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Growing a Feast:
The Chronicle of a Farm-to-Table Meal
by Kurt Timmermeister
c.2014, W.W. Norton
$24.95 / $26.50 Canada
311 pages
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Truth Contributor
Tonight, you’re bringing home the bacon.
You got it at the grocery store on the way home from work:
neat little strips adhered to a rectangle of cardboard,
wrapped in plastic. Some bread, a hothouse tomato, a head of
lettuce, and you’re set.
So where does your food come from? Go ahead. Point to the
grocery store, then read Growing a Feast by Kurt
Timmermeister, and follow along with one scrumptious
meal…
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On a Sunday evening not long ago, Kurt Timmermeister decided
to have a dinner party for friends. Years before, he’d run a
restaurant on his island farm near Seattle, but since he’d
closed his French doors to diners, he realized that he
missed cooking for a crowd. It would take a lot of
preparation – and yet, dinner that night, with its
formidable menu, started some two years prior with the birth
of a calf.
When a heifer is born on a farm, it’s cause for celebration.
Heifers grow up to be cows that give milk to make cheese,
the main income for Kurtwood Farms. So when Alice (the name
given to the calf) was born to a Jersey cow named Dinah,
Timmermeister was pleased.
Alice was born in later fall, which is usually a quieter
time on the farm. Still, there are things to do: as winter
replaces fall and spring creeps in, Timmermeister and his
hired men tend livestock, and they begin to prepare for the
garden by mixing compost with soil and planting seeds in a
ramshackle greenhouse. Fruits, vegetables, and meat needed
for his dishes are mostly grown on the farm, although
Timmermeister sheepishly admits to bartering for some of his
seedlings.
As summer eases into fall, and then another year passes,
Alice matures enough to birth calves of her own. Other
livestock have come and gone, Timmermeister made and stored
dozens of cheeses in the interim, canned and processed
vegetables, and he harvested honey. He also butchered a
steer for meat.
And on a Sunday afternoon not long ago, final preparations
for a lavish meal began…
If it’s possible to fall deeply in love with words, I
believe I have done so with author Kurt Timmermeister’s.
Despite descriptions of hard physical work and chores he’d
rather not be doing, there’s a sure lushness to Growing a
Feast. Timmermeister shares his gentle life: getting to
know his cows, nurturing his formidable garden; and dreaming
of the meals that will come from his current efforts.
But the bucolic pages of Timmermeister’s book belie the
loss, worry, hard decisions, death and necessary destruction
that come on a farm. We get mere peeks at the difficult
things about agriculture-based life that may shock city
readers, but of which farmers are all too familiar.
And yet – you have to love a book that makes you want to
wiggle your bare toes in the grass, eat sumptuously, or try
a new, challenging recipe. I sure did - and if you’re a
gardener, farmer, or cook, Growing a Feast is a book
you’ll want to bring home, too. |
