Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live Off the Land
Type
Book
Authors
ISBN 10
0393070859
ISBN 13
9780393070859
Category
Farming
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Publication Year
2011
Publisher
Pages
335
Tags
Description
From the inside front cover flap:
Growing a Farmer is less a food book than a love story, sometimes unrequited, between an unlikely farmer and his land. The four-acre plot that was to become Kurtwood Farms wasn't much to look at, but that fateful first ferry ride that Seattle chef Kurt Timmermeister took to Vashon Island brought him past the brambles and overgrown blackberries to the possibilities: a home, a business, a self-sufficient life.
At the time, Kurt was a successful restaurateur, which gave him the freedom to experiment with farming haphazardly - bees, vegetables, chickens - while slowly transforming his overgrown patch into a pastoral oasis. But as the months crawled by, he grew disgusted with serving tray-packed chicken breasts while spending his weekends unearthing gorgeously misshapen carrots and sweetening his morning coffee with his own honey. His food consciousness had awoken and he could not turn back, so he set a goal - to build a viable business out of producing food on his scrappy parcel of land - and tumbled headfirst into the project of remaking himself as a real farmer.
In this poignant tale, Kurt chronicles the tiny steps forward and the subsequent heartbreaking setbacks he endured as he cycled through a series of farming projects in search of a sustainable business model. A promising farmers' market vegetable-selling season ends in misadventure and a negative balance sheet. He acquires Dinah, a willful Jersey cow that seduces him into a life of predawn milkings, a semi-legal raw milk dairy, and finally a fledgling artisan cheese venture. He dramatizes the life cycle of a pig, the ultimate consumer of farm waste, from birthing through slaughter and subsequent butchering.
Though initially limited in his knowledge of farming and agriculture, Kurt describes the fine details of farm operations vividly and passionately. His story, delivered with a frank warmth, should be required reading for anyone who has ever thought of starting a small farm, a dream that he acknowledges is frequently inadvisable. Through tribulations ranging from an escape-artist boar to a cow intent on mounting him, Kurt has persevered, and anyone interested in food is the richer for it.
Growing a Farmer is less a food book than a love story, sometimes unrequited, between an unlikely farmer and his land. The four-acre plot that was to become Kurtwood Farms wasn't much to look at, but that fateful first ferry ride that Seattle chef Kurt Timmermeister took to Vashon Island brought him past the brambles and overgrown blackberries to the possibilities: a home, a business, a self-sufficient life.
At the time, Kurt was a successful restaurateur, which gave him the freedom to experiment with farming haphazardly - bees, vegetables, chickens - while slowly transforming his overgrown patch into a pastoral oasis. But as the months crawled by, he grew disgusted with serving tray-packed chicken breasts while spending his weekends unearthing gorgeously misshapen carrots and sweetening his morning coffee with his own honey. His food consciousness had awoken and he could not turn back, so he set a goal - to build a viable business out of producing food on his scrappy parcel of land - and tumbled headfirst into the project of remaking himself as a real farmer.
In this poignant tale, Kurt chronicles the tiny steps forward and the subsequent heartbreaking setbacks he endured as he cycled through a series of farming projects in search of a sustainable business model. A promising farmers' market vegetable-selling season ends in misadventure and a negative balance sheet. He acquires Dinah, a willful Jersey cow that seduces him into a life of predawn milkings, a semi-legal raw milk dairy, and finally a fledgling artisan cheese venture. He dramatizes the life cycle of a pig, the ultimate consumer of farm waste, from birthing through slaughter and subsequent butchering.
Though initially limited in his knowledge of farming and agriculture, Kurt describes the fine details of farm operations vividly and passionately. His story, delivered with a frank warmth, should be required reading for anyone who has ever thought of starting a small farm, a dream that he acknowledges is frequently inadvisable. Through tribulations ranging from an escape-artist boar to a cow intent on mounting him, Kurt has persevered, and anyone interested in food is the richer for it.
Number of Copies
1
