A very entertaining book about a guy, a dog and two goats trying to live without fossil fuels in the New Mexican desert. Worth the read if you are interested in living green (or trying to) or if you just want a good laugh. ( )

Engaging, if not terribly well-written, memoir of a young east-coast journalist's decision to become self-sustaining and carbon-neutral by raising goats in New Mexico. Entertaining and inspiring.

I found this author's writing style to be very comical, and his desire to live green to be more than an adventure for a book. Raising his own goats, converting a big diesel truck to run on vegetable oil, putting up solar panels in a windstorm, etc. are some of the highlights of this book. It is a quick read and has random environmental facts throughout the book. ( )

Another in the "eco-genre" of Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle", etc. Author re-locates to southern New Mexico to try his hand at goat ranching for self-sufficiency; lengthy secition on his obtaining and converting a vehicle to run on leftover kitchen grease, replacing the Suburu in which he arrived. I could see others finding it "funny", but I found it occasionally amusing. I don't regret having read it, but can't truly recommend it either: neutral rating (really 2.5 stars). ( )

Doug Fine's thoughts and recollections on his first year of sustainable and eco-friendly living this book is an accessible, funny, sensible foray into environmentally thoughtful living and environmentalism recommended for everyone. Despite your political affiliations, views on gun control, or religion (unless you bathe in oil and club baby seals before your breakfast of genetically modified food pellets) you will find Fine's treatise on the simple and immensely rewarding joys of sustainable living, growing your own food and connecting to the earth around you a tempting and rational call to another way of life.

Not only charming, hilarious and heart-winning, it is peppered with factoids and garnished with mouth watering recipes Fine prepared with his own cultivated and carefully tended fruits of labor. His dedication to his goals and aspirations is inspiring to say the least. I mean, I love ice cream. I love it enough to make it myself, but I don't know if I could go so far as to raise, vaccinate and shepherd goats for over a year in order to make it. And yet, when Fine describes it, it doesn't only seem possible, but enviable.

Fine weathers floods, droughts, hail, coyotes, loneliness, bureaucratic paperwork, clogged fuel lines, a runaway car, and all other unimaginable challenges with humor, grace and an indomitable spirit that keeps you cheering him on! While certainly an environmentalist, Fine is not strictly a vegetarian, and even hunts which might put off some hard core Greenies, but is forgivable given his unique attempt at the activity. ( )