Possum Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and with (Almost) No Money (Revised Edition)

Freed guides readers on how to buy and maintain a home, dress well, stay healthy, save money, and be lazy, proud, miserly, and honest, all while enjoying leisure and keeping up a middle-class façade. Possum Living instructs on practical matters, including how to grow and can food, raise and slaughter rabbits, catch and cook fish and turtles, and distill your own moonshine. Abstract: After being out of print for decades, Possum Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and (Almost) No Money is being reissued with an afterword by an older and wiser Dolly Freed. Read more... In the 1970s Dolly Freed lived of the land dirt cheap and plum easy. Living in their own house on a half-acre lot outside of Philadelphia for almost five years, Dolly and her father produced their own food and drink and spent roughly $700 each per year. Thirty years later Dolly Freed's Possum Living is as fascinating and pertinent as it was in 1978. Tin House is reissuing the survivalist classic with a foreword by David Gates and an afterword by the author. After discussing reasons why you should or shouldn't give up your job, Possum Living gives you details about the cheapest ways with the best results to buy and maintain your home, dress well, cope with the law, stay healthy, and keep up a middle-class facade ? whether you live in the city, in the suburbs, or in a small town. In a delightful, straightforward style Dolly Freed explains how to be lazy, proud, miserly, and honest, live well and enjoy leisure. She shares her knowledge for what you do need ? your own home, for example ? and what you don't need ? such as doctors, lawyers, and insurance. Through her own example, Dolly hopes to inspire you to do some independent thinking about how economics affect the course of your life now and may do so in the coming "age of shortages." If you ever wondered what it would be like to be in greater control of your own life, Possum Living will show you ? and help you do it for yourself “A back-to-the-land classic” (Garden & Gun) that will “inspire you to embrace a simpler life” (O, The Oprah Magazine). In the late seventies, at the age of eighteen and with a seventh-grade education, Dolly Freed wrote Possum Living about the five years she and her father lived off the land on a half-acre lot outside of Philadelphia. At the time of its publication in 1978, Possum Living became an instant classic, known for its plucky narration and no-nonsense practical advice on how to quit the rat race and live frugally. In her delightful, straightforward, and irreverent style, Freed guides readers on how to buy and maintain a home, raise and grow their own food, cope with the law, stay healthy, save money, and more, all in the name of self-reliant, independent living. Forty years later, Possum Living remains an essential guide to going off the grid. This updated edition includes an introduction by Novella Carpenter, and new wisdom from Freed on aging, used cars, emergency funds, and how to get back in touch with yourself. Possum Living, says Freed, is about how to cook; to go fishing; to be with family, friends, and neighbors; to forage for wild berries; to enjoy a hobby; to relax; or, even better, to do nothing at all. Some of the best living, she reminds us, happens in possum time. In the 1970s, Dolly Freed and her dad lived off the land, dirt cheap and plum easy. Living in the their own house on a half acre outside of Philadelphia for almost five years, they produced their own food and drink, spending about $700 each per year. Since then, Dolly has been a reporter, receptionist, machinist, kennel manager, NASA engineer, environmental educator, business owner, and college professor. Through it all, the knowledge of how to live cheaply has given her financial security and the confidence to try new ventures. Thirty years later she finds herself returning to her possum roots and, to her amazement, the principles of Possum Living apply to today's crazy economy as much as they did to the crazy economy of the 1970s. Content: We quite the rat race -- The cost of living -- Income -- We rassle with our consciences -- Meat -- Fish -- Gardening -- Grain -- Groceries -- Preserving food -- Nutrition -- The "necessities of life" -- Housing -- Heating -- Electricity -- Clothing -- Transportation -- Law -- Health and medicine -- Daily living.