The Dirty Life:

I read the best book recently.  "The Dirty Life:  A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love" by Kristin Kimball.  Soooo interesting.  It's an absolutely lovely book.  I couldn't put it down.  Kristin started out as a freelance writer in New York City.  She had an assignment to write a story on a local farmer who was doing/building/growing everything from scratch.  She met him, fell in love, got married, and now they have their own farm together.  What's unique about this farm is that they are doing all the farming using horses, no tractors or other machinery.  On top of that, they are trying to build a full-diet CSA.  What that means is that their subscribers pay a monthly/quarterly/yearly fee (whatever works best for the customer) and then all year they can get all the meat, eggs, milk, vegetables, fruit, lard, etc, that they need for their family.  Here is her webpage:  http://www.kristinkimball.com/  It talks all about their Essex Farm and their CSA program.  The book is a memoir of their first year starting up the farm.  It's full of amazingly heart-warming stories, and sad stories.  It's just an amazing book.

I'm now reading "Barnheart:  The Incurable Longing for a Farm of One's Own" by Jenna Woginrich.  I think I should have started with her first book first, "Made from Scratch:  Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life" as this one jumps around a bit, and it would have been good to start at the beginning.  But I'll read that next.