OK here is another of my summer reads: "Living the Good Life" by Linda Cockburn - it is the record of six months spent by an Australian family - Linda, her partner, Trevor and their 6 year-old son Caleb decided to explore a better way to live in Queensland.....Well we have our own pioneers in terms of Zero Waste in Gloucestershire (see more here) but this book is about taking it several steps further - an experiment to try to reduce their impact on the environment and their money spending to a minimum. Before the experiment, Linda and Trev were working long hours, travelling lots and leaving Caleb in full-time childcare. The long hours of work don't seem to change, but more of their time is at home and clearly more quality time...
The book is about how they did it, their successes, their relapses, loads of practical info, news items, statistics and even recipes all in a diary style that is very readable. Linda writes about the challenges and lots on their everyday experiences of harvesting rainwater, using a dry, composting toilet, using solar energy and giving up alcohol, packaged consumer goods, chocolate and buying books.
Clearly some of the info is not so useful for those of us here in the UK in terms of crops etc, but I nevertheless enjoyed the read muchly - it is no wonder that Linda reports on her blog that more folk over here in the Northern hemisphere are starting to read the book - as I've noted before, rising prices and the growing credit crunch mean more folk are looking to be more sustainable - books like this are needed more than ever!
Anyhow you can see her website: www.lintrezza.com/ and her blog site: http://lintrezza.blogspot.com/ The latest is her adventure in Tasmania where they are doing it all again. You can see a short video of the family at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOq8S46Xzjg
Order the book ISBN-10: 1905005296 from Stroud Bookshop online here.
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