When someone comes up to me at
market and says they don’t like tomatoes, I like to think they just haven’t
found the right tomato yet. Some shoppers have never had a tomato outside of
the grocery store (those rock hard, sort of red things from the grocery definitely
don’t count) or they’ve never tried anything except a red tomato. Tomatoes come
in all different colors, from almost white to orange to green to black, and in
all sorts of flavors. We grow ones that are so sweet they’re almost like eating
candy, tart tomatoes with a sharp bite, and tomatoes so rich and complex, they’re like a
fine wine.
I always thought I didn’t like
memoirs. During my college years, I was introduced to some pretty boring ones and
few that were so wordy and over-the-top that the stories became unbelievable. A
couple years ago the memoir The Dirty
Life by Kristin Kimball came across my path. Guess what? I loved it! Turns
out I just hadn’t found the right memoir yet.
I’ve been rereading The Dirty Life this September as my “busy
mom read”. It’s tucked in my purse to read during the quiet moments between the
craziness of life. I’m also rereading it because this October Kimball’s second
memoir, Good Husbandry, comes out and
tells the story of their next five years on the farm. I am counting down the
days until it comes out, which is something I never thought I would say about a
memoir!
In The Dirty Life, Kimball shares about her experience falling head
over heels for a farmer during an interview for an article. She abandons her
city life to marry him and start a farm and CSA in upstate New York. Her story
is hilarious as she is thrown into the world of country living, and pulls at your
heart as she describes the struggles they face throughout the first year. Most
of all, I’m drawn to the way that she describes food. Reading her words makes me
want to run out to the garden and grab everything I need to replicate the
delicious dishes they create from the food they grow and raise on their farm.
It also makes me want to get a dairy cow in the worst way!
If you love food or farming or
both, then I highly recommend this book!
