A Highly Satisfying Moment

I just emailed the last few corrections to the publisher and tossed the galley proofs of Working Dogs of Texas into the tattered cardboard file box full of manuscript drafts, notebooks, interviews, correspondence, clippings, and magazine articles dating back to 2003, when Wyman Meinzer and I first started talking about collaborating on a book about working dogs.

If you've ever written a book, you know the feeling.

Working Dogs will be out this fall.

I have plenty of other work to do today, but I'm in a celebratory mood. I'll probably just put the lid on the box and go for a nice, long walk.

Self-Sufficiency Percentage

Matt Mullenix raised an interesting figure in his comment to my last post, "Endangered Agribusiness."

"Just think how large a cow Big Ag would have if the average American provided even as little as 10% his food needs through gardening and hunting?"

Have any of you ever put pencil to paper to calculate how big your garden would have to be or how much fish and game you'd have to put away for you and your family to achieve a certain level of self-sufficiency?

I like Matt's figure of 10 percent self-sufficient. It seems reasonable, though I'm afraid I'd be shocked at just how much gardening, hunting, and fishing I would have to do to achieve it - even for just Jane and me.

Any thoughts? Suggestions for making such a calculation?

Endangered Agribusiness

Matt and all of my other fellow organic gardeners out there, we've got it all wrong, as this letter helpfully points out.

Is somebody feeling a little insecure?

Patrick Deneen and the folks at Front Porch Republic are all over it.