Book notes

Although I am in the middle of reading a couple books, library books tend to take an urgency because you have a deadline. So I have put down Swords Around the Cross and am reading (as mentioned below) Living the Good Life-how to live sanely and simply in a troubled world by Scott and Helen Nearing (1954, 1970).

I believe they were atheists ("Scott Nearing was a kind of deviant Marxist-he had just been expelled from the Communist Party"-from the introduction). At any rate, halfway through the book there are somewhat lengthy explanations on why they don't keep, use or eat animals, treatises on the injustice of the economic system in America---but never a mention of God. However, I note that they worked six days a week and on the 7th rested:

On Sundays we varied our schedule by having no schedule and by doing no regular bread-labor. Usually there was a period of music Sunday morning and often a group discussion Sunday evenings.

It reminds me of something Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy:

And only when they made a holy day for God did they find they had made a holiday for men.

Still, the Nearing's experiences in living and building are fun to read.

A friend gave me a couple of practical books worth noting here: Handy Farm Devices (new edition, but originally published in 1909) and Farm Appliances (also 1909). There are a couple of devices I have already found will be useful. For instance:

I made a simple trough this past weekend. Even though there is plenty of room for all of them to feed at it, they still try to push each other out of the way and climb into the trough. This one should solve both problems. I plan to have this model ready when we rotate the pigs to their next pen in a week or so.

Oremus pro invicem!