David Mas Masumoto works a family farm, growing organic peaches, nectarines, and grapes. When Mas’s father had a stroke on the fields of their 80-acre farm, Mas confronted life’s big questions: what do his and his father’s lives mean? What have they lived and worked for? “A fiercely tender book,” (Debora Madison), Wisdom of the Last Farmer “portrays the farmer’s life with so much passion, warmth and honesty that it’s hard to avoid seeing farming’s beauty and gritty appeal. Written from the author’s perspective, in language that is poetic yet unadorned, it’s part memoir, part manifesto, part philosophical discourse and wholly enjoyable” ( San Francisco Chronicle ). In the harvest of his father’s wisdom, and his own, gathered from a lifetime of farming and surviving, Mas finds the natural connections between generation and succession and life, death, and renewal. He shares how to tend and make things grow, and how to know when to let nature take over and give things away.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
In Wisdom of the Last Farmer, Masumoto farms stories as he farms peaches. His insights are full of beautiful, lyrical descriptions on how to nurture both the tangible and intangible and make them grow. Through Masumoto’s quiet eloquence, we see how our own destinies are involved in the future of our food, the land, and the farm.
