Harvest: A Year in the Life of an Organic Farm [Paperback]

Nicola Smith (Author), Geoff Hansen (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2006

An unforgettable portrait of a family farm, in words and photographs.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Freelance writer Smith and her husband, photographer Hansen (My Life as a Dog), dispel the "dreamy, nostalgic haze" surrounding urbanites' notions of smallholder agriculture with this detailed look at life on a working farm. For a year, they follow their Vermont neighbors, Jennifer Megeysi and Kyle Jones, through the snow, mud and manure as they work Fat Rooster Farm. Numerous vignettes, illustrated by Hansen's appealing pictures, pile up a wealth of detail about this small organic establishment, which raises both livestock and produce. It's a gritty life: Megeysi and Jones, who also hold jobs off the farm, must deal with murderous raccoons, hypothermic piglets, ducks overdue for slaughter, byzantine food regulations (and the legislators behind them) and their own difficult marriage. More than most writers on farming, Smith is attuned to the people who do it: Megeysi may be one of the most vividly drawn farm women since Letters of a Woman Homesteader. Readers who garden seriously, however, may notice a few inaccuracies, as when Smith calls minuscule garlic shoots "scapes" (the term refers to flowering stalks). And occasionally unruly sentences and a not quite chronological, not quite thematic structure can obscure the larger patterns by which Megeysi and Jones manage their farm. Farming is an intricate, sometimes brutal dance with the land; this book demonstrates most of the moves, but never quite the full performance.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Writer Smith and her husband, photographer Geoff Hansen, offer this illuminating portrait of one year on another family's small Vermont farm. Organized by season, the chapters follow a couple--who both hold master's degrees in wildlife conservation--through a tough year of farm management. Smith includes plenty of hard statistics about the state of farming in the U.S. And fans of how-to guides such as Karl Schwenke's Successful Small-Scale Farming (1980) will find a wealth of practical advice for starting and maintaining one's own organic agricultural enterprise. There are plenty of cautionary anecdotes, too, including the story of a single raccoon that destroys the majority of the family's salable chickens in just a few weeks. Smith also writes an intimate, unsentimental portrait of the couple's stresses and anxieties, brought on both by their demanding life as well as their own personality clashes, and it's this close-up view of the private, painful, and real negotiations necessary to keep the farm running that, along with Hansen's fine photographs, may resonate most strongly with readers. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: The Lyons Press (April 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592288871
• ISBN-13: 978-1592288878
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 8.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,072,078 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It was OK but not great, August 26, 2006

By 

Lisa Hammond (Kansas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Harvest: A Year in the Life of an Organic Farm (Hardcover)

The pictures in this book are beautiful but this should have been an educational experience and it just wasn't. I agree with the other reviewer that so much of the book was about logistics that it would have been wonderful to have a map or clear pictures of the property so we would be able to tell what the author was talking about. The other issue I had was how oddly these farmers seemed to deal with animal deaths. For example she slits a sheep's throat during a difficult labor and says she regrets not doing it earlier that day because of the "look" the sheep gave her but didn't because she was in her work clothes. I cannot imagine being pyschic enough to know an animal should be put down based on a look. In addition, they lose approximately half their calves because of the simple fact that they aren't cleaning the enclosed barn stalls during the winter. First of all, why are the cattle in the barn? Secondly, any farmer knows you must muck out stalls for health reasons *especially* if you have calves and you've enclosed them in the barn. It's NOT common practice to do this, at least where I come from and we get temps below zero with serious wind chill factors. The chicken predator was unsettling for me as well. If something's getting my chickens and I really need that income to survive for the year, you can bet all holes will be blocked, the chicks will be moved, anything and everything will be done to stop the killing.

They just seemed to cause themselves so much of their own misery and work. Another examply, they seem to always be chasing down the sheep from where they're not supposed to be and then being frustrated or late. Well.... put up fences. Good fences make for good neighbors and also lazy farming where your animals stay in the pasture you want them - with an occasional excape artist. They seem to take on more than they bargain for at every turn. Like, they want to do tasks that require a tractor but don't have one. So they work out a borrow arrangement with the neighbor but then complain about the neighbor's attitude. If you don't have a tractor, either don't do it, or understand you're at the mercy of others. The old saying "beggers can't be choosers" comes to mind. The entire fiasco with the syrup harvest was baffling. You cannot integrate people into your business like that and not expect some difficulties. If you don't want to deal with them, DON'T include them! It's very simple. These types of issues seemed to bog them down in negativity and made me, frankly, not like them much. Their marriage is in SERIOUS trouble and I cannot believe how often divorce is mentioned. Not that any marriage is always happy, but these people are definitely overworked, struggling, miserable, and stressed. *Something* should give.

After reading the book, I was just... sad. Sad for them. Sad for their animals. Sad for their child. Just sad.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not worth the money, very little useful information., April 22, 2005

By 

April P (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Harvest: A Year in the Life of an Organic Farm (Hardcover)

This is supposed to be a feely book and not a textbook. That said, the brushstrokes are far too broad to even provide that feel for the farm. Too anecdotal, and difficult to piece together. Flashbacks are one thing, but only if they provide literary value. Here, straying from chronological order subtracts from an already shaky narrative. And the writing style itself is poor. Did the publisher even assign an editor?

It would not have hurt to include a map of the place, a small chart of how much of each vegetable or animal was grown, and a rough idea of how the finances added up. The authors instead sprinkle the numbers throughout the book: $79 in beets, $4000 for interns or whatever. I kept turning to the only useful photograph in the whole book: the bird-eye view of the 20-acre farm.

I was lucky enough to borrow this from the library. It is well-printed in a nice binding, but the text pages are padded generously with white space. I got the impression that the hoo-hah binding and glossy paper were there only to distract from the low-quality text, and to justify charging coffee-table price for the book. I believe one should buy books only if you're going to look at them more than once. I have no desire to read this book again, and the content of the pictures isn't worth it either. This book would have been worth it if it were a mass-market paperback, but as it is, IT IS NOT WORTH BUYING.

I am giving this three stars only because I must give credit to the authors for at least addressing the issue. Although poorly organized, I did learn enough to think about the situation of these people. Even with no debt, Jennifer and Kyle are on the edge of going completely under. If their car dies for good, or if somebody breaks a leg, they are in trouble. It made me think twice about finances of the vendors at the farmer's market.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A moving, suspenseful story, December 7, 2004

By 

a reader (Hartland, VT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Harvest: A Year in the Life of an Organic Farm (Hardcover)

Harvest describes the struggle of so many small family farms these days -- how to survive while hanging on to your ideals and the way of life you treasure. In gorgeous prose and stunning photographs, Nicola Smith and Geoff Hansen tell the story of a year in the life of a very special farm family. There is a wonderful sense of suspense to the story -- Smith makes excellent use of the life and death struggles that come with raising animals and food. Most highly recommended!