The much anticipated follow up to The Dirty Life, Good Husbandry follows up on the Kimball family's life on their Adirondacks farm. The book deals with financial worries and injury, as well as the raising of two small children. I loved getting even more of an insight into the farming life and the challenges the family faced, as well as their triumphs. I only wish there was more to come, as it felt like saying goodbye to friends at the end.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher, who provided me with a free ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.

There is something powerful about honestly sharing the wisdom and knowledge of experience. In Good Husbandry Kristin Kimball does exactly that and although we might not all be trying to build and maintain a farm there is much to learn as a result. There is also a genuine joy to be had from sharing in another person’s striving to achieve a meaningful goal. Culturally we value speed, we want what we see and we want it now, but spiritually that avaricious consumption of both material things and ambitions and dreams is robbing us of depth and meaning. Through Kristin and her husband Mark’s endeavour we see the value of hard work towards a fulfilling, values based life.

On one level, with the majority of lives now completely divorced from the process of food production and lacking relationship with the land, there is a need to understand what is involved in keeping food on our tables. Industrial agriculture has directly damaged the land that we rely on to sustain us and it is has robbed us of our relationship with that land and the people who work it.

There has been a societal celebration of tearing up those rural communities that cared for the land, protecting and improving soil for future generations as well as feeding their own, and crucially sustaining each other. It is heartening therefore to read of those who are returning to the fields to farm them in a relational, restorative way. We need brave people to make this reverse movement and we should find ways to support them rather than constantly asking that good farming be done so sacrificially. That way we can all benefit, through what we eat and also how we experience it.

The value of Good Husbandry goes well beyond that however, as Kristin’s willingness to share her intimate personal hopes and fears sheds light on universal struggles that are familiar to us all. Her honesty about her marriage and the way the arrival of children has changed both her and the way she relates to her husband and her work, speaks to us all in our own close relationships. Kristin is prepared to be open with us about her struggles and her compromises, giving us permission and space to do the same as we read.

There is also a sense throughout the book of the need for community. This isn’t just the story of Kristin and her family. There are a steady cast of inspirations and inspired that travel through it. Locals to the area where the family farm who can share wisdom and resources to keep them going and fellow dreamers who want to set up farms of their own and learn from someone already doing it.

As humans we can’t be self-sufficient, we need others around us to share both our physical and our psychological burdens. I’ve seen how powerful community can be recently when my wife had a major operation and a chain of love and care seamlessly stepped in to provide for us when we couldn’t manage alone. Good Husbandry is a personal memoir of a difficult struggle to achieve a dream, but it is also a wise guide and welcome companion as we transition through the stages of life and also the periods of human history. Thank you.

Kimball is 31 and a journalist living in New York when she goes to interview Mark, a new breed of young and passionate farmer. She marries him and they buy a small piece of land to farm together, opting for organic methods and supported by a community of like-minded people and customers, who pay to mirror life living off the land, eating seasonal organic food produced locally.
This is the story of the farm - its seasons, the weather, the animals, the joys and hardships. She writes well as you'd expect from a professional journalist. It's also the story of her marriage, which also has joys and hardships, and the birth of her two daughters. Mark is an enormously energetic man, but not always easy, preferring to put the farm before the needs of his family. For example when she is desperate to make improvements to their home, he reluctantly agrees a small budget for her to do this, but says he won't help or be involved at all. However she is determined to make her marriage work and we hear how she makes the effort to do so.
We are reminded of the seasons, of the passing of time, the rhythms of nature and the inevitability of ageing and decay. It is a very good read, if at times a little repetitive and detailed - though of course the repetition mirrors the coming and going of the seasons. For a city dweller like me it gives an insight into a different world.
The review text isn't easy to read - any word beginning with fl or fi or having this combination of letters is missing these two so that field becomes 'eld' fire is 're' fight or flight becomes 'ght or ght'. I got used to this after a while but it made it harder to read.

Interesting read about the trials of starting your own farm. Well written and honest, makes a change from the books I normally read