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

Bays Mountain Park

Bays Mountain Lake

Boots and concreteI'm obsessed with my book project.  I wake up with sidebars in mind and try to go to sleep with editing decisions still rolling around in my head.

The choice to put the farm on hold and bulldoze my way through finishing the book has been a good one for the manuscript, which is suddenly starting to look like something I won't cringe to see in Tractor Supply.  (I might even go so far as to say I'm proud of it.)  Unfortunately, just a few weeks of sedentism is enough to remind me that my body craves motion.

Photographing observation hive

Egg displaySo I begged Mark to take me to Bays Mountain, where I could wear myself out walking up to the fire tower.  I had forgotten the tower was so high (60 feet) and scarily open, and that the platform at the top was so tiny.  We didn't stay aloft long, but did try out the homemade parachute some kid had left behind.

After an engrossing planetarium presentation, I realized I hadn't thought about the book all day.  Success!  If editing takes much longer, we'll have to go back for another round of nature meditation.

Bridge over the river
Our chicken waterer is the no-spill solution for chicken tractors.


Anna Hess's books
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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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The first picture is striking!
Comment by Maggie Sun Jan 8 14:55:03 2012
I'll bet there are a few dozen pictures just like it floating around --- the park built a boardwalk out to a perfect overlook at that point. :-)
Comment by anna Sun Jan 8 16:37:48 2012





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