Sharon Astyk Adapts In Place: An Expose'
Sharon September 2nd, 2008
This is a guest post by writer Mynda Ubis-Ness, a lead reporter from the Canadian Environmental Magazine “Salacious Green.” Mynda writes “I asked Astyk for an interview about her newly released (on store shelves today) book, but it became very clear shortly after I arrived at her farm that there was a much bigger story here – she’s not really what dozens of readers have come to believe she is. The public has a right to know how she’s misleading us!”
Contacted to defend herself against these allegations, Astyk replied, “Ummm….”
Mynda: May I call you Sharon?
Sharon: Of course – everyone does.
Mynda: Sharon, your writings make you seem to have it all. You have the perfect, dream homestead. A supportive family. A brilliant, loving husband. Four beautiful children. Delicious, homegrown food. You homeschool, farm and write, as well as preparing for peak oil and climate change. And yet, the reality is a little different than the perceptions, right?
Sharon: Of course it is – we’re normal people, in fact, on the lazy side a lot of the time. You saw the three foot weeds in the “perennial garden” on the way in, right? Want to see the seedlings that the goats got at? The perfect children are out there whining at the brilliant husband, who is snapping at them because he’s trying to get a field scythed and keeps stopping to take people to the potty and get them glasses of water. And as soon as I’m done with you, I will go clean the goat and chicken poop off the milking stand. It isn’t very Martha Stewart.
Mynda: Yes, I was surprised, nay, shocked, to find that the house doesn’t seem to be the paradise I’d imagined it to be. Don’t you think it is unfair to other people, especially women, that you make it seem so easy, let them think that you are the sustainable Martha, when in fact, this place is…dare I say…kind of a dump. I mean look at those rolls of rusty fencing, and the firewood that hasn’t been stacked. There’s chicken poop on the walkway and do I hear those children *complaining* about egg collection? I thought they loved to do their chores.
Sharon: Well, we’re rather fond of our dump, but yes, you could say that. I keep meaning to get the fencing put away. And sometimes the kids do like to do their chores, but sometimes they don’t want to, and we make them do them anyway. But I never claimed I was a perfect housekeeper, or mother – in fact, I keep saying I’m not.
Mynda: But you must admit, others take your protests to be merely polite form – but I look around and think “I’ve never seen a cobweb that big.”
Sharon: We always say “It isn’t just a home, it is an ecosystem.”
Mynda: And you do claim, don’t you, that you mostly eat local and homegrown food. But looking in your refrigerator (she opens fridge door) – look here, I see mustard from France, limes, and…what’s this? (Mynda opens chest freezer) – I am shocked! Shocked and appalled! Popsicles. Not organic, local juice popsicles. But artificially flavored and colored popsicles. Oh, and are you claiming that wasabi peas are locally produced?!
Sharon (weakly) Well, the french mustard was a presesnt from a friend of mine who went to France. And yes, there are the popsicles – I know we should make them from local juices, but well…sometimes there isn’t time. And umm…the wasabi peas are from (she sneaks a look at the package) umm…Virgina, which means they aren’t that non-local… We try to keep our junk levels down to a minimum, but we do allow ourselves about 5% of our food purchases to be non-local and non-sustainable.
On the other hand, this corn is corn I dehydrated. And look, over here – see the beets? And the jars of pickles….
Mynda: About those pickles – you are a food storage and preservation expert, are you not?
Sharon: Well, I’m writing a book about it, and I do teach classes, but there are still things I’m learning myself. Why?
Mynda: Aren’t there supposed to be labels on the jars? Didn’t you write something about demons gnawing your entrails if people don’t label *before* the date on these jar lids.
Sharon: Ummm….
Mynda: Moving on. Let us see your emergency evacuation bags. You have written about those, I think?
Sharon: Yes, here they are, hanging on the hooks in the closet. Well, all but Isaiah’s, since he was pretending to go down the Oregon Trail with his – I think it is up in his room – somewhere.
Mynda: May I look inside? Hmmm…jacknife, food, water, directions, photocopies of ID, matches….very nice. (She opens another bag) I was led to believe that your youngest child was 3, no? Is that not him out there, a very tall, solid young boy, nearly as big as his 4 year old brother?
Sharon: Yes, of course, that’s Asher.
Mynda: Then why are the clothes in this bag for a 12 month sized infant, please?
Sharon: Ummm….yes, updating the emergency bags has been on my list for a bit now.
Mynda: Moving on. You advise everyone to have concise, written records of what they’ve done, what and where they plant, and everything they’ve done. Can I see your records?
Sharon: Well…some of them are here ( after rummaging for a while, she hands over a sheaf of crumpled papers marred by a spill that appears to be grape juice)
Mynda: Let’s see, a garden plan from two years ago, a picture of an alien drawn by Simon, two old grocery lists, the immunization records of a cat from 1997 (is this cat even still alive?), an inventory of canned goods, and a doodled picture of a gentleman’s…Good gad…that can’t be your husband – no one is that…!?
Sharon (turning bright red and very much on her dignity) “That, Mynda, is actually a picture of a projected possible peak in natural gas and oil futures.”
Mynda: (skeptical) – Of course it is…well… this is a family magazine. Regardless, these records seem incomplete. As well as a bit disorganized. Where are the rest of them?
Sharon: Well, uh…upstairs, I think. Somewhere.
Mynda: Lead the way. This will be an excellent chance to show everyone your composting toilet set up. I’d love to see it.
Sharon: Well, there it is.
Mynda: But that’s just a commode in the bathroom. And not a clean bathroom at that. Don’t you have something more, well, photogenic for the magazine?
Sharon: A lot of what I do to save energy and adapt in place is kind of hard to take pictures of – not doing things isn’t nearly as photogenic as doing things.
Mynda: Well, perhaps we’d better see the garden then. Certainly that will make a good photo spread.
Sharon: Well, if you take a picture of the corn from this angle, and don’t show the lambs quarters going to seed in the middle, it almost looks like I keep my garden weeded, right? Or maybe you could just take a very close up photo of this nice squash here. No…not the 3 foot zucchini… That’s umm… a seed saving experiment. That’s right, I’m trying to maximize my production of zucchini seed. Oh, and over here, come look at my beautiful comfrey and horseradish plants. Yes, I absolutely planned to have the comfrey interplanted with the potatoes. That has nothing at all to do with my laziness in rooting out the comfrey weeds – they are actually important guild plants in permaculture.
Mynda: Really. With potatoes?
Sharon: Oh yes. And look at that buckwheat…it isn’t it beautiful. Of course I grow buckwheat seed. Don’t you? No, of course I didn’t forget to scythe it down at the flowering stage and let it go to seed. Oh, sorry, there are a lot of thistles here, aren’t there.
Mynda: You recently wrote about how you weren’t really “preparing” but living your life. So tell me – how much of, say, your laundry do you actually do by hand.
Sharon: Well, there are time constraints of course….maybe 5%?
Mynda: What about food – how much of your food do you actually grow?
Sharon: About half our produce, and much less of our grains, 2/3 of our meat and 1/3 of our dairy. And most of the rest is local.
Mynda: But I’m sure, like most of your readers, I thought you grew all your own food. Don’t you worry you are misleading them?
Sharon: Sometimes. It isn’t my intent to do it, but I write a lot of posts, and not everyone reads them all. Every so often I attempt to reassure people that my life is just as screwed up as theirs. But not everyone gets that message, and sometimes I think I come across as more authoritative than I intend to.
Mynda: Don’t you think your readers deserve to know all the details of the harsh reality? What about the cloth toilet paper? What percentage of the time are you wiping with cloth?
Sharon: Oh no – I read the Times Article about NoImpactman – no way I’m talking toilet paper with any reporter. Sorry, I reserve the right not to answer that.
Mynda: Ah, you have secrets. It all becomes clear. No pictures. Weeds. No discussion of cloth toilet paper. I spotted a pile of plastic star wars toys over there – what happened to your “cloth, wood and no television tie in toy rule?” I see the dogs eat purchased dog food at least part of the time, and I hear the children asking for television. Tell me, “Sharon” if that is your real name – aren’t you ashamed of yourself, pretending to be a leader in sustainability. Did not the above mentioned NoImpactman publically state that the three best things you can do for the environment are to stop watching television, stop eating meat and stop driving. And yet you kill and eat your chickens, let your children watch television and drive places. And then there are those four children. And you call yourself an environmentalist!
Sharon: Well, now that you mention it, I do pretty much fail on all those criteria. Can we go back to talking about toilet paper? Please?
- adapting in place , humor
- Comments(51)
Please, please, please, don’t send Mynda to New Jersey. At least not until I’ve cleaning up the resuts of LSHIWMP with some cloth TP and hand washed it, too.
*dies laughing*
Well done. Excellent post!
It’s like when people say that they don’t know how I do all the things I do. I smile and say, “You haven’t seen the state of my house…”
Spring is now here, which means that the veggie garden gets cranked up again. Still, it’s better than vacuuming!
“Ths isn’t just a home, it’s an ecosystem.” I must remember that one for my cobwebs … *GRIN*
Oh boy! Dirty Secrets thread!
I’m serving potatoes for the third night in a row, because I can’t face gringing corn for cornbread, or wheat for bread or pasta. And I’ve used the dryer 4 times this week!
Mynda didn’t ask if the computer you do all your writing on is of local resources and manufacture and made with solar power. But I’ll bet you can distract her from toilet paper to cloth menstrual products!
OMG, and I’ve been working my a** off trying to keep up with all you “Sustainable Marthas”. Well, no more.
I’m going back to my battery acid/Coca Cola and bonbons now…
Ha! I feel much better now Sharon, thanks! (My lambs quarters is actually taller than most of my corn!)
“a spill that appears to be grape juice”
I’m thinking it was wine. You’re a quasi-lush struggling to do the right thing and get by and enjoy life just a teensy bit, just the like of us, aren’t you! I knew it all along.
Oh god – I LOVE YOU Sharon! Thanks for the laugh – perfect timing. I was just admiring my blackeyed susan and weed beds out front — I’m sure my fertilizing-weed wacking-edge trimming neighbors just love me this year. Oh well, someone has to bring down the house values in the neighborhood!
This spring my mother said she’d seen the perfect farm sign for my acreage at a shop somewhere …
it said “Dandelion Test Plot”.
Just like Mister Rogers said, Sharon, we love you, *just the way you are*.
BRILLIANT.
thank you, thank you, thank you. I fully intend to steal all your comebacks here for my own use. The “not just a home but an ecosystem” line is exactly what I’ve been desperately needing for years…
sharon, sharon, sharon! how did you catch me off guard like this? this is funny stuff!
“it isn’t just a home; it’s an ecosystem”- perfectly describes my fridge, the attic, the barn; well a lot here actually
and my horseradish is umm interplanted with the potatoes- definitely by choice of course- an experiment in insect control……
You continually surprise me. Just when I think you have got to start running out of entertaining insight, you keep it coming. By the way, I am half way through your book and thinking… “This book is ground breaking. It synthesizes material and takes powerdown to a new level. You pick up where Heinberg leaves off”. You are one pretty brilliant lady.
Karen
Falling over laughing! And gratefully trying to impress the “it’s not just a home, it’s an ecosystem” comeback on my brain for future use.”
Could you come up with an ecological reason not to dust?
Those big piles of weeds/sticks/cut down blackberry vines scattered around the backyard aren’t there because I was too lazy to pick them up, by the way. They’re important wildlife habitat. Yes, indeed. See, garter snakes like to live under them, and garter snakes eat slugs, which we have a lot of here …
Hi Sharon,
Loved your “reality check” post, also the August 8th one on “slacker” style homeschooling! The comment “…it’s an ecosystem” looks like a good upgrade from the quote I’ve been borrowing from friends until now: “This is how we live.”
On a similar note, here’s a story from when my kids were 2 and 7. A friend came over for coffee and saw my children off playing in different corners with Lego or crayons or whatever. She couldn’t get over how autonomous they were (not that they are all the time, by any means), compared to her daughter who wanted full-on attention and accompaniment at all waking hours of the day.
After a quarter of an hour of hearing (thoroughly unmerited) praise and accolades for my parenting style, I finallly turned to her and said, “So let me get this straight. I’m the perfect mom, because my kids thrive on neglect?!?”
Cheers, Corinne
Sharon, for crying out loud, will you PLEASE just let me think that your life is perfect?
Geez.
I love the post, but for one item. The TV thing seems really going too far. But, I’m not working for the Spanish Inquisition, so carry on.
Heeeee! My backyard is made of massice FAIL too, with a liberal scattering of plastic toys left out, straw blowing about the yard, a trailer load of compost sitting in the middle of the lawn waiting for me to shovel it (for the last 2 weeks) and those chooks keep escaping and POOPING on my concrete too. But you know, I’m very busy doing VERY IMPORTANT things (like, errr, reading blogs and watching terrible TV shows, on the box that we absolutely don’t use very much, really…) so I can’t very well clean it up right now, can I?
“not doing things isn’t nearly as photogenic as doing things.”
*LOL*
Nice. I got chastised by our community garden’s “plot coordinator” this week for having more weeds than recognizable veggies/flowers in our plot. I was like, but I planted all these herb seeds? And then all this stuff grew up? And I didn’t know what was herbs and what was weeds, so I only weeded the stuff that was clearly not valerian or black cumin…
She wasn’t hearing it. Kinda like Mynda.
HILARIOUS! Sounds like our place!
Contacted to defend herself against these allegations, Astyk replied, “Ummm….”
Too funny!!
I have buckwheat in need of scything too over at the school veggie garden.
Well, my garden is neat and well-weeded, but my study is heaps and piles everywhere and my wife says I need a tattoo that says, “Death Before Dusting”.
And my food storage is only 2/3 neat and not well-recorded at all.
I __have__ managed to start keeping a detailed diary of our garden — something which I never did until I read The Urban Homestead by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen. I’m actually weighing the produce I harvest this year so I will know if I’m really saving any money by gardening.
I think it is important to learn to differentiate between jobs that stay still when they are neglected and the ones that become rapidly worse (and everything in between) to help prioritise what we do with our limited time and energy.
So leaving a box of junk in the corner is more of the first catagory, except that the items may slowly rust or rot if they are neglected.
Neglecting to keep records adds to future work and subtracts from past work linearly.
Neglecting your food stores is probably next along the line since infestations can become established and spread from food to food. Neglecting house upkeep (especially leaks) is around here too.
Not preventing your weeds from going to seed is probably the most dangerous neglect, since they grow exponentially to replenish the seed bank in the soil. One year of neglect can turn into a decade of heavy weeding demands. Its all very well to say that weeds can be useful- but you have to actually *use* them. And you dont have to remove every single weed to make progress. If you only have so much time pick out the worst ones to focus on and let the ones that play nice fill in the gaps. Anything spiny, poisonous or rapidly spreading should get top priority, then weeds that grow tall and can shade your plants, then the low growing weeds that can still suck a fair bit of water and nutrient out of the soil but tend to get smothered by mature crops, and finally the semi-weeds that the chickens love to eat or are a not much more aggressive than self sown chicory or radishes.
Neglecting important relationships is probably at this end of the spectrum too, and people’s health (including your own) as situations can spiral out of control exponentially.
So some things are more cosmetic and predictable. And others are terrifying forces of nature that take off at exponential rates on their own.
A little laugher for stress relief…good timing for me. With the excitement of going backyard farmer came clutter, then dirt, then exasperation over the mess. Now with successes and disappointments (and a smile) I’m canning and planning for a better next year. The cycle continues. Oh, thank you for the suggestion of the purple tomatoes. They are THE best tasting, healthiest, and most beautiful. My five year old granddaughter, who had given up eating tomatoes, gobbled up the “purple” ones.
LOL!!! This was great!
Is the television bit over the top because I shouldn’t have one, or because I shouldn’t be harping on it
?
Sharon
So you couldn’t wait for me to do the expose’? Well that is ok because you did it so much better than I would have. You live pretty much the way I do, except I will not buy store popsicles. But I do make them with non-local juice. When I visited I thought your house was neat and well put together. I don’t know if you had specially cleaned it up, but I wish my house looked that nice. My friends, that came with me to meet you, said they were surprised to find that you were just a normal person. I guess I had really talked you up. Nice interview.
Cindy in FL
I’ve just spent the last week finishing projects that have been half done, cleaning cobwebs from my ecosystem, canning, canning, canning, weeding, weeding, weeding, oh and mulching. Why? Because company was coming over and I wanted folks to see that we have it together. I could take them over to the water collection, barn, garden and have an authoratative discussion on the merits of cover cropping. It was a great day with friends and family. The next day The pile of dishes from the day before remained where they were, a new to do list was written and on it included: sit in the sun and read a book, let toddlers dump all his toys out on floor, don’t harp on teenager when he leaves his dirty underwear on the floor, leave the cobwebs where they are because they are part of my fruit fly remediation program.
Yea! Sharon is not really perfect! What a relief.
I loved the cobweb comment, they are my halloween decorations here (it just takes all year for them to grow) and just this weekend dh asked if I was going to pick the rest of my beans and I, too said they were “for seed” Riiiight.
Well, it works, doesn’t it. Maybe it is values and expectations that need improvement.. Sustainability doesn’t mean easy. We lost the garden of eden years ago.
Lambsquarters are survival food. They are related to Quinoa. The chickens may enjoy them. You may need them yourself sometime. Chickens may enjoy the buckwheat, too. We don’t scythe buckwheat either because the ducks forage it, stripping off the seed ends with their long beaks [we call it "sucking down the buckwheat"]. We get many volunteers the next year, but they don’t grow dense enough to choke out anything, probably thanks to the ducks. They draw bees to the garden, it looks pretty, and they prevent monoculture problems. I pull any that is in the way. Most gardening advice is wrong. It’s for commercial use. I just plow up, sprinkle the seeds, plow again. We get lots of edibles for all year round here in Maine. Not that there aren’t problems each year. There are always problems. We solve what we need to each year. But there is always food.
By the way, we got lots more food this year, thanks to your free nitrogen post. Thanks for that one!
ROFL I’ve always been quite adamant that “housekeeping” is not on my list of hobbies. *grin* Folks say “how do you find the time to make: bread/afghans/skirts/curtains/crocheted grocery bags?” I say “I don’t do much in the way of vacuuming or mopping floors.” *grin* The irony is, my MIL prides herself on keeping her house spic & span, cleaning both bathrooms every other day (top to bottom, seriously!), vacuuming EVERY day (at least once!), doing dishes by hand before washing in them in the dishwasher (EVERY night!), mopping the kitchen floor every weekend….. And yet, she’s miserable, and such a nasty, bitter nag, my FIL is miserable. My house may be messy, but at least we get along most of the time.
Perfection Sucks! I’d rather be imperfect and mostly happy, than nearly perfect and miserable.
Truth be told, Martha Stewart annoys the heck out of me. I find your leadings inspiring and somewhat attainable in that you’re at least TRYING it all, with varying levels of success, and DON’T look perfect while you do it. *grin*
ROFLOL, I am glad to find I am not the only sustainability “expert” who lives in a dump. One of these days I will get around to painting all that drywall I put up for our new interior walls. I did put home-made pine paneling in the living room, sun porch, and kitchen, but that was only because the local public television station was doing a documentary and I needed at least a few rooms that were filmable. But I didn’t get the chimney replastered. I have two closets where opening the door could be moderately dangerous due to a landslide of stuff stacked therein. I don’t worry about the purple-haired mutant looters stealing my wheat storage because its buried in those closets and they would never find it!
And our lovely eco-system of 100+ different varieties of useful or edible plants is not at all admired by the local code enforcement folks, although I have developed a pretty friendly first-name relationship with the guy who does our area, due to the frequency of his visits. I must get rid of the last remnants of bermuda this next year. Everything else I can argue is useful and thus can be taller than 12 inches, but I don’t even try with the remnant bermuda.
[...] This is really funny. [...]
[...] Astyk over at Casaubon’s Book wrote a really cute post about being potentially perceived as a “Sustainable Martha [...]
LOVE this post. I was going to comment but then the comment grew into a post ( http://www.humblegarden.com/2008/09/04/sharon-astyk-sustainable-martha-and-the-brutal-comfortable-truth/ ) – wanted my readers to catch this post, too funny!
well i love the post and i’m glad someone exposed sharon. i tried by simply asking her two years ago why do you have 4 kids?
if the subject isnt about overpopulation not worth discussing. starts there.
she got all bent out of shape!
fair question right? she refuse it and dised me. in my opinion she is fos and capitalizing on others fears. i guess from the interview she isnt what she claims to be and she did it all for money i’ll assume to pay for her 4 kids popsickles -to keep the quite. lets see how it all works out as they grow.
i give her credit for posting her interview. one wonders why. it only proves she only talks the talk never walks the talk . oh perhaps a bit.
i never pay attention to her suggest all do the same, came across this in eb!
suggest anyone in the area go over and see for yourself! who knows. she is not a issue for people who care about mother earth. with those 4 kids what is her ecological footprint. now thats a issue.
Actually, Winston, I repeatedly asked you to stop emailing me and threatened to report you to your internet service provider because you kept sending me harassing emails, which included antisemitic and inappropriate content. Just FYI, you are entitled to your opinion and may express it here, provided you do so appropriately and with reasonable courtesy. If you pull any of the crap you did in email, your comments will be deleted and you will be banned.
Sharon
actually sharon may i suggest your wrong again. i know we only went back and forth once via e mail. now let me set you straight. i dont or have i ever harrassed anyone and antisemetic i’m not and– i consider us all one -all be it with different opinions. i suggest you be a bit careful with your comments. lets close this up as your upset because it seems someone else has your number. i just though i’d pipe in . i’m sure your well meaning or- i hope so. go take care of the kids and get them popsickels if you will! i wish you well. again we are one- my only concern was your “crap” {your words”} on mother earth and your own ecological footprint. i think the gal from canada exposed that. good things to all, end – winston
Sat at the computer and laughed aloud as I read the story. Absolutely understand where Sharon is coming from. Time to think and plan and a good laugh would do a lot of people more good than their usual busyness.
And the alpine strawberries in the long grass – well, we like strawberries you see….
We have a pet spider corner in the living room. It had a nest with lots of babies last year. Spiderlings everywhere! The kids thought it was great.
viv in nz
ps love the post
I’ve actually thought about this a bit. We have an author who lives in our town who wrote a book on child rearing. He (and his wife) have no children. He interviewed parents and children. He researched. Then he wrote his book.
We all have different skills, right? The best use of those skills might be to use them to the advantage of many people. If your skills run more toward research and writing and not so much to splitting wood and cleaning, what do you do? Clean and split wood?
Nay nay! You always use your best talents! Always!
So glad I am not the only one. Keep up the good work Sharon!
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Was that Mynda person for real???
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