Possum Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and with (Almost) No Money (Revised Edition)
Dolly Freed
Language: English
Pages: 224
ISBN: 0982053932
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
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.
In the late seventies, at the age of eighteen and with a seventh-grade education, Dolly Freed wrote Possum Livingabout 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, dress well, cope with the law, stay healthy, save money, and be lazy, proud, miserly, and honest, all while enjoying leisure and keeping up a middle-class façade. Thirty years later, Freed's philosophy is world-renowned andPossum Living remains as fascinating, inspirational, and pertinent as it was upon its original publication. This updated edition includes new reflections, insights, and life lessons from an older and wiser Dolly Freed, whose knowledge of how to live like a possum has given her financial security and the confidence to try new ventures.
* Add ⅓ cup powdered milk, 3 tablespoons margarine, 1½ teaspoons salt, and 2 teaspoons sugar. Beat well. (If any of these ingredients are already in your leftover potatoes, omit them here.) * Gradually stir in 4 cups flour. You can use white flour or half white, half well-sifted ground wheat flour (give the middlings to the chickens). * Dissolve a packet of dry baker’s yeast in a little warm water and add. * Stir and beat thoroughly. * If necessary, add enough extra flour so the dough isn’t
either!) It exists, but it’s hard, hard, hard to find. But then so is paying off a twenty-year mortgage hard. Most people are on a sort of treadmill which allows them neither the leisure nor the cash to look around and evaluate their housing opportunities and requirements. They need a house near their job, so they can get to their job, and they need the job to pay for the house. This is something of a vicious circle. It really doesn’t take much money by today’s standards (our home cost us
see it. It describes the action of the common pleas court in foreclosing on the property. Write down: * The defendants’ exact names, initials included. (Most often it will be a jointly owned husband/wife property. Get both names.) * The plaintiff’s name. (Usually a bank.) * The plaintiff’s attorney’s name. (The attorney-on-the-writ. You might want to talk to him later.) Verify the following: * An affidavit must be included showing that neither defendant was a member of the U.S. armed forces
Then to get him calmed down, I pointed out that the item “Home improvement material” was nonrecurring, and since the stuff was used to increase the value of the property, it’s like money in the bank. Take off that item and the budget reads $1,163.32. Well, he muttered and sputtered awhile (out of habit), but he left smiling. Even a possum can make $1,163.32 per year, let alone two possums. Having told what we do spend money on, let me now say what we don’t spend it on. In a word, hardly
garden, the heavy work, and the care of the creatures. Not because we have sexist roles, but because the housework bugs him more than it bugs me, and vice versa. If I don’t feel like doing the dishes, say, for a couple of days, why I just don’t do them. I often feed the animals if Daddy feels like goofing off, and he often does the dishes. The anarchy works for us because we love each other and don’t abuse it. It amazes me that so many people must either dominate or be dominated, like a bunch of