Book Review: Greenhorns

Go to www.thegreenhorns.net for info on the film

If you've ever thought about becoming a farmer, love food, or simply wondered what goes into the day to day grind growing of our food, this book will give you a voyeur's peek into the life of the new farmer.  If you weren't already, you will be mighty grateful to farmers everywhere and may even speak your gratitude to the ones at your local farmers' market.  Choosing to be a farmer is a career full of muscle aches, never ending stress, battles against culture's ideas of farmers and food, and very little money. And it seems that many of  today's new farmers are educated environmental activists that have to beg and borrow for a patch of tillable earth, as opposed to the farms of generations past that were handed down through the family.  Hooray for farmers, "new" and "old" and for whatever path lead them to grow the food on my table and yours!  Truly, you are among the heroes that walk (and till) the earth. 

Goatsong book review

If I can't have a farm of my own yet, at least I can live vicariously through others who do. Lately my favorite kind of books to read are the memoirs of farmers who are stumbling through learning how to do what they do. Most have never farmed before and are transplants from some other career found to be unfulfilling. Such is the case of the author of Goatsong. Brad Kessler and his wife move to Vermont and begin their adventure in raising goats. Brad poetically catalogs his days of milking, breeding, cheesemaking, protecting his small herd, and connecting to Mother Earth. He even takes a pilgrimage to France to learn from the cheesemakers of the Pyrenees mountains firsthand. I admit, I am jealous. Thanks Brad, for allowing me to learn from your experiences and to imagine in full color what it will be like to someday do what you do.