By Fine, Doug, published by Villard Books, 2008.

I’ve been in a reading funk, feeling unmotivated and saw “Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living” by Doug Fine, when I was cleaning up my husband’s stash of books. He reads books about cars and this was purchased as one of those car books but when I looked at the subtitle and summary, I realized it was a book on homestead living. While I don’t have the acreage, I view my garden as a type of homestead. Homestead living is definitely a state of mind and I wanted to read his experiences.

In order to live more locally, Fine wanted to grow his own food and source his own fuel for his automobile to run his errands. A large segment of this book is about replacing his beloved Subaru with a cleaner running biofueled Ford truck. From converting the truck to adapt to biofuel to sourcing the grease to run it and the basics of running it, Fine weaves amusing details and stories of the interesting people he meets.

He also adopts two young female goats with hopes of meeting his dairy needs from milk to cheese and eventually, for ice cream. All of these events take place on a farm and acreage he purchased in New Mexico. Having a homestead in a desert can be challenging from floods to water sourcing. Solar electricity is abundant but an efficient system to heat his water is another adventure.

About a fifth of his book is about his entry into keeping chickens and gardening. There is the heartbreak losses of chickens due to a coyote and the adaptation he had to learn to protect his chickens. Finally towards the last few chapters of his book, after setting up his homestead, he was finally about to do what he sought to do which was to grow his own food. He had to contend with the numerous weeds he grew as his drip irrigation was too efficient. Then there was the fluctuating weather to contend with. Fine did what any gardener did–he didn’t give up and just replanted.

I enjoyed reading this book and Fine’s adventures was written in a humorous, amusing, self-effacing tone where he often didn’t know what he was doing and wasn’t quite sure he was doing it right but he had to forge on anyways. I especially appreciated his honest look at homestead living where you have to do everything yourself and that can feel entirely overwhelming. He was also constantly accessing his choices and whether or not that was local living. But as he settled in, he reaped the benefits felt closely to his life goal. I saw some of his other books he wrote and it looks like he became a hemp farmer and I am ready to read his adventures and learn more about his homestead state of mind.