Growing a Farmer

I found Timmermeister’s book Growing a Farmer interesting because it takes a different path than what most people would conventionally take. While most would assume that people from the country would seek moving to the city for better opportunities, Kurt nonetheless, did the opposite. When I think of farm life, I view it as an activity that is very simple and straight forward, however after reading Kurt’s account, being a farmer is a very difficult and complicated task. I didn’t expect it to involve so much trial and error, rather I thought farming was a very mundane task, however farming involves a diverse set of work with not only growing vegetables, but killing the live stock and making products out of them such as cheese, and beekeeping. Also how a farmer of small size can eventually sell his produce and goods in the market. Kurt highlights the complexity in farming in chapter 2 “Growing the Farm” when he talks about how “cows’ manure into the water, increasing the the level of algae and decreasing the oxygen level, potentially detrimental to salmon,” and how this could have led the farmer to lose his farm because of the environmental regulations set by the government. 

Kurt might be viewed by the outside world as insane, but I see him as man trying to do something that most people would do;pursue his passion. I think Kurt shows us that in order to follow your dream and aspirations you must take risks that may go against the norm. Kurt not only pursued his goal of making the reader marvel at the food that he gets and think of the journey that food had to go through before it was served but he achieved that goal. Timmermeister’s book has completely change the way I look at the food I get at the supermarket; it will make me wonder about the hard work that had to be done to make the basic ingredients of my food.