Growing a Farmer - Comment

I am very content about the book, even though I only browsed the first half pretty quickly, but I am sure I will go back to read it occasionally to just slowdown my upbeat life and immerse my mind into the country life.

The author is ambitious, despite of his depictions in fairly plain English. He intends to inform the readers to experience the world from a more peaceful perspective, hoping them to view tings from the same lens as he does. Better yet, he encourages the readers to abandon their identity as observers and to become players, thusly truly functioning as active components of the nature, who benefit from the grace of nature.

The author grew up in Seattle, and later decided to grow his own vegetables, so he bought four acres on an island. He then slowly became a typical farmer, raising from chickens, cows, to pigs, learning to make artisan cheeses, and ultimately coming full circle to serve clients with what he raises on the farm. As a result, he discovers the connections between nature and human beings. In a city, urban people live in buildings and buy food from grocery stores, not knowing where the food comes from, nor do they have the desire to find out. On the farm, people grow their own food, and they are required to know the nature of food well - the process of growing it, the connection it has with the earth, the timing to sowing seeds, to water, and to harvest at the end – or they will starve during winter since they won’t have anything left.

The fast tempo of urban life somehow permits human to forget about the changing of the seasons, the law of jungles, and the effort that it takes for the food to arrive in front of them. From the book of Growing a Famer, readers are invited to become farmers, as they were in the good old days, and to reconnect with nature.