Still Life with Chicken

I started reading it, and I got about 20 pages into it before the depression hit.

Everyone told me that I should read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.  In this book, Kingsolver and her family move away from Arizona and head to Virginia to live on a farm and try to have a more sustainable existence.  So, obviously, it would make sense that I might enjoy reading this book, since that’s exactly what we have done. I resisted reading it up till now, because I was afraid I’d read it and get really sad.  I was right.  See, the big difference between me and Barbara, is that I’m not a best selling author, and I can’t take a year off work and be a full time farmer.  Or even a half time farmer.  Last year I spent nearly every weekend during the growing season in the garden, and was just able to keep up with it.  This year if I get 2 days a month I’ll be lucky.  So I figured if I read the book, it would just exacerbate my feeling of job-burnt-outed-ness which has been growing steadily the past year or so.  See – if it were up to me, I’d raise vegetables, chickens, start a goat dairy, make cheese, bread and generally focus on the slow life for a while.  It’s hard to describe how much more in balance I feel when I am weeding the garden verses, say, sitting in front of a computer in a poorly lit windowless cube with no natural light.  Working at home improves things marginally, but still you are glued to a glowing monitor all day producing nothing but “software”.  Don’t get me wrong – I like programming, and I like working on the computer.  I’d just like my hobby (farming) and my job (programming) to switch places.