Growing a Farmer

My husband is trying to understand my new curiosity about farming. I don't understand it myself, but I keep reading books about people who farm.

I especially like the books written by people who had a childhood similar to mine - suburban without even a garden. I loved the first book I read, The Dirty Life. (click to read my review)

So, when I saw Growing a Farmer: How I learned to Live Off the Land by Kurt Timmermeister, I picked it up at my local library.

Timmermeister started his career as a chef, then moved to owning several successful restaurants in Seattle.

Quite by accident, it seems, he ended up buying some acreage on an island in the Seattle area. In Growing a Farmer, Timmermeister documents his journey from urbanite to farmer, the lessons he learned, the mistakes he made and how he made his farm a success. For now.

I really enjoyed this book. I admire Timmermeister's tenacity and determination in starting his farm. I appreciate his honesty about his farm, his mistakes, and the difficulties of life as a farmer. It's hard to not make farming sound idyllic, yet Timmermeister succeeds, in some ways, by giving an honest look at the hard, unrelenting work it takes to create and run a farm.

Of course, Timmermeister loves what he does, and his passion shines in this book. So, parts of his life sound idyllic. And it's easy, as a reader, to brush over the years and years of hard work he's put into his land, since he writes about twenty years of life and work in a mere 312 pages.

If, even after reading the whole book, you're inclined to start your own farm, Timmermeister gives a thorough bibliography at the end of books he's found irreplaceable.

The Dirty Life

On the Farm
Anne Perez-Guerra

Horses in the pasture lot,
A windmill whirling 'round,
Apples on the orchard trees
Tumbling to the ground,
Cattle grazing 'long the road,
Porkers in a pen,
Chickens scratching near a coop
Where lives the mother hen.
Sliding down a stack of straw,
Jumping in the hay,
When I'm on the far, I go
Barefoot all the day.

I have this idyllic dream of living on a farm, growing my own food and raising chickens and milking cows.

When I tell my husband about it, he laughs. Then he looks at me very seriously and says, "You think you want a farm. But you do not want a farm."

And he should know. He grew up working on his grandparent's and uncle's farm. His parents own five acres - they rent out three to a neighboring farmer. When he was a boy, my husband's parents would bring cows from his grandparent's farm to graze the other two acres. It cut down on the mowing.


But farms still fascinate me. I hate getting my hands dirty, but I like reading about others who do. Kristin Kimball writes about her amazingly quick transformation from city girl to farm girl in The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love.

Kimball's transformation is a great story. I find it amazing that this freelance writer gave up Manhattan to move north and start a farm. Not just any farm, but a tractor-free farm, designed to provide all the food people would need. In addition to raising vegetables, Kimball and her husband milk cows (by hand), raise beef cattle, pigs and chickens.

I loved reading this book. Kimball not only tells about the hard work on the farm, but also her personal shortcomings she had to confront in the midst of hard work and lots of dirt. In between it all, she tells of meals she and Mark (her fiance) share - some sound fantastic, others made me shudder and shake my head in amazement at her adventuresome spirit.

If you're looking for a book to read this summer, I highly recommend The Dirty Life. If nothing else, you will 1) appreciate your current life; 2) want to investigate a local Community-Sustained Agriculture (CSA) farm; and 3) enjoy a really good book.

Read more poetry here, for Poetry Wednesday.