Comments on: Five Acres and Independence Book Review

By: dave c

dave c — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 03:24:17 +0000

I like laurie’s closing comment about the past being the future. Makes perfect sense. With all the technological advancements, we seem to have gotten dumber in many ways. Why is it that common sense is not so common anymore? Think about it…

By: laurie mikita

laurie mikita — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:04:06 +0000

Five Acres and Independence is one of my favorite books.i was raised in a small community that was green lol before it was popular to be green!!!i found the book donated by an older friend to a store about 10 years ago.if you were raised green you have always had the outlook on pestacides,ect. as i see it the past is the future

By: quickies « crazy dumbsaint of the mind

quickies « crazy dumbsaint of the mind — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:05:51 +0000

[...] Five Acres and Independence wistful dreaming book [...]

By: Off Grid Ebert

Off Grid Ebert — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 18:15:34 +0000

Everyone here makes great points. From a historical perspective, this book was a good read. From a practical one, it was not – at least in my opinion.

I wasn’t looking for entertainment or infotainment. Many of the alternative books I mentioned at the end of the review are not entertaining. But they do contain information that is more applicable to modern homesteaders.

And I’m not talking about “modern” as in technology. I mean “modern” as in applicable to today’s laws, today’s septic tanks, today’s water problems, today’s lack of heritage-breed livestock and heirloom seeds… Some of the problems discussed in the book are no longer problems, and some of the problems not addressed in the book were not yet problems at the time.

It’s dated. That’s all I’m saying. If you like history and just want to read how the old-timers did it, why not pick up a copy of the Foxfire anthology? I’m all for old-timey ways and will be using wood ash to make my own lye this year even though it’s cheap and easy to buy. But I don’t know a local blacksmith, so I guess I’m not going to be getting the metal bands to my barrel made down the road. This book is a CLASSIC. But so is Walden Pond and, although entertaining and of high value to our bank of literature, neither seems to me an applicable manual for off grid living in today’s world.

By: Enrique from Mexico

Enrique from Mexico — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 18:00:49 +0000

You don’t became a builder by reading the “Ten Books Of Architecture by Marco Vitruvio Polion”, and nobody thinks Vitruvio was a polluter or something like that.
We need some historic perspective here.