Off the Grid

It is now cool (and necessary) to be environmentally conscious.  There is a growing trend towards living an organic and Eco-conscious way of life or in other words, getting off the grid.  The one hundred mile diet, the urban farm, chickens in the city, vegetable gardens anywhere you can grow them, composting and recycling are all responsible and common sense lifestyle choices that would no doubt benefit the community you live in. 

 

Interested, but don’t know where to start acquiring the pure knowledge, the history and experience of people who have already gone down that path?  Try hunting for and acquiring as many Western Producer Prairie Book memoirs as you can...and read.  You will most likely have to go online, scour used book and thrift stores and if you’re lucky, you might be able to find one of those rare prairie settler memoirs by Nell Wilson Parsons, Isabel M. Reekie ( Bella Melvin Reekie)  or Edna Jaques.                                                                                      

 

You will read about how the old prairie settlers homesteaded, put down roots in nothing but pure soil, dense bush and thick grass.  You will read about how the real pioneers built homes, broke and cleared land and grew crops.  You will read about prairie fires, deaths of friends - human and animal alike, household chores, trips to town, the gathering of berries, mushrooms and wildflowers and the humility and pride of building a life from under the prairie ground all the way on up to the tip of the hip roofed barn.  

  

DIRT.  FIRE. WATER. WOOD. 

From there, you know that anything can be done anywhere and you can adjust to suit your modern lifestyle.

“Western Producer Prairie Books was established as an independent department of the newspaper ‘Western Producer’ in 1975.” (http://sain.scaa.sk.ca) 

The Western Producer itself began publishing books in 1954.  In 1991 Western Producer Prairie Books was sold to Douglas and McIntyre of Vancouver which started the imprint Greystone Books.  

 In 2013, Heritage House Publishing acquired Greystone Books from D&M.