Three Fantastic Farm Memoirs

Now, in late August, the peak of the year’s garden work appears to be behind us. Last week I harvested pumpkins, and in the space vacated by the dying vines, I sowed a fall garden of lettuce, spinach, collards, turnips, carrots, and beets. For the next few weeks, the only time-consuming work should be the never-ending need to pick…

Gardening by Hand

My favorite passage so far from Harlan Hubbard’s Payne Hollow: Life on the Fringe of Society: I have found no one who sympathizes with my insistence on gardening by hand, without the use of any machine. So many times have the advantages of a garden tractor or tiller been pointed out to me that I half…

The Dirty Life

There are not many books I’ve read more than once. My appetite for the written word is voracious–my loved ones might say insatiable–but it’s almost always focused on  tantalizing new territory. Fortunately, this is not as much of a vice in reading as it would be in other spheres of life. But every now and then, a book comes along…

Whole Wheat and Cavities

Flour probably isn’t the first thing that springs to mind when you think of fresh food, but what baker hasn’t opened a container of whole wheat flour only to smell that it’s gone rancid? Refined flour’s staying power on the shelf is one of the things that has led to its popularity, but unfortunately, the reason it…

The Resilient Gardener

I’ve read a lot of gardening books in my thirty-one years, and I’ve learned something new from every one. But it isn’t often that a book comes along in which I not only learn something new in every paragraph but each bit of new information feels absolutely vital. Carol Deppe’s book The Resilient Gardener is…

From the Land and Back

This weekend, kept indoors by the glorious rain, I finally read a book that’s been sitting on my shelf for at least a year. One of my best friends found it at a thrift store and thought of me. She knows I love anything to do with gardening or farming, and especially with old-timey farming…

This Life Is in Your Hands

If you’re an organic gardener, you must have heard of Eliot Coleman. You’ve probably read some of his books: Four-Season Harvest or The New Organic Grower. I confess that I haven’t. Yet. But that didn’t diminish my excitement at finding a memoir written by his daughter, Melissa Coleman. In 2011, she published This Life Is…