Book Review for Growing a Farmer First Half

Book Review for Growing a Farmer First Half

The book detailed describes the author’s story of becoming a farmer. The intention of this book is giving a more vivid image about how the food is growing on a farm. in my opinion, the book is serving the purpose of marketing his product and farms. The book starts from the life before the farm. The author starts his business as a small café owner. The business is good and profitable. The whole idea of the becoming a farmer comes from an apartment hunting incidents. He wants to find a house which has spaces and affordable price, which leads him to the Vashon Island in suburban Seattle. Through the experience with real estate agents, the author seems to have a vision of the previous owner’s life and his blackberry farms.

From the inspiration of “delicious morsels with juicy sweetness” in blackberry farms, the isolation of the commuting between downtown and Vashon Island and his failure of the newly opened restaurant, Mr. Timmermeister decided to become a full-time farmer. Moreover, he also bought the neighboring house to expand his farm. From the experience in the farmers market, the authors know the key success for the beginning of a small farm is the quality vegetables. Therefore, with the help from Matt, the Kurtwood farm for vegetables began. They sell vegetables to local farmers market and CSA subscriptions. The chapter 1 and 2 mainly describes the how the authors become full-time farmers. The following chapter explains the special project on his farm.

Bee-keeping

The first project is bee-keeping. Before he made his bee-keeping dream comes true, he checks the equipment, supply catalogue and city zoning requirements for his property. He started his lesson from an old book-First Lessons in Beekeeping for basic bee-keeping skills and knowledge. It is smart to do a small research before you starting a project. From the magazine and advertisement, he found series supply house for future shopping.

He introduces the serval different types of Bees from his experience of the failure, which shows the reader how hard is the bee-keeping at the beginning of this project. Moreover, the author also emphasizes the importance of weather for farming. The first failure is because of the rainy and cool weather of the Seattle. The second one is because of the transportation in a different weather zone. The success of the bee-keeping project started at the second year with small failure. The success means he will have enough honey for his and his friend. The failure means the production is too low to the market. The honey the author get is light in color and flavor. However, the color difference is due to the different season. From the spring flower, the honey mainly is dark brown. After serious study of the lives of bees, Mr. Timmermeister started to achieve success in his first project.

The most interesting part of the bee-keeping for me is how the farmer changed the hive to get the honey. It is a terrifying process for people who is looking. However, it is also an exciting moment for pouring out the honey from the hive. The key part of this process provides the colony with a new physical hive.

He also gives readers a glimpse of trick and business idea in the bee-keeping project. The thick he gives us is to use the smoke make the bees less interested in stinging. The risk management keeps more than one hives.

Fruit, Apples, Vinegar

In the center of the Kurtwood Farm, there is an orchard. The first fruits tree he planted is apples, which later also can be cider. Part of the reason for growing apples also because of the law registration support for small cider makers. The biggest challenge for this project is restricting animals from the eating the tree and fruits. For the authors, it is a long and hard process to fight with deer’s nears his farm. He tried to build serval fences to prevent the deer’s approach the trees. Finally, with the help of different size of the fence, he is able to harvest apples from the trees. Part of the product will also save for vinegar, which is an essential ingredient for cooking. He also introduced the readers a series byproduct of the apples, the cider, the vinegar, the achohol, and juicy. He also stated a project for Italian Balsamic vinegar procedure. In this chapter, he explains the intention of the farm’s project is to share with a friend not for sale.