The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Top three blogs

Dog in the snow from Sugar Mountain FarmAre you looking for some more blogs to follow?  I read over fifty, ranging from personal odysseys to nonprofit newsletters, but only a few are so rivetting I want to share them.  These top three blogs are my personal picks based on: posting frequently enough to keep me hooked, mixing personal and informational in a fun proportion, and either being beautiful or well written (or both.)

Causabon's Book is probably the blog I discuss the most at the dinner table.  Sharon Astyk is a Jewish homesteader and peak oil writer who sucks you in with her tales of family life and simple living but adds plenty of meat about how to store your food and prepare for the end of civilization.  Her posts are thought provoking and mirror my own world while also veering off in other directions.  (She used to write over on her personal blog, but is mostly writing at the link above.)

Sugar Mountain Farm is "stories from a small farm in Vermont's mountains raising pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks, dogs and kids naturally on pasture."  I started reading because we're contemplating running pigs on pasture some day, but I kept reading because Walter's photos were astounding --- really the best I've seen on any blog.  It's also fun to read about someone running a successful small farm.

Not Exactly Rocket Science
is a new favorite, interpreting new scientific discoveries into layman's terms.  This isn't precisely homesteading, but you need to know the science to make it all work!

What are your top three blogs and why?

Don't forget to subscribe to our chicken blog where I'm currently going on at great length about formulating homemade chicken feeds.


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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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  1. Idle Words has infrequent, often quite long & well written posts about life in Poland, China, Argentina, and other interesting subjects. Including "Rocket to Nowhere", probably my favorite rant ever, about the space shuttle.

  2. Planet Debian allows me to cheat and include the blogs of 300 of my favorite people in one bullet point. I'm big on personal blogs of people I know, both to keep up with their lives and as a way to find out about new things from a wide variety of perspectives.

  3. XKCD

Comment by joey [kitenet.net] Sun Feb 14 13:56:58 2010
I think you told me about Idle Words before, but that was before I really learned how to use RSS and so I never started following them. I'll have to check on them now!
Comment by anna Sun Feb 14 15:09:28 2010

I wrote a post about my favorite blogs too. Rather than give you the list all over again, I hope you don't mind me pointing people to them: http://www.livingoffgrid.org/homesteading-blogs/

My favorites are: Walden Effect Fast Grow The Weeds Throwback at Trapper Creek

Comment by Everett Mon Feb 15 10:35:03 2010
I was hoping you'd chime in! I'll go check those guys out and add to my reading list! :-)
Comment by anna Mon Feb 15 10:50:52 2010

Of course, your blog is at the top of the list. I also enjoy one called www.littlehousesouthernprairie.wordpress.com which is a humorous blog about a woman who used to be a reporter, quit her job and she and her husband simplified their life and now live in a small house (not sure where), www.tinyhouseblog.com which is a blog that follows the tiny house movement with folks living in spaces as small as 100 sq. feet, www.whimfield.com which is about a young couple who sold their condo in Victoria (near Vancouver, Canada) and drove across the country to the opposite coast (from Pacific to Atlantic) to Prince Edward Island, bought an old fixer-upper house, fixed it up, and are now living their dream.

I will have to check out your blogs. :)

Comment by HeatherW Mon Feb 15 13:23:59 2010
Awww... Thanks for putting us at the top of your list. :-) I'll check out your other top choices --- they all sound intriguing!
Comment by anna Mon Feb 15 16:35:59 2010





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