"I’m glad you convinced me to buy it"

I got this letter from a new friend Tom Herzog who had been following this blog but who hadn't gotten the book.  I met him at a sustainability gathering here in Santa Cruz (we were meeting to trade home made preserves, what a great idea, and thanks to Meetup!).  So at some point in discussing gopher control, he realized that he knew about my book through the blog but hadn't bought it.  Boldly I said, "You should buy it!"  He did.  He took $20 out of his wallet, even though he was unemployed at the time, and money was tight, and then a few weeks later, I got this email from him.  

Farmer Tom Herzog

"It’s been a while since we first met/talked at the Preserve Swap Meetup Manfred hosted a few months back. I thought the Meetup was great and I’m glad I got to meet you.  I’ve been getting my little farming operation up and going. You might remember that we were talking for a bit about the Natural Process farming method I had learned while interning under Bob Cannard at Green String farm in Petaluma. Then at some point during the night I realized I had been following your blog for some time but had never bought the actual book. Well I’m sure glad you convinced me to buy it that night because you were right, I Loved it.
  

I just finished reading it and it’s almost completely covered in highlighter marking. So much I don’t want to forget! I’ll probably end up reading it few more times when I’m in need of some more inspiration in my life but for now I’m passing it on to friends that I know will love it as well. I really needed to hear the bits about people getting by with so little money and always being confident they will have enough to get by because that has been a current struggle in my life. 

Murata and his son, by the rice fields that feed them

    For me it was awesome to hear about all these different people successfully living the simple life that I’m currently trying to attain in my own life journey. I feel our Western society has done its best to hide these kind of people from us. They want our role models to be rich people, celebrities or musicians with all their expensive material things to trick us into thinking a life full of money is what truly brings happiness, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Most of these fake role models are so miserable and messed up they are dependent on some kind of drug/alcohol just to make it through the day. I know our national happiness has been in decline for some time and I really think it has a lot to do with our disconnect from nature and its daily destruction. I can only hope enough people wake up to this realization before it’s to late to mend all the damage we have caused to the mother of us all.

Gufu Watanabe (Chapter 8) displaying the warm conviviality you will find at all of these people's homes.

    Hopefully I’ll make it to another one of these Meetups and get to talk to you some more. Starting next week I’ll be out on my new farm full-time and trying to get the land/irrigation all prepped to get a good head start on this springs planting! 

Sincerely
Tom Herzog"

So, if you've been lurking around the blog, you really are missing out on great material.  We've just gone into our third printing (the first two have sold out), so please consider getting a copy for yourself, or for a friend. 

Outside of Mainstream Bookselling Channels

Books are sold in cities, right?  Book sellers and publishers focus on where concentrations of people are, and that makes sense.  But what about a book about rural life?

A Different Kind of Luxury is about person-to-person contact, about small-scale enterprises, about intimate connections with the natural world, and about doing for yourself.  This happens of course in the US as well.

One of the places that has sold dozens of books is the tiny "Kettenpom Store" in Zenia, CA.  It's in Trinity County near where my partner and I have some land where we live some of the time.  

Kettenpom Store

There are probably less than 200 people in the surrounding 50 miles, but they have stocked the book for two years now, and with a little "local author" sign, it sells.


One day, when I was signing books, a bearded man in overalls walked up to me and said, "You are signing that as if you wrote it."

"I did, actually."

"Wow, I love that book, I've read all the way through it three times."

It turns out that he lives in the same valley, and grows Japanese vegetables, including burdock root, or gobo as it is known in Japanese.

I have been very adamant about this book not being "about me."  Too many books about Asia focus on the Westerner's experience going there and learning about himself (usually it's a he).  There's something vaguely distasteful about that focus to me.  So when I've been asked to "talk more about yourself," I've resisted.  The book is about these people who are so amazing.  I try to move towards their ideal.

However, I think one of the reasons people want to know is because they want to believe that "people like them" can do it too.  And many Japanese people want to know if I live like the people I write about do.

So, over the next few months, I will go ahead and write a bit about ways in which my life has parallels to the people in the book.  But if this is your first visit to the blog, please, please read about them first.  There are many excerpts on this blog, and if you like what you read, please do purchase the book.  I don't make very much money at all on the book, but if it is going to continue to be available to other people in the future, it has to keep selling.  It's only $20, or less, with shipping. ( The computer you are reading these words on is likely more expensive than that.)

In Winter

So, for a bit of a start, here are a few photos of our land (about 15 miles from the Kettenpom store) and the house we built there.  Hand tools only, no generators.  Solar power and a little hydro electricity generator in the creek.

In Summer

Hand built house, from the front

This window arrangement
is based on Japanese flower
arranging ikebana

These solar panels were built in the early 1970s.  We bought them in the early 1990s.  In the summer, they give us more than all the power we need.  Just a few lights and the laptop.  They were $100 each, and boy was it hard to spend that much money!

No nukes.

So, yes, as I wrote in the introduction, "the good life is possible."  This is our version of it.  You too can create one of your own.  Try hard.  This is your time, and your life.