“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 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.”
December’s AgBookClub selection, The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love, by Kristin Kimball, is a totally different type of literature compared to previous AgBookClub selections. Join us for discussions throughout December as you seek cozy activities while the weather turns cold and snow begins to fall outside.
Here’s what you need to do this month:
Get the book. Buy it, borrow it, download and listen to it, read it over your neighbor’s shoulder — we don’t care. But don’t steal the book.
Read the book.
- Week 1: Prologue, Part 1, Part 2 [pages 1 – 124] (Twitter chat on 12/4)
- Week 2: Part 3 [pages 125 – 192] (Twitter chat on 12/11)
- Week 3: Part 4 & Epilogue [pages 193 – 273] (Twitter chat on 12/18)
- Week 4: Merry Christmas! No Twitter chat on 12/25. See you in January!
Join the chat (#AgBookClub) on Wednesdays at 8:00pm Central on Twitter. Learn how to participate in a Twitter chat here. While we hope you can participate in our discussion every week, we know that everyone has busy schedules. We always include general questions following the topic(s) of the book that can be answered by anyone, so please don’t hesitate to jump in the Twitter chat if you didn’t have a chance to read the section we’re discussing. We welcome any and all to join the discussion!
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