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Book draws from life in Terrace

FORMER RESIDENT Marianne Brandis has written a book influenced by Terrace.

FORMER RESIDENT Marianne Brandis has written a book influenced by Terrace.

“Thinking Big, Building Small: Low-tech Solutions for Food, Water and Energy” tells about her brother Jock, who invented a variety of inexpensive, earth-friendly tools for irrigation and food-processing, like a nut sheller, that are promoted and distributed by a small non-governmental organization called “The Full Belly Project” to 35 countries, including the U.S. and Canada.

“It introduces you to people in the developing world who use this technology in their hand-to-hand combat with poverty and hunger,” said Marianne, who now lives in Stratford, Ontario.

“It’s about making small-acreage farms everywhere more productive and profitable with irrigation and food-processing equipment that doesn’t depend on petroleum or grid electricity.”

She and her brother Jock lived here for nine years on a small farm near the end of what was then Eby Road, she said.

“...and the amazing inventiveness and creativity which Jock has shown in his later life has its roots in his experience of small farming,” said Marianne.

“My years on the farm gave me a deep sense of how small farms work; I’ve drawn heavily on that experience in writing this book,” she said.