The secondary title of this book--One Woman's Solutions to Finding Abundance for Your Family while Coming to Terms with Peak Oil, Climate Change and Hard Times--pretty much tells the story.
This is not just another of those doom-and-gloom, batten-down-the-hatches-and-man-the-lifeboat handbooks we have seen so many of in the past few years. I've read most of those other books, and while they are helpful in understanding why we are where we are (in terms of energy depletion, climate change, and overwhelming personal and national debt), they don't go very far toward helping us deal with the problems we are facing.
Depletion and Abundance is different. For one thing, it is written by a woman--a smart, well-informed, and energetic woman. She is also a mother of four small children who manages to grow a garden, put food in the freezer, home school the kids, and write about it. These are not small matters, for all of the other books that have been written about energy, environmental, and economic woes have been written by men, bless 'em. These writers understand conceptually what we are facing and tell us with great authority and occasional sympathy just how bad it's likely to be. But Sharon Astyk is different. She speaks with authority and sympathy, but she focuses on how we can manage when tough times come. She writes with cheerfulness, humor, and great personal commitment. I'm betting that, if anybody can show us the way forward, she can.
For another thing, Depletion and Abundance is a book about the "new home front"--and if you ask me, this is where our real battles will be fought: not in Washington or in some foreign country, and not with guns (we hope). We will be trying to make our lives better at home. We will be working with a toolkit that women will need to know how to acquire and use: food from the garden, low-energy appliances, and care and attention to the wise conservation and deployment of the family's resources of time, effort, and money, in and out of the "official economy." Peak oil and gas, the use of coal and nuclear and renewable resources--these are public issues and must of course be addressed by national and local governments. But as Astyk points out repeatedly, it all comes home in the end. Home is where we will find sufficiency or scarcity, and it is women who will man the home front. This is a new message, an important message. We need to listen up.
Depletion and Abundance is full of important and helpful ideas. Astyk suggests ways we can reduce our consumption, get out of debt, and learn how to use what we have--use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without: the real homeland security, as she sees it. She has learned to live on seasonal produce and local foods. She and her family have faced the frightening fact that our futures may not be fully or continuously electrified (as I write this, Hurricane Ike has imposed this knowledge on some four million reluctant learners). Astyk has learned how to cope and she tells us how. Indeed, she is never stingy with her ideas. There's a 14-page appendix full of good suggestions for turning less into more, and more, and more.
And that, at least for me, is what is most important about this book. Yes, we're facing an unpredictable future where there will be less of everything. But the human spirit, as Astyk shows us, is capable of a marvelous alchemy. We can turn tough times into a test, and pass it. We can become self-sufficient, and in the process, learn how to recognize true abundance when we see it. Hers is an optimistic vision, to be sure--overly optimistic, in some ways. But we need optimism now, don't we? And if we need it now, we'll need it even more next week or next year or the years after that, in what may be a future most of us don't want to think about.
Read Depletion and Abundance and see if it doesn't change your ideas about what's ahead. It just might change your life, too.
by Susan Wittig Albert
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
Product DescriptionWhy are so few peak oil authors women? There's been much debate about this, and no one has yet arrived at a definitive answer. But whatever the reason, Sharon Astyk has established herself as a true rarity within the peak oil community by virtue of being a woman who has chosen to write about peak oil. The perspective she offers is thus both uncommon and vital.
In Depletion and Abundance, she shows how rewarding life on her New Home Front could be, immeasureably improving our health, nutrition, sense of community and overall well-being. Chief among its benefits would be all the extra time that we'd have. She points out that people in medieval times worked far fewer hours than Americans do today, and that most people in modern-day peasant societies also work less hard than we do.
This, along with Astyk's unique perspective as a woman, a mother and a peak oil activist, makes Depleiton and Abundance well worth a read. The ring of authenticity to her writing will hook you - while its relaxed style, ineffable humor, personal anecdotes and comforting touch will soothe your melancholy peaknik soul like a warm hand on the shoulder.
Reviewed by Frank Kaminski, Energy Bulletin
Sharon's introduction is pricelss in its succinct, dead-on analysis of collapse, and is reason enough to buy and send this book to everyone you know who is partially or completely clueless about where we're headed. "When I realized that everything was going to change, I was at first afraid. Because I thought, if my government or public policy or other choices weren't going to fix everything, what could I possibly do? What hope was there, if I had to take care of myself, if my community had to take care of itself?
But when I began looking for solutions that could be applied on the level of ordinary human lives, that involved changes in perspectives and pulling together, the reclamation of abandoned ideas and the restoration of strong communitites, I began to feel hopeful, even excited. Because I realized that when large institutions cease to be powerful, sometimes that means that people start being powerful again."
Depletion and Abundance is not a feel-good book, but it is intensely human, compassionate, supportive, pracitcal, alarming, enlivening, and astonishingly accurate.
Reviewed by Carolyn Baker, Carolynbaker.net
OK, quick check: everyone who is concerned about the economic crisis turning into a depression and causing food and fuel prices to rise and pockets to empty - whether for yourself, your parents, your children, your neighbors, your friends, or anyone - raise your hand. That covers just about everyone, doesn't it? Almost every conversation I've had recently with different people lately has touched on the economy and people's fears about what this situation means. Astyk knows she's covering a lot of territory to bring many people up to speed on the various causes behind our current crisis. Her research and thoughtful insight in discussing peak oil, climate change, and the economy are on target too.We may be headed into difficult times - and heaven knows, if you read only Astyk's first chapter, you might find yourself too depressed to go on --but ultimately we still retain the ability to choose a certain aount of independence. We can invest our time and our work in the sustenance of our selves, our families, and our communities, and we can begin to build a more sustainable economy. Sharon Astyk's book gives us the hope and the inspiration needed to take that step.Reviewed by Jennifer M, The Ethicurean
Climate change, peak oil, and economic instability aren't just future social problems-they jeopardize our homes and families right now. Our once-abundant food supply is being threatened by toxic chemical agriculture, rising food prices, and crop shortages brought on by climate change. Funding for education and health care is strained to the limit, and safe and affordable housing is disappearing.
Depletion and Abundance explains how we are living beyond our means with or without a peak oil/climate change crisis, and that, either way, we must learn to place our families and local communities at the center of our thinking once again. The author presents strategies to create stronger homes, better health, and a richer family life and to:
- live comfortably with an uncertain energy supply
- prepare children for a hotter, lower energy, less secure world
- survive and thrive in an economy in crisis
- maintain a kitchen garden to supply basic food needs
Most importantly, readers will discover that depletion can lead to abundance, and the anxiety of these uncertain times can be turned into a gift of hope and action.
An unusual family perspective on the topic, this book will appeal to all those interested in securing a future for their children and grandchildren.
Sharon Astyk is a former academic who farms in upstate New York with her husband and four children. She also raises livestock, grows vegetables, and writes about food and peak oil. (Check out her blog-www.sharonastyk.com.)
About the AuthorSharon Astyk is a former academic who is a writer, subsistence farmer, parent, activist and prolific blogger (www.sharonastyk.com and http://henandharvest.com/). She farms in upstate New York with her husband and four children, raises livestock, and grows and preserves vegetables.She is the author of Depletion and Abundance, and co-author of A Nation of Farmers.
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Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front (Paperback)
This book is written as if Steve Solomon is the grandfatherly type telling those who know nothing of gardening what's what. Initially, I was a bit put-off by this tone, but the author has earned a right to that tone and his opinions. I quickly became very interested in what he has to say, in that he rejects many ideas and fads on intensive, hyper dense garden production. Steve Solomon has been around long enough to have tried some of the high density, intensive gardening ideas and found them wanting. 
