Good Husbandry: Growing Food, Love, and Family on Essex Farm

Kimball’s superb memoir (following up The Dirty Life) chronicles the evolution of a farm, marriage, family, and her own personal identity with humor, insight, and candor. Having left her home in New York City to start Essex Farm “from scratch” with the man she would marry, she left a world of easy conveniences for farming rigor in partnership with a man whose “inner radio has been tuned to WFRM, all farming, all the time.” She commits to using horses instead of machines and expresses her desire to “make a farm that did more good than harm” to the environment and community, leading to both extraordinary labor (“working for grueling hours in all weather”) and deprivation (the house lacked stairs between floors). But by the end, readers will come to understand and appreciate her message that “the work is all there is, and it’s a beautiful thing.” Eventually, children are welcomed, and “I was on one side with the children and their needs, and he was on the other, with the farm and all its work.” Readers curious about small-farm life, or simply how one woman weathers great change both professionally and personally, will love Kimball’s gutsy, generous second memoir. (Oct.)