Hi, we’re Evan and Judith.
Together we're tackling a year-round vegetable garden in the city that we cook and eat from. On the weekends, we're chipping away at fixing up a little cabin in the forest by the sea. And like other people, we spend a lot of time at work.
As often as possible, we head outdoors and try to visit our State and National Forests and Parks. All the while, we're thinking and talking and planning and wondering about the benefits of frugality, working for ourselves, giving things up, and just spending more time together living a good, simple life.
Over the years, we've been encouraged by stories of people who are really going for it—people who have realized that they can't have it all, but who have decided they don't have to. We love reading about and meeting people who have carefully chosen a project, or a way of life, and doubled down on it. Folks who've asked themselves, "What can I do without in order to free up time and resources that will allow me to more fully experience the life I want to live?"
So we're trying it ourselves. The world is an amazing and fragile and very busy place. And it's not easy to find your way in it. But we've discovered that slowing down and simplifying have always helped our chances. We hope our story gives you a little encouragement to choose your own adventure, whatever that may be.
"The store customer, who comes home with a package under his arm has learned nothing, except that a ten dollar bill is a source of power in the marketplace. The man or woman who has converted material into needed products via tools and skills has matured in the process."
— Helen Nearing, The Good Life
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms..."
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
See our garden transformation.
