by Tony Orman

A welcome book on the need for food self-sufficiency and a practical book encouraging self-sufficiency

The cost of living is a major issues for families, individuals and it’s now a big political issue too.

Unfortunately, on-going urbanisation for New Zealanders combined with an obsession with fast foods has seen New Zealanders lose many of their traditional skills and independence in putting food on the table. Once almost everyone had a home vegetable patch ,but over recent years that has been eroded.

However, this new book may inspire people to turn to the land and soil and whether in town or country recapture the skills in vegetable gardening. Reportedly there is an upsurge in hunting with the intent of putting meat in the oven, a strong factor.

The book, sub-titled “A life growing and eating our own food”, is an excellent, practical guide about producing and utilising farm or home garden produce.

The Food Farm is basically a seasonal diary about growing your own food, such as fruit, vegetables, nuts, eggs, grains, dairy, honey, meat and wild food. It’s chocker with ideas about sowing, harvesting, foraging and preserving.

Reconnecting with the land

The couple advocate that small farms can completely feed and sustain people and results in a reconnection for people to the land for food. Angela Clifford leads ‘Eat NZ” movement which aims to reconnect people with the land and ocean via food. Nick Gill grew up on a South Australian family farm before embarking on a 30 year career in the wine industry across Australia. The couple have 16 acres in North Canterbury, near Amberley. 

Colourfully produced by Bateman Books, The Food Farm is both inspirational and practical in its message. The book is packed with information on seasonally growing your own food; ideal for people contemplating rural living.

It’s very likely to inspire those living in suburbia to adopt the ideas or even head for the country. But then if you live in town, the ideas are invaluable. For example the section on strawberries gives growing tips and then gives a mouth-watering recipe for strawberry shortcake. Likewise other examples are a recipe for Berry Pavlova as a Christmas dessert, Upside-down Peach Cake and utilising food from the wild such as trout and saltwater resources such as paua and sea fish. There’s many more.

Highly recommended.

The Food Farm by Angela Clifford and Nick Gill, published by Bateman Books, Recommended Retail Price $55.

Carol Sawyer pic.

We are highly skeptical — see this post

BREAKING: Dr. Peter McCullough explains he received 40 annual flu shots but never felt well afterward, only to find out they INCREASE your risk of flu and respiratory illness. New Cleveland Clinic data shows the flu shot does more HARM than good pic.twitter.com/7RrHOyW3JF

— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) October 24, 2025

Does he care about Britain? It doesn’t seem so and he gives his Ukrainian lover-grifter billions of pounds of taxpayer money. Can he even fathom why most Britons are so pissed off?

Plaid Cymru [Welsh Nationalist] candidate Lindsay Whittle won the Caerphilly Senedd by-election, with the result announced in the early hours of Friday, 24 October 2025. The historic win ousts Labour from a seat it had held for over a century. The Reform Party of Nigel Farage came from nowhere to get 36%.

That 11% is about what Starmer is getting in general opinion polls.

Reviewed by Tony Orman

Something that dawned on me when I was putting all this (book) together was that we fishers never stop learning. –Al Brown

A great book with plenty of visuals

Al Brown renowned chef and avid angler, has written a book that is bound to be eagerly absorbed by young anglers, male and female and indeed by families wanting to embark on fishing days by the river, lake or seaside. It’s chocker with information and delightfully enhanced by Hope McConnell’s lively illustrations.

Whether fishing freshwater or saltwater, fishing from the jetty or wharf, beach, boat or kayak in saltwater or fly fishing in a river or stream, it’s full of practical, down-to-earth tips and techniques.

Al Brown wisely advises patience for a beginner and to realise that fishing is a lifelong learning exercise.

Something for all fisher-folk

“Something that dawned on me when I was putting all this (book) together was that we fishers never stop learning.” He admits that there’s hardly a day when fishing, he’s not discovering something new.

So what started out to be a beginner’s book has morphed into a book for every angler, novice or even experienced.

He finds fishing a great way to get on top of any personal concerns or worries and to add to that it’s therapeutic.

“I find fishing a great way to clear my head — there is something almost spiritual about being about water. Sometimes it is the vastness, other times the stillness, the deepness or the speed of flowing water.”

Fishing gear, recipes, value of Kahawai

The book has instruction on knots, baits, hooks, casting and of course in line with the author’s cooking expertise, how to fillet and cook the catch.

A real bonus is the author’s recipes at the end which feature “Best Fish Pie Ever”, “Fish Head and Bacon Chowder”, “Lucky Chocolate Fish Slice” “Mussel and Kumara Fritters” “Roasted Fish Belly” and “Smoked Kahawai Melt.”

Kahawai have always been a very underrated fish. Al Brown writes “Such great scrappers, delicious raw or cooked fresh and of course they smoke beautifully.”

Interestingly — and I agree with him — he writes “some fishers say to bleed kahawai, but I’m not in that camp.”

Al Brown’s Hooked at $37 is a great catch for any angler, young or old, beginner and even the experienced will probably learn more than a thing or two.

Hooked by Al Brown, illustrated by Hope McConnell, is published by Allen and Unwin. Recomended Retail Price $36.99

Over and over, U.S. government officials and their mainstream media allies called Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine an “unprovoked attack.” The slogan became so overused that people began to ask the obvious question: Why do they protest so much?

In Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine, Scott Horton explains how since the end of the last Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union, successive U.S. administrations pressed their advantage against the new Russian Federation to the point that it finally blew up into a full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine.

From NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, to “shock therapy” economic policy, the Balkan and Chechen wars, color-coded revolutions, new missile defense systems, assassinations, Russiagate and ultimately the brutal conflict in Ukraine, Provoked shows what really happened and why it did not have to be this way.

Scott Horton is a co-editor at AntiWar.com

Ever hear “I believe in cars” or “I believe in tools”? Probably not. But people routinely say, “I believe in vaccines.” This saying carries a truism because claims about vaccines often require faith. Belief. It is why challenging these claims often results in an emotional, not logical, reaction.

If you want the facts about vaccines—not beliefs and dogma—this book delivers. From the game-changing National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 through today’s post-Covid-19 landscape, Siri lays it all out based on a decade of experience deposing the world’s leading vaccinologists and prosecuting over a hundred lawsuits against health agencies. On that journey, he found that common claims about vaccines are often contrary to the evidence. This book lays bare this evidence, often the result of epic legal battles. There is what medical and health authorities tell the world, and then there is what they admit under oath in a lawsuit.

If you want to learn the truth about vaccines and the secret world of vaccinology, this book injects a heavy dose of reality and reveals the power structure and facts regarding vaccines as they have never before been laid out. Once you see the evidence, you cannot unlearn the truth.

The Table of Contents

Siri explodes all the “beliefs” people have about vaccine religion and how people’s opinions have been manipulated.

Both books are on Amazon.com

Copacetic: very satisfactory

‘The KCDC Boss considered his latest $50,000 raise copacetic.”