Possum Living, and what I’m up to

I just rediscovered a link to a great book, Dolly Freed’s classic ‘Possum living: How to live well without a job and with (almost) no money’. It’s an interesting read, lots of useful tips and hints. You can read the whole thing online here.

In other news, I’m nearly done writing a book(let), a collection of essays and endangered skills. It will hopefully be on paper in the next month, once I figure out how to do that, and available for folks to buy (gasp!). I am really excited about it, it’s somewhat a distillation of the most pertinent ideas and skills I have to share at the moment, that I can fit into a smallish booklet. Some stuff has appeared here, much of it is fresh.

Getting to Know Hazel

I remember first reading about hazelnut trees in a book, ‘food plants of the northwest coast’, when I was maybe 18. I had flipped through and seen that hazelnuts grow where I live before, but at this time I realized how significant this was. I’d never noticed a hazelnut tree, or heard people talking about them, so their presence seemed unreal to me. I looked at the photo in the guide, remembered the shape of the leaf, and kept my eyes peeled as I went about my days. I started seeing them everywhere. Things got really crazy when, in mid summer, I noticed little nuts starting to form. Totally outrageous I thought – nuts, from trees?!