I suppose this is going to be an article about what I intend for this site, and a little insight into me.
The origins of this site, and of where I am now in my life, go back right into my childhood. As a child, I was absolutely fascinated by books about children who, through various dark dramas, were cast into the world to look after themselves. I can’t even remember the names of most of these books, although I think the adventures of either The Secret Seven or The Famous Five featured from time to time. Children who had to take care of themselves, who secreted sausages and bread and cheese and chocolate and lemonade away in caves so that, when needed, they could escape from the dark world of adults. There was one amazing book, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, where a group of children had to embark on a long and difficult journey through dark industrial Victorian Britain, and they managed this through their own skills and lots of raw eggs slipped down feverish throats.
As a child, because of my own dark childhood, I dreamed - fantasized - about a world in which everyone died but me. Yeah, a bit gloomy, I know! (I’ve moved on, since.) When I was about 11 or 12, The Omega Man came out, starring Charlton Heston, and I was mesmerized, because it fitted so perfectly into my own childhood fantasy.
I grew out of these fantasies, but my admiration of people who achieved independence because of their own self-reliance in life continued to enthrall me. In my twenties I loved the Jean Auel books, mainly because her female protagonist was so amazingly resourceful (having invented everything the modern world depends on, including microwave ovens and cling wrap). In more recent years I met a modern day Auel woman, living atop a mountain here in Tasmania, not a whit dependent on all the products and appliances that consume most of our lives, but managing with a rough hut, a leaky caravan and an outside fire pit. I had the best meal of my life there atop that mountain and from that fire pit, and it was the simplest - just some rough bread, some oil, some lamb spitted over the fire.
All of this intrigues me, and it speaks to something very deep inside me. I feel very drawn to the self-reliant life, and have enormous admiration for people who have somehow escaped the product-driven consumerism of our daily lives to live a simpler, more meaningful and more self-reliant life - people like John Seymour (oh, his wonderful books!) and Barbara Kingsolver’s experiment of self-sufficiency in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. It is not simply that in the doing a person can achieve some independence from the grip of consumerism, but that they manage to live a life more attuned to the natural rhythm of the seasons, that treads much more gently on this ravaged world of ours, and that encompasses a world of personal satisfaction.
Over the past 15 years or so I have also become aware and highly concerned about two other issues: what is happening to the global climate (and environmentalism in general, I guess), and the amazing (but generally unrecognized) fragility of our own highly destructive modern way of life (the depth of that fragility is a topic for another day). I realised that I had become a person who, while believing in environmentalism, and mouthing all kinds of concerns about how our modern way of life was steadily destroying the planet, was nonetheless encouraging this destruction by the use of countless products and appliances that, frankly, I didn’t really need.
So, over the past ten years or so, I have been moving ever more toward a simpler and, so far as I can make it, a more natural way of life. I recognise fully that I still live a duplicitous life - making use of so many modern conveniences while espousing environmental concerns - but I am doing what I can to shed as much as I can.
I do what I am able. I literally live, as much as possible, that philosophy of Voltaire’s that I used to teach my uni students so long ago: I reject the lights of Constantinople and prefer instead to cultivate my own garden.
I know I don’t do enough, but each year I try to do a little more. I grow as much of my own food as I can, and I shop as locally as possible (both to support members of my own community, and because the less miles each of the products I buy has to travel, the better). Every year a few more commercial products slide off my shopping lists, and I feel a little freer. (I mean, did you realise that your hair actually feels better without using shampoo and conditioner?)
So this blog, and the Nonsuch Kitchen Garden website generally, is here to document my journey, and hopefully to encourage others to think a little more deeply about their lives, and how they live them, as also to maybe influence people to try out some of the ‘old ways’ of living a life (kitchen gardening and preserving are the two I am mostly concerned with). The main reason I’d like to influence even just one person is not so much because it reduces our environmental impact (although it does), or because it may encourage you to be a little bit more independent of the global corporations which rule our lives (although it will), or because it is a far healthier way of life (which it most certainly is), but because it is such a happy way of living.
This all sounds so pretentious, doesn’t it! But it is the happiness aspect of it all, the deep personal satisfaction I get from being able to grow and produce so much of my own food, that drives me. I haven’t eaten so well in all my adult life as when I started to grow and produce my own food. So that is what this site is about, at least for me - sharing some of that deep personal happiness.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
I think that’s incredibly admirable. These days everything is close at hand and very few people are willing to make the effort to cook something healthy from scratch. Why do that when there are pre-cooked meals at Woolworths that just need to be zapped in the microwave? I know I’m guilty of that at times, but lately I’ve been trying to buy as local as I can. Not only for the environmental and health benefits but because, as someone who grew up in a farming town, I’ve seen what the drought has done to people I personally know. They need all the support they can get. Plus, we all know that local free range eggs taste so much better compared to caged eggs the supermarkets throw at us, let’s not even start on the tastier fruits and vegetables
July 13th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Natural food always tastes so much better & you know what has gone into & onto it during production.
There is nothing nice that picking something from your garden & putting it straight in the pot to cook. No goodness lost because it has sat in some cool store for who knows how long.
You are taking it further than that though Sara, by your preserves etc. Nothing was ever thrown out from my dad’s garden. It was bottled, pickled, cooked fresh or give to the neighbours. I applaud you in your endeavours.
July 15th, 2009 at 1:15 am
Hi,
It sounds wonderful.
July 21st, 2009 at 12:32 pm
It is amazing that the world of home grown fruit and vege is a never ending reality. Your garden looks amazing
Jewels (JemStar)
August 29th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
True happiness is that which is shared. Thankyou for sharing.
September 27th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Ditto with everyone’s comments here. Congratulations on your achievements, Sara. Please take a peek at happyearth.com.au. It’s fascinating. I have yet to complete reading it, having recently returned from a short holiday in Adelaide and the Barossa. There I visited Maggie Beer’s Farm Shop and took in the beautiful surrounds of Tanunda, plus the gorgeous Seppelt Winery. Keep up the good work.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:59 pm
It makes me really happy to see you involved in such an admiral project and wonder why other people with the means to make a difference like yourself do nothing.
I do not pretend to know you at all, except through your books and previous website. You have found something you love and you are living your dream.
I do not want to mention what you have gone through over the last 2 years and i can understand that your priorities change when you live through something like that.
When i read on your site, that you were ill, i was literally depressed for months. Over the last decade most people attribute the read renaissance to J.K Rowling. However you have done that for at least 15 people in my life with your own books. Not only did you provide me and many friends and co workers riveting stories and great characters, you served to inspire. Your pages on the art of writing have been invaluable and enable me to find a passion that i never knew i had. With your site you made me feel that i was part of an exclusive club or your fans.
Not only did you introduce me to the power of books, you showed me that some one from Australia could be a successful writer.
Being from the Western Suburbs of Sydney and from a low socio economic back ground, reading for pleasure or even to study was not really encouraged.
I found that by the time i left high school, i had only read the books that were assigned to me in class.
I had just started a new job with 2 hours of public transporting to do each day.
I was struggling with the travel time, untill my Mum gave me a small star trek paper back book to read. It made the time fly, but i found that i needed something a little meatier then a novelization of a TV show i watched as a kid.
Off to my local library i went, i must have looked at over 200 books. One of the first ones that i picked up, the one that i eventually chose to read was The Crippled Angle. OH MY GOD. Not only did the story and characters completely envelope me, i was exposed to the power of words for the first time. I enjoyed this book as if i was watching a movie! I had never experience anything like that before.
I am not sure if it is Crippled Angle (it is definatley in that trilogy) but even 10 years later i have scenes from that book seared into my head. The Scene where the Tournament goes to hell and Queen Mary calms everyone down was still the, and i cannot explain this at all, the most exciting, moving, dramatic scene i have read from a book. I do not know why that stays with me, but i remember deciding when reading this scene that i wanted to write.
I then discovered the Tencendor Series. WOW.
I have now read everything you have published. I have followed your site and have watched Nonsuch Gardens grow.
I just never made contact with you before. I was a coward
You are an inspiration. If i ever make it to Tasmania (i am sure i will) I will join your rake squad and be the best damn raker you have ever seen!
I am glad you are back and running a blog regularly. I look forward to your next book (Infinity Gate) (i am still not over Ishbel “I am Persimius” and perhaps even your next series, but realise you have new priorities and am not holding my breath.
November 8th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Hi Sara,
I love the new website having stumbled on it by chance having been to the one you maintained in a previous life. Read with interest about your dark childhood and rolled on the floor laughing with your comments about the quality of supermarket food. The photos show the house coming along in leaps and bounds and your self sufficiency, well, if you can achieve it, then good luck and congratulations. But don’t tell the utility companies, they will start shutting down power stations.
May all the snakes on your doorstep be expired ones.
WC
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