A NEW YEAR NEW PLANS

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That old save "Write what you know°' may be a cliche by this time, but it's still a pretty good rule for authors and it gets broken more often than it should in the literature of the back to the land movement. A happy exception is a new book from Rodale Press: The Manual of Practical Homesteading by John Vivian. John and his wife, Louise, are former city slickers who've spent the last seven years learning the hard way how to live on their land in central Massachusetts and the fruits of their experience are packed solidly into a 340 page guide that really lives up to its name. No one system is right for all areas or all individuals, of course, but the Vivians' gardening, stock raising, and food preservation techniques make a lot of sense for large portions of the U.S. and Canada and the couple's down to earth approach to their new lifestyle is a good model for settlers anywhere.

If the following excerpt whets your appetite for the whole book and we hope it does The Manual of Practical Homesteading is available for $8.95 from Rodale Press, from local bookstores, or from MOTHER'S Bookshelf.

With the end of holiday excitement and activity the tree goes out for the birds, the crust of the last wedge of pumpkin pie has become so soggy it becomes a treat for Horrible Pig, and the homestead slides into a new year. Like most everyone, we find the first few days of January a time for reflection and planning for the coming season. We begin gathering up the receipts and records and when the first seed catalogs arrive I find I'm beginning to plan gardens. But these have become fairly routine tasks by now and most January evenings in front of the living room fire are taken up in discussing the major changes we hope to make on the homestead and our life on the land.

It seems that as time goes by, the projects that we undertake are more and more decided for us by national and world events. Without the recent energy crisis, resulting in skyrocketing costs of power, our planning for an independent water or wind powered electricity generator would be a lot more iffy than it is. So would plans for a log splitter, a wood burning kiln to replace Louise's electric model, and a good deal more. It seems that the pace and severity of change keeps picking up with every passing month, this crisis or that shortage appearing suddenly to make dramatic change in all our lives. With each big change, of course, a homesteader's plans and priorities are affected, though not so drastically as if we were still townspeople. So, after the greenhouse is completed, I really can't say which project will be the next to be carried out. It depends on which will appear to make the most valuable contribution to the ever expanding partnership between us arid the !and.

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