We recorded this episode of the Bookjam celebrating hardworking farmers and the bounty they bring to our communities way back in June. It still seems quite relevant post Labor Day considering the devastation that’s occurred at many valley farms in the wake of recent post-Irene flooding. Please consider a donation to help Vermont farmers recover from their losses.
Listen now to Farmers Markets
Summer’s amazing Farmer’s Markets provide an excellent excuse to read books about food and farming. We found, read and recommend three new books:
This Life is in Your Hands a memoir by Melissa Coleman. Weeks after finishing, J Lisa C is still pondering the story contained in this memoir. It has so much, the trials and successes of building a life and a family, how failures shape you, an unbearable pain that comes with the loss of a child/sister, making peace with an upbringing and more. Beyond the actual real life tale in this book, the author’s rendering of her childhood spent as neighbors to Helen and Scott Nearing (famous homesteaders and authors of The Good Life) also raises questions about how to accomplish a life that remains true to your ideals, yet brings the least amount of harm to and the most amount of help for the people you love. Specifically, it deals with organic farming and lessening carbon footprints. Globally, this book just deals with life.
The Dirty Life: on farming, food and love by Kristin Kimball – A tale told by a former suburban and urban dweller who interviews and then falls for a man and his life in the country. Visual delights include a description of unloading a car full of Pennsylvania treats in the midst of Manhattan, their weekends in the country before they embark on their life together as husband and wife. The memoir then does a fabulous job of juxtaposing the merging of her urban sensibilities with his desire to live only off the land. As a bonus, because she is a food lover to the core - you want to sit and eat with them again and again.
Goat Song: A seasonal life, a short history of herding and the art of making cheese by Brad Kessler – beautiful prose and refelections about life with goats and the changes those four hoofed friends bring. Lisa LC likens his work to poetry.
Read these under a tree this summer or wait until winter when you need to think a bit about vegetables fresh from a garden, and find your own answers to the questions within each.
We hope you enjoy the bird song and russling leaves in this podcast. They are the sounds of summer and actually occurred during our recording session. We certainly enjoyed the live visitors and recording from the porches of The Norwich Inn.
