Overview

"From a ""graceful, luminous writer with an eye for detail"" (Minneapolis Star Tribune), this riveting memoir explores a year on a sustainable farm.When Kristin Kimball left New York City to interview a dynamic young farmer named Mark, her world changed. On an impulse, she shed her city self and started a new farm with him on five hundred acres near Lake Champlain. The Dirty Life is the captivating chronicle of the couple's first year on Essex Farm, from the cold North Country winter through their harvest-season wedding in the loft of the barn. Kristin and Mark's plan to grow everything needed to feed a community was an ambitious idea, and a bit romantic. It worked. Every Friday evening, all year round, over a hundred people travel to Essex Farm to pick up their weekly share of the ""whole diet""--beef, pork, chicken, milk, eggs, maple syrup, grains, flours, dried beans, herbs, fruits, and forty different vegetables--produced by the farm. In The Dirty Life, Kristin discovers the wrenching pleasures of physical work, learns that good food is at the center of a good life, falls deeply in love, and finally finds the engagement and commitment she craved in the form of a man, a small town, and a beautiful piece of land."

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9781797107769

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Reviews

If you want to understand the heart and soul of the new/old movement towards local food, this is the book you need. -- Bill McKibben, author Eaarth The Dirty Life is a delightful, tumultuous, and tender story of the author's love affair with the man who becomes her husband and the farm they work together to restore. -- Jeannette Walls, author of Half Broke Horses In her beguiling memoir, Kimball describes the complex truth about the simple life in prose that is observant and lyrical, yet tempered by a farmer's lack of sentimentality. -- Elle Kimball is a graceful, luminous writer with an eye for detail... How lucky we are to be able to step into that world with no sweat. I wished for a hundred pages more. -- Minneapolis Star Tribune Kimball writes in vivid but unsentimental language, equal parts dirt and poetry. -- Burlington Free Press A hearty, chromatic account of a meaningful accomplishment in farming. -- Kirkus Reviews

A hearty, chromatic account of a meaningful accomplishment in farming. -- Kirkus Reviews If you want to understand the heart and soul of the new/old movement towards local food, this is the book you need. -- Bill McKibben, author Eaarth The Dirty Life is a delightful, tumultuous, and tender story of the author's love affair with the man who becomes her husband and the farm they work together to restore. -- Jeannette Walls, author of Half Broke Horses In her beguiling memoir, Kimball describes the complex truth about the simple life in prose that is observant and lyrical, yet tempered by a farmer's lack of sentimentality. -- Elle Kimball is a graceful, luminous writer with an eye for detail... How lucky we are to be able to step into that world with no sweat. I wished for a hundred pages more. -- Minneapolis Star Tribune Kimball writes in vivid but unsentimental language, equal parts dirt and poetry. -- Burlington Free Press

If you want to understand the heart and soul of the new/old movement towards local food, this is the book you need. -- Bill McKibben, author Eaarth The Dirty Life is a delightful, tumultuous, and tender story of the author's love affair with the man who becomes her husband and the farm they work together to restore. -- Jeannette Walls, author of Half Broke Horses Kimball is a graceful, luminous writer with an eye for detail... How lucky we are to be able to step into that world with no sweat. I wished for a hundred pages more. -- Minneapolis Star Tribune Kimball writes in vivid but unsentimental language, equal parts dirt and poetry. -- Burlington Free Press In her beguiling memoir, Kimball describes the complex truth about the simple life in prose that is observant and lyrical, yet tempered by a farmer's lack of sentimentality. -- Elle A hearty, chromatic account of a meaningful accomplishment in farming. -- Kirkus Reviews

Author Information

Kristin Kimball is a farmer and a writer living in upstate New York. Prior to farming, Kimball worked as a freelance writer, writing teacher, and as an assistant to a literary agent in New York City. A graduate of Harvard University, she and her husband Mark have run Essex Farm since 2003, where they live with their daughter, Jane.

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