The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.69 (939 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1452632782 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 562 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-05-14 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. From Publishers Weekly Kimball chucked life as a Manhattan journalist to start a cooperative farm in upstate New York with a self-taught New Paltz farmer she had interviewed for a story and later married. In this poignant, candid chronicle by season, Kimball writes how she and Mark infused new life into Essex Farm, and lost their hearts to it. Once June hit, there was the 100-day growing season and an overabundance of vegetables to eat, and no end to the dir
Kathleen B. Walker said I loved this memoir. I grew up in an agricultural community. My family owned a cotton farm they rented out to farmers each season, but I never lived on the farm. As a young girl I did raise ducks and chickens, but in a pen in town. I’ve always held a romantic vision of someday actually living on a farm, having a garden, maybe some horses and chickens.So it was with this idyllic vision of farming that I eagerly read Kristin Kimball’s The Dirty Life, a memoir about establishing a “whole foods” farm with her husband. I learned so much from this book: about farming and about life.There is so much WORK involved in farming and so much RESPON. Fun, but dig deeper in the dirt, Kristin! I have longed for, and not found, many modern biographical books out there about women who farm. I was excited to find this memoir, and enjoyed it, but despite the talented writing, I felt a lack of connection to the author and the people she includes in her story.I wanted to love this book, but found myself disappointed by the lack of deeper characterizations and motives revealed. Many of the author's actions, large and small, are described, but go unexamined and unexplained. I wanted a 'new best friend' in this book, but I found the author oddly emotionally unavailable, offering what felt to me like detached, generic platitudes for uniq. Soulful Memoir About Life, Love, and Living Off the Land This book, very timely with our national interest in eating local and sustainable food, is a touching account of a woman falling in life with a man and falling in love with the land they work. Anyone who has ever been drawn to growing their own food, or who has nostalgic memories of parents or grandparents doing so, will be greatly rewarded by this book. Kimball's writing style is direct, enjoyable, and quite humorous. A story she recounts about both she and her soon-to-be husband's parents meeting for the first time is absolutely hilarious.Though this book is a book about farming and the lives of a husband and a wife, the book ultimately
Now she wakes up at four, wears Carhartts, and carries a pocket knife. It was an ambitious idea, a bit romantic, and it worked. Single, thirty-something, and working as a writer in New York City, Kristin Kimball was living life as an adventure. But she was beginning to feel a sense of longing for a family and for home. 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.. "As much as you transform the land by farming," she writes, "farming transforms you." In her old life, Kimball would stay out until four AM, wear heels, and carry a handbag. But on an impulse, smitten, if not yet in love, she shed her city self and moved to five hundred acres near Lake Champlain to start a new farm with him. Kimball's vivid descriptions of landscape, food, cooking-and marriage-are irresi