The Dirty Life chronicled Kimball’s move from New York City to 500 acres near Lake Champlain where she started a new farm with her partner, Mark. In Good Husbandry, she reveals what happened over the next five years at Essex Farm.
Farming has many ups and downs, and the middle years were hard for the Kimballs. Mark got injured, the weather turned against them, and the farm faced financial pressures. Meanwhile, they had two small children to care for. How does one traverse the terrain of a maturing marriage and the transition from being a couple to being a family? How will the farm survive? What does a family need in order to be happy?
Kristin had chosen Mark and farm life after having a good look around the world, with a fair understanding of what her choices meant. She knew she had traded the possibility of a steady paycheck, of wide open weekends and spontaneous vacations, for a life and work that was challenging but beautiful and fulfilling. So with grit and grace and a good sense of humor, she chose to dig in deeper.
Featuring some of the same local characters and cherished animals first introduced in The Dirty Life, (Jet the farm dog, Delia the dairy cow, and those hardworking draft horses), plus a colorful cast of aspiring first-generation farmers who work at Essex Farm to acquire the skills they need to start sustainable farms of their own, Good Husbandry is about animals and plants, farmers and food, friends and neighbors, love and marriage, births and deaths, growth and abundance.
My thoughts - I really enjoyed Kristin's first book and was excited to dive into this one. As someone who harbors a small desire to leave conventional life behind and move to a farm it was very exciting to get an inside look into that sort of life. This was definitely an eye-opener to the rough, difficult side of farm life while still being a voice of support for the farming lifestyle. I found this incredibly interesting and engaging, and I attribute a lot of that to Kristin's conversational, friendly tone. While I most likely will never find myself living on a farm I'm incredibly happy to know that people like Kristin are out there keeping this lifestyle going and providing the rest of us with amazing food and an alternative lifestyle to daydream about when real life gets to be too much.
I received a review copy from NetGalley, but all thoughts are my own.
