Single, thirtysomething, working as a writer in New York City, Kristin Kimball was living life as an adventure. At Essex Farm, she 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.'This book is the story of the two love affairs that interrupted the trajectory of my life: one with farming-that dirty, concupiscent art-and the other with a complicated and exasperating farmer.' Now she wakes up at four, wears Carhartts, and carries a pocket knife. 'As much as you transform the land by farming,' she writes, 'farming transforms you.' In her old life, Kimball would stay out until four AM, wear heels, and carry a handbag. Kimball's vivid descriptions of landscape, food, cooking-and marriage-are irresistible. The work is done by draft horses instead of tractors, and the fertility comes from compost. Every Friday evening, all year round, 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. It was an ambitious idea, a bit romantic, and it worked. Kimball and her husband had a plan: to grow everything needed to feed a community. The Dirty Life is the captivating chronicle of their first year on Essex Farm, from the cold North Country winter through the following harvest season-complete with their wedding in the loft of the barn. But on an impulse, smitten, if not yet in love, she shed her city self and moved to five hundred acres near Lake Champlain to start a new farm with him. Kristin knew nothing about growing vegetables, let alone raising pigs and cattle and driving horses. When she interviewed a dynamic young farmer, her world changed. But she was beginning to feel a sense of longing for a family and for home.

From author Kristin Kimball, 'the story of the two love affairs that interrupted the trajectory of my life: one with farming-that dirty, concupiscent art-and the other with a complicated and exasperating farmer.'

The dirty life kimball