Living the Natural Life

This book is a treasure trove of information about old-time food preservation methods. Firth, a farm girl and a one-time Alaska bush pilot, raised her family in the Virginia suburbs, but still followed the old-time methods for food preservation she learned from her parents and grandparents. In this book, food item by food item, she describes how to preserve one's food to last without freezers or refrigeration. She discusses curing meats, making sausage, collecting and drying herbs for tea, making homebrewed soft drinks, pickles, potted cheese and meats, home canning, and bread baking. For safety reasons, I'm not sure I'd want to follow all of her recipes, like those for canning low-acid vegetables without a pressure canner. But on the other hand, the methods Firth describes here were those relied on for hundreds, if not thousands of years to feed families throughout North America and Europe. With the advent of commercial food processing, this information, once common knowledge, is being rapidly lost. The methods and recipes Firth provides can some provide some essential information for modern-day homesteaders and those interested in just how people got along before they had commercially processed food and home freezers. The book isn't simply a cookbook or preservation guide, however. Firth manages to include a lot of humor and thoughts to ponder in her text. For instance, when discussing the merits of homemade pepperoni, she quips "Homemade pepperoni on homemade pizza puts everyone in an energetic mood; we eat with our hands and talk and laugh as the hot cheese stretches....Sometimes we get into heated discussions. Recently we had a fine fight over high-sulphur fuels and thermal pollution, then ended up chewing on the concept of `growth is good.' Someone pointed out that John Dewey had said that ideas concerning ethical questions must have their roots in natural explanations. What is the place and function of man in the environment? In the simplest terms we concluded that man must be faithful to the earth....Natural, saving points of view should be adopted wherever possible. Preserving meats by natural means is a molecular but positive way in which one man, one family, can wage war on waste." And later, she writes, "Preserving the earth's gifts of meat, herbs and fruit is one tiny contribution toward saving our overburdened and lacerated planet. In turn, the very act of saving becomes an act of faith because when a person saves he is saying that there will be a tomorrow....Saving, whether it involves bits and pieces of meat, the gathering and brewing of native teas, or canning of the season's surplus, adds the firm touch of earthiness to today's plastic-wrapped patterns of living."