Growing a Farmer is less a food book than a love story, sometimes unrequited, between an unlikely farmer and his land. The four-acre plot that was to become Kurtwood Farms wasn't much to look at, but that fateful first ferry ride that Seattle chef Kurt Timmermeister took to Vashon Island brought him past the brambles and overgrown blackberries to the possibilities: a home, a business, a self-sufficient life.At the time, Kurt was a successful restaurateur, which gave him the freedom to experiment with farming haphazardlyùbees, vegetables, chickensùwhile slowly transforming his overgrown patch into a pastoral oasis. But as the months crawled by, he grew disgusted with serving tray-packed chicken breasts while spending his weekends unearthing gorgeously misshapen carrots and sweetening his morning coffee with his own honey. His food consciousness had awoken and he could not turn back, so he set a goalùto build a viable business out of producing food on his scrappy parcel of landùand tumbled headfirst into the project of remaking himself as a real farmer.In this poignant tale, Kurt chronicles the tiny steps forward and the subsequent heartbreaking setbacks he endured as he cycled through a series of farming projects in search of a sustainable business model. A promising farmers' market vegetable-selling season ends in misadventure and a negative balance sheet. He acquires Dinah, a willful Jersey cow that seduces him into a life of predawn millings, a semi-legal raw milk dairy, and finally a fledgling artisan cheese venture. He dramatizes the life cycle of a pig, the ultimate consumer of farm waste, from birthing through slaughter and subsequent butchering. Read Less