Try the Village Life
(Page 2 of 4)
March/April 1979
By the Mother Earth News editors
And—along with our "own" lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, parsley, beets, and turnips—we found that our new neighbors were downright insistent that we share in the bounty of their gardens, too! This informal "swappin' " ( of course we returned their gifts in kind) provided us with a wide variety of tasty homegrown fruits and vegetables.
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The village also proved to be a wonderful "marketplace" for quality protein. I discovered that local farmers were often willing to sell off a side of beef or a ham after butchering . . . and the finest grocery stores in the world don't offer meat that can approach those delectable cuts ... or eggs equal to the huge beauties that the poultry farmer 'cross the way often peddles for a little extra spend-in' money!
Better yet, the fields and the forests around our village home are chock-full of free-for-the-takin' foods. With the help of the local county agent (and the books he made available to us), Pat and I were soon gathering wild berries and (cautiously) even an occasional mushroom.
Nearer to home, we found a wild "orchard" of mulberry trees and took full advantage of the sweet fruit. (It wasn't long before we'd planted a good number of dwarf cherries, apples, pears, and peaches of our own, too!) Watercress, fennel, lamb's-quarters, and dandelions all grow close enough to the doorstep to be handily gathered, also. And we soon learned to "harvest" our share of game from the woods and fish from the river (not to mention giant bullfrogs . . . whose legs were regarded with suspicion at first but have become a favorite delicacy at our house).
By now you're probably champin' at the bit to try the small-town life for yourself (and maybe gettin' just a little bit hungry, too!). In order to smooth the path for anyone else who'd like to "scale down" his or her life, Pat and I offer the following hints and information:
SMALL TOWN, U.S.A.
Just what is a village, anyway? Well, when this country was being settled, folks tended to gather where there were valuable natural resources . . . things like water, timber, coal, minerals, and (of course) land. And, as their farms grew, these people came to depend upon each other for security, the exchange of goods, and kinship. Soon, they'd built a meetinghouse, a school, a store . . . and the settlement had become a small town! (Of course, today's villages are a bit more organized than those mutually dependent groups were . . . and usually have their own government with a board of trustees, a treasurer, a clerk, and even a police official ... as well as stores, churches, and a post office, too.)
