end wrap up post so I thought I'd post a few moments in pictures. The highlight of the year was of course my trip to England: my aunt and I had a fabulous time and I hope very much to make another trip there soon.

My search there for both Kilner history and Kilner jars was a success and then my friend Leigh trumped the list with this beauty she recently brought back to Canada with her. It's a vintage 3lb jar that is going to look great on the wall of jars.

The gardens on the other hand have had better years. In fact the less said about them the better. The best thing about a new year is the ability to forget all the heartbreaks of last year's garden because it's a clean slate again. I'm already dreaming of what I want to grow this year!

The one sad note of 2011 was losing my beloved Casey in Sept. I still occasionally forget she's gone and then miss her all over again- 20 years of habit I guess.


I'm grateful to still have my other two Farmcats even now that it's winter and they are as stir crazy as we are. They get restless being inside so much and need regular amusement lest they find some on their own (hide the toilet paper and lock up the yarn!)Our favourite method of entertaining them in the winter is the mini disco balls we have strung in the sunporch. At this time of year when the sun does shine, it streams in the windows; sunbeams reflect off the mirror balls and bounce all over the place. The cats think it's a marvelous game. Best cat toy ever!

And of course I am full of joy that the Russian is still here in Canada. Although it's been a year since he was granted permission to stay, he's still awaiting the documents that make him a permanent resident and until he has those in his hand he won't believe it 100%. Government bodies move slowly and at times it's still frustrating-the longer it takes the more he doubts it will really come to be no matter how much I try to reassure him. Having those papers will mean we can make more plans, as well as allow him to travel outside of Canada again and he hopes to be able to see his daughter who he hasn't seen in 4 long years. Hopefully he won't have too much longer to wait.



Despite my earlier grumbling, 2012 looks to be a promising year. Colette and I have decided to emulate our Can Jam experience by attempting to can one recipe a month again and we have our eyes on Meyer lemons for January. And speaking of canning I finally splurged on a pressure canner just before Christmas but I've yet to try it out so I'll be sure to record my first attempt!

We've also got some other great plans for this winter, including building window farms and of course tapping maple trees again- mmmm, syrup!
At work we're putting together a number of interesting projects as well. I'm still amazed that I'm getting paid to come up with gardening plans and related projects and I can't wait to get going. There's even a rumour that I might be working with bees and possibly even chickens!!

Maybe I should enjoy the quiet time while I can!

Books for Blustery Days

It's a chilly one out there today. It rained all day yesterday and we even got some wet snow last night but I'm not complaining because if it were a few degrees colder we'd have been buried in snow by now. It's still cold tho and the kind of damp that gets in your bones. It's a good day to stay inside, make a pot of tea and delve into one of the large stack of books that I've been working my way through. Too bad I'm off to work instead. I start my new job today!

Remember my Crossroads post a few weeks back? Well all the options aren't yet in but an opportunity came my way that I couldn't refuse, so today I start a new part time position as a Community Food Animator with Foodshare! I'm excited to be working with community gardens and related projects all over the city and i'm sure I'll have lots of new stories to tell once I get settled in.

In the meantime here are a few books I've been enjoying recently:

The book that I've been reading one and off for the past few days is The Non Toxic Avenger: What You Don't Know Can Hurt You. Written by Deana Duke who blogs at Crunchy Chicken, this book is definitely not light reading! In the same week in 2007, Deanna's son was diagnosed with Aspergers syndrome and her husband became critically ill with multiple myeloma. Her reaction to this life altering news was to take a hard look at the life they'd been leading, a lifestyle which was a fairly healthy one by today's standards. Deana took things a step further and began examining the hidden toxins we are all exposed to on a daily basis; common chemicals that appear in our toiletries like shampoo and toothpaste, and in our household items such as the glasses we drink from, and the ones we wear on our faces. Using herself as a test subject, she went to great lengths to demonstrate that the levels of known environmental toxins we are exposed to are higher than we're led to believe. It's a pretty scary read and and it almost seems impossible to avoid exposure to many of these substances (cash register tapes contain BPA? Seriously?) And once you know all of this, how do you not go a little crazy trying to avoid it? (Deana herself, not surprisingly, titles one of the chapters Going a Little Bonkers). What she discovers and the choices she makes to deal with that knowledge makes for a compelling read!


Growing a Farmer is another book I picked up the library last week and it's a great read. There are an abundance of books out lately written by people who've given up their successful careers to become farmers but this one stands out if only because of the amount of detail devoted to each aspect of food he produces, from fruit to raw milk, to pork. In his former life Kurt Timmermeister was a chef so his transition to full time farmer/cheesemaker isn't as surprising as some but what is unusual is his stance on many commonly held beliefs of the local food movement. As I made my way through each chapter, I came across several instances of this; moments that made me wonder if I wanted to read anymore but his clear explanations of the options and why he made the choices he did made me respect him, even when I don't necessarily agree with him. Refreshing, informative and sometimes challenging, this is a wonderful book for anyone who's considering producing their own food on a larger scale.

It's a long time till next gardening season but if you need a fix, a good gardening book can be a godsend at this time of year. One of the books that I was given to preview is a titled Decoding Gardening Advice- the Science Behind the 100 Most Common Recommendations and it's a perfect book to read before making plans for next year's garden. It's broken down into eight chapters,with topics ranging from Soil to Lawn Care; each chapter is further broken down into Good Advice, Advice That's Debatable and Advice That's Just Wrong. The information is clear and easy to read, yet very thorough. This is a great book for beginners and experts alike, and a handy reference for a variety of circumstances.

You don't need me to tell you what a great read Half Blood Blues is- it was a finalist for the Man Booker prize and recently won the 2011 Giller prize. But I'm going to tell you anyhow- go get this book. And read it while listening to Louis Armstrong (who makes a cameo in the story), with a kleenex box near by.

So many great books! Next time- How Carrots Won the Trojan War and Reclaiming our Food