7:30 PM - Hotchkiss Recital Hall
Gibson Art Center
Join author Kristin Kimball in discussing her new memoir, "The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love." Kimball and her husband, Mark, farm 500 acres near Lake Champlain in northern New York. "Against all odds, I fell deeply for him, and for farming...At the end of the first growing season, we got married in the loft of our shabby red barn. We've farmed here for seven years now, and have become parents to two little girls."
The Kimballs raise almost everything they need for a year-round diet, including 50 kinds of vegetables, herbs, grains, and fruits, plus pigs, chickens, and dairy and beef cattle. They use no pesticides or herbicides, and most of the work is done with draft horses instead of tractors. The farm feeds 150 people, who come each week to pick up their share of our produce, flours, milk, meats, and eggs.
Prior to farming, Kimball worked as a freelance writer, a writing teacher, and an assistant to a literary agent. A graduate of Harvard University, she has run Essex Farm with her husband since 2003. She grew up near Rome, NY, where she didn't even have a garden as a child. Kimball says: "Farming asks a lot of a person, physically, emotionally, and intellectually. It keeps you close to the dirt and humble. I've gained many skills on the farm that I couldn't have imagined needing in the city...But the best lesson farming has taught me is the deep pleasure of commitment—to Mark, to our farm, to a small town."
The program is sponsored by The Center for Environment & Society, The Joseph H. McLain Program in Environmental Studies, The Sophie Kerr Committee, and Farm Dinners on the Shore. For more information, call 410-778-7295. The event is free and open to the public.
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