Customer Reviews

This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader

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I had this book on my wishlist for quite some time, then finally broke down and checked it out of my local library. I had been warned about the "chatty" style and the lack of focus, but I was intrigued enough about the subject itself to overlook those potential flaws. I used to belong to a CSA Farm, so the subject of sustainable and responsible agriculture is close to my heart.

The style of writing did not bother me. Although she does seem at times to meander in the early chapters, she has quite a few complicated and inter-related subjects to cover: the purchase of her first home, the purchase of her new home, the development of her commitment to self-sufficient agriculture (or something close to it), and the death of her husband. Once those subjects are covered, I found the book became clearer and more linear (for better or worse).

Most of what she says I can't argue with. I agree that there is something fundamentally wrong with a food production system that makes it more affordable for we Northeasterners to buy food shipped in from California than to buy food from our own home states. When she describes the system as essentially a lot of fuel going to ship cold water, one has to want to reevaluate their food choices.

I found myself nodding in agreement when she talked about the taste of the foods we have the "luxury" of being able to buy year round. Having tasted food right off the farm, I can verify that there is a world of difference between it and the items you find in your store- even if they are "in season". Fresh produce does get addictive. Of course, not everyone has the luxury of having enough land to grow a substantial garden on, as Gussow points out. She suggests a CSA as an alternative, but that can be an unrealistic commitment for many people as well.

...I took puzzled offense to her chapter on vegetarianism. While I feel that serious gardeners and farmers have a right to protec their crops from "varmints" and that therefore there is a little death in even the most stringent vegan diet, I felt that she completely dropped the ball in her argument against a vegetarian diet. Throughout the book she drives home that the gasoline used to ship food all over the country contributes to the greenhouse effect that caused her (and most of the country) some of the most erratic summers and winters on record. In her dismissal of the vegetarian diet, she does not once make mention of the fact that the waste from the livestock is also a major contributor to the greenhouse effect. She talks about an organization that touted the belief that the planet would return to an Eden-like state if we all stopped eating meat. Perhaps (although she gives an incomplete argument against that assertion), but the argument I have heard for the last decade is that if everyone in the US cut their consumption of meat by 10%, we would significantly reduce energy consumption and livestock waste- enough to make a difference in the global warming trend she (and I) is so concerned about.

That aside, this is a book worth reading if you are interested in sustainable agriculture. Again, it's not something we'll all be able to do, but it's something we can all participate in.

From the Washington Post: Books Show Organic Gardens Can Be of Beauty and Service By Joel M. Lerner Saturday, June 16, 2001; Page H07

...(G)et a copy of "This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader" by Joan Dye Gussow (Chelsea Green...). You will forget that education is the purpose of this book, because it moves so much like a novel. However, you will find yourself stopping and jotting down little bits of information and recipes along the way.

This informative text is about the author's trials and tribulations, a story of self-sufficiency and living off the land. It is so well written, poignant and packed with facts that every page is enjoyable and educational reading. You will go through floods and feasts, good times and bad, and come out the other end an extremely well-informed organic gardener, but you get there almost subliminally as you enjoy this 273-page hardcover account.

"This Organic Life" offers a crucial message about the importance of soil, a living part of the Earth and of our lives, and about how our food choices affect the health of the soil. Gussow makes this and some related points forcefully and repeatedly, and bravely offers up the example of her own decisions to enact a local-foods philosophy.

The writing suffers from underinvolvement of an editor. The work lacks focus, especially in the first half, when her marriage, her community, a search for a new home, remodeling, and other events compete with the "Organic" promised in the book's title. An editor would have been able to bring continuity and theme to these essays, which actually are a narrative of the middle age and early elderly eras of her life. Strong editing would also have eliminated the confusing (and really needless) details about the nature of her newly purchased house and the foot by foot descriptions of the lot. Verbal descriptions, at least of this kind, cannot provide a sense of the surely daunting prospects she and her husband faced in claiming their new plot of land.

The really interesting stuff is contained in the latter part of the book, where Gussow combines polemic with her adventures in gardening and storing food in her own yard and in the community garden she helped commence. Each of us who tries to live a commitment to sustainable and healthy participation in the natural coil struggle with a myriad of choices and compromises. We are hopeful that our journey towards responsible activity is a progressive one. I think an essential part of the journey is a frank acknowledgement of our limitations and contradictory behavior. Gussow makes some concession to hypocritical choices in food selection. She does not, however, recognize some of the other difficulties inherent in her recommendations.

For example, it is not clear to me that shifting the freezing of foods from the producers and supermarkets to a citizenry that has one or more individual home freezers will result in less consumption of electricity and other resources. Gussow seems to be a consumer of a great deal of plastic and the role of this and other manufactured products (such as the huge amount of demolition waste from her home) in the health of the soil in land fills and dumps is not addressed. She is very vocal about the evils of transporting foods over long distances, at a high natural resources cost, for out-of-season consumption. Yet if we all we mailed crates of citrus in the winter and other food products from out of state, are we shifting the high resource consumption from the food service sector to the mail sector? Which is less wasteful?

Other topics I would have liked to have seen addressed involve the use of heritage seeds versus newer crop hybrids, how eating local foods improves health through localizing the mineral and environmental cycle of feeders, the ways that new homes can be built with more sustainable housing products, and energy-efficient, alternative ways of regulating home temperatures and providing storage. It seems that "This Organic Life" might better have been titled "This Organic Eater" or "This Organic Gardener." The author does provide an interesting look at efforts we can make to improve our situation, and raises issues and questions that will extend the discussion without providing an ultimate solution.

Ms. Gussow's book is an important work that enlightens the reader to the meaning of eating and living locally. She tells us about the costly effects, both personal and global, of eating food that comes from half way around the world (if we know where it comes from at all). She paints a beautiful picture of the glories of growing and eating food produced locally, all from her own experience. Her gardens are astounding, something to aspire to! But so is her knowledge of nutrition, agricultural politics and organic gardening. Key points in her writing are puncuated with simple, delicious recipes. Her granola is great! I look forward to trying more of them when things come in to season. She reminds me of MFK Fisher, with a very clear and pointed social conscience. Reading this book has inspired me to be much more aware of where my food comes from and has given me good reason to always ask the supermarket to sell me local produce when possible.

As a former student of Joan Gussow, I have had the pleasure of visiting the garden that she so eloquently describes. After reading her book, it has further "energized" me to get my act together & get things ready for a garden next spring (which means I must get the beds & soil ready now). Joan is an inspirational person & it is so nice that more people will have the ability to learn from her through her book. It will make you think twice before you buy imported produce. Support your local farmers!

Confession:I'm not a gardener -- only somebody endlessly grateful she has friends who are. But Joan Gussow's lovely book might just get me out there. Her arguments for eating locally are so cogent and expressed with such passion that she leaves me little choice. "This Organic Life" is deliciously written -- wry, acerbic, ebullient by turns -- and is in fact about much more than gardening. It's about Finding Your Dream House -- and having to rebuild it from the ground up. Obliquely, poignantly, it's about a long, strong marriage and a death. As Barbara Kingsolver says, "full of hope, kindness, and arresting wisdom." All this, and great recipes!

I haven't spent much time looking at the recipes & I'll admit I skipped a few boring(in my eyes) paragraphs here & there.
However I'm growing my first organic garden this year & the reason is similar to Joan's. I don't want to rely on industry for everything. I would like to be able to provide some of the basics for my family. I found the story of her life very motivating. I also know a little bit about the area she lives in & I think she did a terrific job describing it.
This book most certainly inspires me to raise the bar in my organic garden and I will buy locally.
I know some people didn't enjoy her home building sections, but I found them interesting & sometimes funny.

I have read scores of books on organic gardening, permaculture, the environment, and food... This book tops my list of must-reads! Every living, breathing, eating adult needs this book! (while you're at it check out "The Organic Gardener's Home Reference" it's a wonderfully comprehensive and precise reference)

A wise, heart warming and inspiring book. As a European living in the US, horrified at the 'get outta my way', SUV driving, self obsessed disposable culture that afflicts so many here, this books not only brings lessons for life and tremendous humor, but is a timely reminder that some here do care passionately for a more thoughtful, humane life. Inspiring, educational, and should be required reading for kids across the country.

Joan Dye Gussow may be a suburban homesteader as her book jacket suggests, but she managed to live in two places one does not ordinarily associate with suburban tracts-an old Victorian house on a large plot of land in Congers New York and a second half acre plot on the banks of the Hudson River in Piermont New York (featured in Woody Allen's film The Purple Rose of Cairo). At the latter site sat an Oddfellows Hall which the Gussows hoped to rehabilitate but discovered after having begun their project they would have to tear down and rebuild.

Gussow does not spend a great deal of time describing the new house with a room for her artist husband and a root cellar, but she does go into detail about the gardens the two of them developed before, during and after the new house was built. For awhile, the Gussows were living in Congers and gardening in both places. On top of that, the couple was involved in converting the eyesore parking lot and general dumping area next door to their new house in Piermont into a community garden.

Dr. Gussow's husband died two years after they moved into the new house in Piermont, so to some extent her book is a memoir of their last few years together gardening. Gussow is a nutritionist and was a college professor and lecturer before she retired. She has written several books on nutrition, food, and gardening and is an advocate of organic gardening and eating locally grown foods in season. She says if you can't grow them yourself in a home plot or community garden center, then join a cooperative that supports a local farmer. At the very least, shop the farmer's markets in your area, learn how to store foods for the winter, and avoid eating out-of-season produce. The incredible waste of energy expended to grow and import tasteless foods and the conventional (as opposed to organid) practices used to produce most fish and meat are destructive to both human health and the environment.