Sharon Astyk - Making Home: Adapting Our Homes and Our Lives to Settle in Place

Praise for

Making Home

Making Home is quintessential Astyk. Which is why, when suggesting that giving care is what makes us human, she is not only nudging our participation in the worlds healing but, most strikingly, showing us exactly how its done. Her legions of fans have come to expect just that and Making Home will not disappoint. Exhaustively researched and compassionately delivered, this tribute to home, family, community and place offers an honest analysis of the challenges we face and the skills, tools and heart we will need to take them on. Part call to arms, part siren song of love, Making Home: Adapting Our Homes and Our Lives to Settle in Place, is the new standard to beat.

Harriet Fasenfest, author, A Householders Guide to the Universe

Americans are born to be transient Sharon Astyk has the prescription for dealing with that genetic disease, and building a healthy nativeness into our lives.

Bill McKibben, author Deep Economy

True to form, Sharon Astyk has given us another thought provoking kick in the pants. No matter what your resources may be, or where you fall on the socio-economic spectrum, this book has something to teach about building resilience for a better future for everyone.

Shannon Hayes, author, Radical Homemakers and Long Way on a Little

Global crises will be paralyzing unless we have made for ourselves a grounded home life that includes children, animals, soil, music, and daily choresunless we have learned to respond to economic turmoil, peak oil, and climate change through the details of our daily existence. Sharon Astyk gives us exactly the eloquent, realistic encouragement we need at this moment in history.

Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute, author, The End of Growth

Making Home is part how-to, part engaging memoir, part philosophy, and all wise and intelligent. Sharon shows us why the actions that prepare us for emergencies and energy descent are the right things to do no matter what the future brings, and she takes us through the steps to get there with certainty and good humor. She truly walks her talk, as this book shows, and is one of the clearest voices telling the much-needed new stories of the opportunities and challenges well meet as we continue to emerge from the fossil-fuel age. This book is another home run for Sharon Astyk.

Toby Hemenway, author, Gaias Garden:

A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture

ADAPTING OUR HOMES and OUR LIVES TO
SETTLE IN PLACE

Sharon Astyk

Copyright 2012 by Sharon Astyk.

All rights reserved.

Cover design by Diane McIntosh.

Cover image: iStock (illuworld); label image iStock Nic Taylor

eISBN: 978-1-55092-509-8

Inquiries regarding requests to reprint all or part of Making Home should be addressed to New Society Publishers at the address below.

To order directly from the publishers, please call toll-free (North America) 1-800-567-6772, or order online at www.newsociety.com

Any other inquiries can be directed by mail to:

New Society Publishers

P.O. Box 189, Gabriola Island, BC V0R 1X0, Canada

(250) 247-9737

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Astyk, Sharon

Making home : adapting our homes and lives to stay in place / Sharon Astyk.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Simplicity. 2. Sustainable living. 3. Conduct of life. 4. Thriftiness. 5. Happiness. I. Title.

BJ1496.A87 2012646.7C2012-903261-1

New Society Publishers mission is to publish books that contribute in fundamental ways to building an ecologically sustainable and just society, and to do so with the least possible impact on the environment, in a manner that models this vision. We are committed to doing this not just through education, but through action. The interior pages of our bound books are printed on Forest Stewardship Council-registered acid-free paper that is 100% post-consumer recycled (100% old growth forest-free), processed chlorine free, and printed with vegetable-based, low-VOC inks, with covers produced using FSC-registered stock. New Society also works to reduce its carbon footprint, and purchases carbon offsets based on an annual audit to ensure a carbon neutral footprint. For further information, or to browse our full list of books and purchase securely, visit our website at: www.newsociety.com

To the authors of my first homes, my parents

T ODAY, MORE THAN EVER BEFORE, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, Mother Earth News is recommending select New Society Publishers books to its readers. For more than 30 years, Mother Earth has been North Americas Original Guide to Living Wisely, creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature. Across the countryside and in our cities, New Society Publishers and Mother Earth are leading the way to a wiser, more sustainable world. For more information, please visit MotherEarthNews.com

T HIS PROJECT WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN possible without the support and friendship of many people first and most importantly, Aaron Newton, who, even if he didnt write the book, has worked with me on many classes and projects and who continually inspires my thinking on this subject. Miranda Edels beautiful illustrations made the pictures in my head real. Thanks go to those who agreed to be profiled: Gerri Williams, Risa Bear, Lisa Coons, Michelle Kay and Kathy Harrison. Others not profiled gave advice from their lives, including MEA, Pat Meadows, Michelle Chandler, Maria and Fred Tupper, Bernard Brennan, Loren Brown and Pamela Talese, Beth Hook, Stephen Beltramini, Deanna Duke, Tammi Hodson, Robyn and Brian Morton, Tovah Gidseg, Kathy McMahon, Dave Perkins, Edson Freeman and Lonna Cunningham. Thanks also the participants in our Adapting in Place classes and to the commenters on my blogs, who immensely improved this book.

I built upon ideas from Toby Hemenway, Richard Heinberg, Dmitry Orlov, Wes Jackson, John Michael Greer, Kurt Cobb, Albert Bates, Shannon Hayes, Rod and Julie Dreher, Harriet Fasenfest, Gene Logsdon, the late Carla Emery, Peter Bane and Keith Johnson, Larry Santoyo, Pat Murphy and Faith Morgan, Jeffrey Brown, Philip Rutter, Megan Quinn Bachman, Stuart Staniford, Naomi Davis, Nicole Foss, Ilargi and, of course, Wendell Berry.