Review: The Good Life, by Gillian Swinton

To the uninitiated, homesteading – to be frank – sounds pretty overwhelming. Are you supposed to grow all your own food? Make everything from scratch? Know how to wrangle some wire and a two-by-four into, I don’t know…a possum trap? Go completely off-grid? For everyone except those already living at least semi-rurally, the lifestyle can feel a bit unattainable. 

Fortunately, “Gill-of-all-trades” Gillian Swinton – who has been everything from a ski lift operator to a relief milker, station cook and (now) B&B owner in the idylls of Lauder, Central Otago – is here to break it all down in her clear, welcoming and wholly nonjudgmental homesteading guide, The Good Life.

“We utilise everything we produce, and I mean everything – from our kitchen waste to our bountiful summer harvests and the animals we raise. We want everything we grow to serve a purpose,” Swinton writes in the introduction about how she and her partner Hamish approach homesteading. 

To some degree, homesteading is what you make of it, and Swinton’s three main pillars are food, land and community. This means growing as much food the two can eke out of Central Otago’s notoriously tricky climate as they can, and eating locally and seasonally; taking care of the health of their lifestyle block and the animals they’re responsible for; and knowing when to ask for – and offer – help.

Swinton’s early emphasis that, no, you don’t, and probably shouldn’t, try to do absolutely everything all at once is refreshing and encouraging. “The sooner you realise you can’t do it all on your own, the easier and more fun homesteading becomes. Self-sufficiency is a bit of a misnomer, because you simply can’t do it all by yourself. Community resilience is important for food security, sharing local knowledge, and simply making life a little more enjoyable.”

The rest of the book is helpfully broken down by season – Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter – and then into those three pillars Swinton mentioned earlier: Garden, Paddock and Kitchen. It makes it easy to find and take advantage of what’s most relevant to your current situation. Unless you’ve got a herd of sheep or chickens, the Garden and Kitchen sub-sections will likely be of most use to the homesteading-curious.

Still, the entire book is worth reading from cover-to-cover, not only because the imagery (most of it by Southland-based photographer Francine Boer) is absolutely gorgeous, but because you never know where you’ll find inspiration to give something a go. There’s over 25 recipes and plenty more of Swinton’s practical know-how and tips scattered throughout, plus memories of time spent in the Outer Hebrides with her grandmother. 

So spring means tending to your garden’s soil health (small or large) with compost and nutrient-rich banana peel tea, and sowing the right seeds in the right place. Summer means beekeeping, making the most of your herbs by making them into ready-made “flavour bombs” and preserving the best of the stonefruit. Autumn means chopping wood with all the neighbours, digging to heartier meals (like Scottish stovies, from Swinton’s childhood in Edinburgh) and – yes – humanely processing meat. And then winter is for slowing down, making batches of apple crisps and pressure canning preserves for the months to come. 

Swinton's open about mistakes, trials and errors, because perfection isn’t the point. Giving it a go, whatever works with your current circumstances, is the true goal. “Trying to be a perfect homesteader can lead to burn-out and, even worse, falling out of love with it,” Swinton reminds us. “Now, I focus on my priorities and joy, and I am not afraid to ask for help.” 

The Good Life is the perfect starter volume for anyone keen to dive right in to homesteading – or for someone who isn’t going that far, but just wants to feel like they have a bit more control over where their food comes from.  Reviewed by Claire Williamson