This Common Ground: Seasons on an Organic Farm [Mass Market Paperback]

Scott Chaskey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2, 2006

In the tradition of Michael Pollan, Joan Gussow, and Verlyn Klinkenborg’s The Rural Life, This Common Ground is an inspirational evocation of a life lived close to the earth, written by the head farmer at one of the country’s first community-supported farms. By reflecting on four seasons of activity at his beloved Quail Hill Farm in eastern Long Island, Scott Chaskey offers stirring insight into the connections between land and the human family. Whether writing about the voice of a small wren nesting in the lemon balm or a meadow of oats, millet, and peas rising to silver and green after a fresh rain, this poet-farmer’s contagious sense of wonder brings us back to our bond with the soil.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Poet Chaskey, former head of the organic Quail Hill Farm on Long Island's South Fork, gives a sprightly account of "the education of a gardener become farmer, representing a committed community" as well as "the challenges faced by all small farms, enlivened by a wind from the sea." As this chronicle of a year at Quail Hill shows, Chaskey loves the way of life at the farm—a cousin to the more than 1,500 CSA (community supported agriculture) farms now in the U.S., dedicated to community and providing locally grown produce. The delight of his writing is his balancing of the poetry of farm life—as when he looks up "to catch the liquid flight of swallows" and "the music of wind as it weaves a thread through the brambles"—with touches of humor, such as his amazement that "our cabbages continue to grow to epic proportions." He also effectively summarizes the "critical juncture" at which the organic farming movement finds itself as a result of recent federal legislation governing organic foods. His book will be a joy to read for lovers of organic farming, and it also offers a strong argument to the general public that, with careful management of the soil, "everyone, the haves and the have-nots, [can] gain access to land and good food." B&w illus. Agent, Paul Bresnick.(Apr. 25) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Chaskey is the head farmer at Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett, New York. This organic community farm on the eastern tip of Long Island is one of 1,500 community-supported agricultural farms in the country. At Quail Hill Farm they grow food for more than 200 families and supply food to restaurants, a school, and food pantries. Members visit the farm twice a week from June through October, where they grow potatoes, carrots, herbs, radishes, kale, collard greens, eggplants, tomatoes, corn, beans, and other crops. Chaskey tells of his love for such diverse things as migratory monarch butterflies, milkweed pods, earthworms, cicadas, beetles, swallows, and crows. He maintains that "Quail Hill Farm is in the best sense a communal response to the preservation needs of a seaside place, an attempt to create and conserve what Aldo Leopold, the author of A Sand County Almanac (1968), calls 'a state of harmony between men and land.'" Chaskey's reverence for the land and its creatures is rare in today's society. We should all follow in his footsteps. George Cohen
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

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (May 2, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143037064
• ISBN-13: 978-0143037064
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,068,160 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love and Frustration on an Organic Farm, June 22, 2005

By 

John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: This Common Ground: Seasons on an Organic Farm (Hardcover)

A story of love and frustration in building a farm that grows products organically.

It's clear that the love drives Mr. Chaskey to farming, watching things grow, watching the seasons turn. The poet in him makes his prose read like this love -- 'Last night our fields felt the first light touch of Jack Frost.'

The frustration also comes through, especially as he talks about new gtovernment rules -- To qualify as organic compost must be turned a total of five times within a fifteen-day period and you must prove that the temperature inside the pile was between 131 to 170 degrees Fahrenheit for the period. --Who turns compost every three days.

This book is the story of the changing seasons on an organic farm in New York. It is not an instruction book on farming, it is an ode to organic farming.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well-written and engaging journal of life on the organic farm, May 28, 2008

By 

Michael Jandrok (Lockhart, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: This Common Ground: Seasons on an Organic Farm (Mass Market Paperback)

I have to begin this review by taking note of the delicious irony of finding this slender little gem of a book at my local supermarket, as the essence of this story is an ode to the slow food movement and the community-supported agriculture (CSA) efforts that have been gaining steam around the country over the course of the last decade or so. Definitely not supermarket material.

The author is Scott Chaskey, farmer/poet emeritus of Long Island's Quail Hill Farms, one of the oldest CSA groups in New York State. His text reads like a set of short journal entries, carrying the reader through an entire cycle of seasons on the farm. His prose is beautiful and descriptive, with occasional hints of verse adding depth and color to the proceedings. Chaskey's love of Nature (with a capital N for sure) comes through loud and true, as does the book's central theme of living in harmony with the Earth and her gifts.

It's never explicitly stated, but there's a real neo-Pagan feel to this book, especially in the way that it follows the seasons and the wheel of the year. Chaskey is definitely in touch with his inner Druid, his connection to the land and it's flora and fauna making him an effective advocate for organic farming and the CSA model.

HIGHLY recommended.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Down to the earth gardener, March 20, 2006

By 

Mary Capen "happyreader" (Centralia, Wa.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: This Common Ground : Seasons on an Organic Farm (Hardcover)

This book was a very sweet description of life at a organic farm. It brought to life ideas and processes that must happen every year or helpful hints on what makes this gardening adventure easier. You can feel the joy and effort he has put into the farm and also the challenges. He gives a glimpse of the organic association, and what it means to be organic. Chaskey generously lets us learn from his mistakes. The wholesome roots of farming are embraced by this book, I loved it.