Overview

After an epiphany caused by a harrowing bite into a pink-slime burger, Max Watman resolves to hunt, fish, bake, butcher, preserve, and pickle. He buys a thousand-pound-steer—whom he names Bubbles—raises chickens, gardens, and works to transform his small-town home into a gastronomic paradise. In this compulsively readable memoir, Watman records his experiments and adventures as he tries to live closer to the land and the source of his food. A lively raconteur, Watman draws upon his youth in rural Virginia with foodie parents—locavores before that word existed—his time cooking in restaurants, and his love of the kitchen. Amid trial and experiment, there is bound to be heartbreak. Despite a class in cheese making from a local expert, his carefully crafted Camembert resembles a chalky hockey puck. Much worse, his beloved hens—""the girls,"" as he calls them—are methodically attacked by a varmint, and he falls into desperate measures to defend them. Finally, he loses track of where exactly Bubbles the steer is. Watman perseveres, and his story culminates in moments of redemption: a spectacular prairie sunset in North Dakota; watching 10,000 pheasants fly overhead; eating fritters of foraged periwinkles and seawater risotto; beachside with his son; a tub of homemade kimchi that snaps and crunches with fresh, lively flavor well after the last harvest. With infectious enthusiasm, Watman brings the reader to the furthest corners of culinary exploration. He learns that the value of living from scratch is in the trying. With a blend of down-home spirit and writing panache, he serves up a delectable taste of farm life—minus the farm.

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9780393350838

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Reviews

While I was growing up on our family farm near Lyon, I learned the importance of seasonal produce and fully utilized livestock at an early age. Max Watman's witty and vivid accounts of producing farm-fresh products such as cheese and preserves in a modern world brings back fond memories and had me laughing throughout. -- Daniel Boulud Max Watman has the descriptive and narrative power to make the outer limits of the food world seem both magnificently rare and dangerously explorable and appealing. Harvest finds the sweet overlap between our gustatory appetite and our hunger to keep turning the pages of a great story. -- Matt Lee and Ted Lee, authors of The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook Succeeds not only as a memoir but also as a work to inspire everyone to try new things regardless of expertise. -- Publishers Weekly [Watman] captures the swing and momentum of food preparation, the Zen of hunting and fishing, and the sweet, quirky joys of family life . -- Eugenia Bone - The Wall Street Journal On the surface, Harvest is about food ...[but] a deeper examination reveals that Harvest is also about family and friendship and the role of food in those relationships. -- Shannon Morgan - Washington Independent Review of Books

On the surface, Harvest is about food [but] a deeper examination reveals that Harvest is also about family and friendship and the role of food in those relationships. --Shannon Morgan

Author Information

Max Watman is the author of Chasing the White Dog: An Amateur Outlaw’s Adventures in Moonshine and Race Day: A Spot on the Rail with Max Watman. Raised in the mountains of Virginia and the kitchens of Washington DC, he currently lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife and son.

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