Just Finished

There aren't many books that I can say I finished in a few days. I generally have a short attention span with books, marked by my pile of half-read selections on the shelf. This one had my attention though, probably because I could picture a minuscule version in our own yard.

The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball

The Dirty Life - A Memoir of Farming, Food and Love by Kristin Kimball. The author is a New York city writer that stumbles upon a love for farming while doing an interview, and clumsily goes from enjoying reading the paper at a coffee shop to milking the cows before sun-up and providing crops for an entire community.  One afternoon she finds a horseshoe from decades past while plowing the field and notes:

 "You can't truly own a farm, no matter what the deed says. It has a life of its own. You can love it beyond measure, and you are responsible for it, but at most you're married to it."

It made me think of our tiny 7x7ft square in the front yard. The bullets, canning jars and marbles that we turn up while weeding, and how if the dirt could talk it would have more stories than our neighbors that have been there since birth. Chickens have returned, cucumbers are growing rapidly, we have our first watermelon, eggplants are bright purple, and the tomato plants look like tarantulas taking over the plot. 765 may be tiny but it sure is productive.