Life at the Funky Butte Ranch
Written: Apr 28 '08
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Very amusing
Cons: No complaints at all. Well, maybe needs some photos
The Bottom Line: Really well done account of a suburban boy who goes back to the land and lives to tell about it.
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| pambo's Full Review: Doug Fine - Farewell, My Subaru: One Man's Search ... |
Doug Fine wants to live responsibly, getting close to the land and reducing his dependence on oil. He also wants to live reasonably well. How to do both? Why, pack up the Subaru, drive to New Mexico and take up farming, raising chickens and goats, adding solar power, switching to biodiesel fuel and fighting off varmints.
“Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living” is the true, amusing and inspiring story of a suburbia-raised journalist’s experiment in responsible, sustainable living.
Though he has no experience in working with electricity, farming, plumbing, mechanics, horticulture or animal husbandry, he is not a complete babe in the woods, having covered wars and traveled on several continents and is apparently willing to try just about anything.
His plan has four major goals to start:
Use a lot less oil
Power his life by renewable energy
East as locally as possible
Don’t starve, electrocute himself, get eaten by the local mountain lions, get shot by his U.N.-fearing neighbors or otherwise die in a way that would cause embarrassment
But he doesn’t want to give up all of his creature comforts, either, such as sufficient power for his iPod, his wireless computing, ice cream, Netflix movies, toilet paper and so on. So if he wants to live the good but ethical life, he has to do some serious work. And he does.
Early on, he is tempted by the Wal-Mart store in town. He has to wean himself away from buying junk he doesn’t need, though sometimes the big-box store has the only supplies he needs to get started. He buys goats from a Craigslist seller. Getting to his ranch requires two water crossings; within a week of moving in, the area is hit by the worst August flooding the area has ever seen.
The adventures continue; he switches from his Subaru to a monster truck that is converted to biodiesel use. He even figures out a way to send out a cloud of veggie fumes smelling like Kung Pao chicken when another driver follows too close; he sleeps in the corral with the two baby goats to fend off the coyotes who seem to think he’s brought them take-out food; he learns to fire a shotgun; place solar panels to feed his well pump in the midst of a wind storm; he takes on a rattlesnake; he buys chickens and sells eggs, plants big gardens and learns to cope with wretched heat and sudden rain and fierce lightning.
He makes mistakes, of course, driven forward primarily by his own eagerness and naivete. Things don’t work at just the flip of the switch if you haven’t installed the power correctly. There are consequences for letting certain tasks go undone or for forgetting what your new device will do. After a lengthy description of a “breadbox” meant to produce instant hot water, he quickly forgets just what that means. “I was so distracted by the cartoonish mishaps associated with my solar-hot-water effort, that, by the next evening, when the pipes had dried, I had forgotten that the breadbox collector might actually work. I discovered this at the same time I learned what a restaurant lobster’s last moments are like.”
He finds a couple of girlfriends, then moves on before finding The One to make his life complete.
The lessons to be gleaned from Fine’s experiences show that they don’t come easily but the overriding message is one of involvement in life. While he sometimes requires the help of others, he alone is responsible for deciding and then carrying out whatever he needs to go as green as he wants. His experiences are both humbling and enlightening.
He gets his occasional comeuppance—thinking that he’ll have free fuel whenever he wants after converting his truck, he’s stunned to discover that someone else already has first claim to the best restaurant grease. He brokers a deal.
Installing the pipes to go solar, he finds that the pipes are sealed with a petroleum-based compound that he’s told is toxic.
His writing is lefty, certainly; he names a chicken-stealing coyote Dick Cheney because “He was living in an undisclosed location that was clearly within surveillance range of our bedroom,” enabling the predator to know when it was safe to venture out. He offers various comments on George Bush’s inability to speak clearly or show up for military duty. But these comments are parenthetical, not key to the great story Fine has to tell here. And they are amusing, as are most of his descriptions of his own ineptitude, the behavior of the goats, the anti-U.N. neighbors, the old hippies who sail through life in the desert, the unpleasant folks down at the local hardware store and his vehicles.
I get the feeling that a lot more preparation went into his plans than he describes in this book. But what we do get to hear about forms the story of a man committed to living a better lifestyle, open to learning, but not so committed as to turn off the rest of us just looking for a little wisdom, advice or example.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
pambo
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 - Top 1000 |
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Member: Pam
Location: Long Island
Reviews written: 430
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