Apr/May 2011 – The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball
Join us the Farm Chick’s at Polyface Book Club for our April & May Read.
We will start reading the book on April 1st and will discuss different aspects of it throughout the two months.
The Dirty Life on Farming, Food and Love by Kristin Kimball
Description
“This book is the story of the two love affairs that interrupted the trajectory of my life: one with farming—that dirty, concupiscent art—and the other with a complicated and exasperating farmer.”
Kimball and her husband had a plan: to grow everything needed to feed a community. It was an ambitious idea, a bit romantic, and it worked. Every Friday evening, all year round, a hundred people travel to Essex Farm to pick up their weekly share of the “whole diet”—beef, pork, chicken, milk, eggs, maple syrup, grains, flours, dried beans, herbs, fruits, and forty different vegetables—produced by the farm. The work is done by draft horses instead of tractors, and the fertility comes from compost. Kimball’s vivid descriptions of landscape, food, cooking—and marriage—are irresistible.
“As much as you transform the land by farming,” she writes, “farming transforms you.”
In her old life, Kimball would stay out until four a.m., wear heels, and carry a handbag. Now she wakes up at four, wears Carhartts, and carries a pocket knife. At Essex Farm, she discovers the wrenching pleasures of physical work, learns that good food is at the center of a good life, falls deeply in love, and finally finds the engagement and commitment she craved in the form of a man, a small town, and a beautiful piece of land.
audio design (20)
Mrs H (19)
Leilani (13)
Shana Thornhill (10)
Cynthia Lewis (8)
Dawn (8)
Timeless Environm... (7)
Sherral (6)
daisyglitter (5)
Head Farm Steward (4)
Melissa (4)
Tonia (4)
Carrie (3)
ken anastasi (3)
Lyndsey (3)
Annie Kate (2)
Chara (2)
garden tractors (2)
Mary Lou Burke (2)
Monica Dix (2)
