New York Review of Books Review

Looks like we're back to minding our peas and kumquats. This season, gardening books will tug us into the vegetable patch, and it s but a slip of the muck boot into the chicken coop and pigpen. Where we go from there is anyone's guess, but as I recall, last time around the rural life left us hungry for . . . Big Macs and TV dinners. Perhaps, though, while we've been spinning through this great cycle of dharma, we've ratcheted ourselves up to a higher level. We'll see. The place to begin, you might think, is your own backyard, and that wouldn't be a bad idea, were it not next to impossible to learn how to farm from a book. You need a living, breathing teacher to tell you that the ground is too wet to plant just now or the nights still too cold. THE COMPLETE BOOK OF VEGETABLES: The Ultimate Guide to Growing, Cooking and Eating Vegetables (Firefly, paper, $29.95), by Matthew Biggs, might scare budding farmers off the land, though most youngsters I know are too smart to learn how to do anything by reading a book. They just dig in. Take cardoons. A promising garden choice because you can eat them or just admire the purple, thistle-like flowers for their ornamental value. "On a day when the leaves and hearts are dry," we are told, it's time to blanch them: "Wrap cardoons with 'collars' of newspaper, corrugated cardboard, brown wrapping paper or black polyethylene tied firmly around the stems. . . . Alternatively cardoons can be earthed up. Cover stems with dry hay, bracken or straw held firmly at several points." I'm sorry, but I don't use collars even to help my soufflés rise. Unfortunately, this book is so beautiful you won't want to get it dirty by consulting it in close proximity to actual garden soil. And you'd need a magnifying glass because the type is so small. Then again, just because this book is so beautiful, it might inspire you to design your own garden. As for the recipes: why so complicated? Does a picture of rhubarb ... really make me want to "lift a few crowns in late autumn, leave them above ground and let them be frosted"? The answer is no. It makes me head to the freezer section a that chic deli around the corner. Much more satisfying is Biggs's other book, a lefty collaboration with Jekka McVicar and Bob Flowerdew, VEGETABLES, HERBS AND FRUIT: An Illustrated Encyclopedia (Firefly, $29.95). There's an abundance of information and tantalizing pictures. Isn't it nice when peas are so neatly tucked into their pods in those very polite rows? Along these lines, EAT YOUR YARD: Edible Trees, Shrubs, Vines, Herbs and Flowers for Your Landscape (Gibbs Smith, paper, $19.99), by Nan K. Chase, is both useful and beautiful because she has a feel for the dreams - and limitations - of the home gardener. Rose water plum compote and Mountain Farm citrus lavender marinade sound lovely, and doable. I can understand why some garden writers are tempted to be all things to all people. Gardening is very, very, very hard work. It's dirty and cold and hot and wet and dry, and it usually features a plague of locusts. You have to sell people on the idea that it's not only fun to reap what you sow but that it's interesting to read about what someone else has reaped. This must be why we're in the midst of a harvest of farming memoirs. And just as no two peas are ever really alike, so it is that no two farmers are alike. I've singled out the two ripest and most delicious of this bunch, and the most philosophically opposed. On the subject of karma: Martha Stewart's mansions have many garden rooms, and many gardeners too, so she can have raffia-tied collars around her cardoons whenever she wants. Stewart is a key player in Josh Kilmer-Purcell's story, THE BUCOLIC PLAGUE: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers (Harper/ HarperCollins, $24.99). What his subtitle doesn't mention is that Kilmer-Purcell has spent years in bed with the marketing gods, toiling at various advertising agencies, about which he is brilliantly cynical. His partner, in life and in business, is Brent Ridge, aka Dr. Brent, who worked for Martha Stewart as a health and wellness expert, a curious career move after surviving medical school and business school, but go figure. Dr. Brent travels with her, appears on television shows with her, and wines and dines with her until one day he's summarily fired by a corporate suit. He never hears from her again. "For a woman who has publicly lamented her lack of friends," Kilmer-Purcell writes, "it's hard to believe that her 69 years of human interaction haven't illuminated the cause." Do I detect a backward whir on that karmic wheel? But wait. This is a book about farming. The farm is on land in upstate New York whose centerpiece is the Beekman Mansion, built in 1802 but immaculately restored and just sitting there, empty, waiting for a buyer. When Kilmer-Purcell and Dr. Brent stumble upon the property, it's as if by magic accident. And "The Bucolic Plague" turns out to be appealingly replete with mythic characters and otherworldly connections. Yes, yes! I'm getting to the farming. The men start raising goats when Kilmer-Purcell surprises Dr. Brent with a herd, very much against his wishes. My Amtrak seat mate in the Quiet Car, a complete stranger, insisted that I read out loud the scene - a goat in labor - that was making me laugh so hard I was crying. One December, before Dr. Brent is fired, he and Kilmer-Purcell make soap from the goat's milk for Martha Stewart's Christmas present, an anxiety-inducing office ritual that has her employees practically handing over their first-born sons. The soap is such a hit that the goats are invited to make a guest appearance on Stewart's show, which is important because retail will help keep this farm afloat. But farming is very hard work even if the farmer lives in a mansion, employs a farm manager and visits every weekend. When Dr. Brent loses his job, he devotes himself full time to the goats, the house, the vegetables - and the Web site. On modern farms, blogging is the new plowing. Having spent formative years in the exquisitely designed Land of Good Things, Dr. Brent is compulsive not only about how things look on the farm but, in a neat confluence with his partner's marketing savvy, how things might appear to look. The goat project nearly scuppers their relationship. Their household deities are incompatible, it seems. While Dr. Brent is a Martha, driven by perfectionism, Kilmer-Purcell is, as he explains, an Oprah, "Living My Best Life." Soon they're fighting about everything from raised beds to cherry pies, peddling a vision of gracious living and barely speaking. "I was sick and tired of the Beekman," Kilmer-Purcell confesses. His former life had "been replaced by a brand." Josh Kilmer-Purcell, left, and Brent Ridge, the gentlemen farmers of "The Bucolic Plague." In one hilariously revealing passage, Kilmer-Purcell describes the winter visit of a New York Times reporter, assigned to write about the farm just as he and Dr. Brent are on the verge of having to shut it down or sell it altogether. The two rehearse "the approved biography answer" to her questions, but fear the worst. "She only needs one truth for the article. So we pick the one that sparkles most. We bought the Beekman to return to a simpler life. Truth isn't beauty. It isn't even always true. Truth is nothing more than consistency of message. I learned that from advertising." Of course everything goes wrong during the reporter's visit. Life on a farm is far from simple, and the reasons people fall in love with a patch of earth, as the reader now knows in wonderful, gossipy detail, are complicated and can lead to nerve-racking, if not heartbreaking, messes. Luckily for the Fabulous Beekman Boys, as they are soon to be known on their own Planet Green reality show, the Times reporter is enchanted by the consistency of the sparkle. After her article runs, their computers light up with soap orders. Kilmer-Purcell's book is manically funny, sweetly open and trusting, and slick and snarky. Must be something in the soil. For a more serious yet equally engaging look at the farmer's life, pick up THE SEASONS ON HENRY'S FARM: A Year of Food and Life on a Sustainable Farm (Surrey/Agate, $25), by Terra Brockman. This is by far the most informative and earnest of the back-to-the-land memoirs; anyone thinking about farming as a way of life should read it. "The Seasons on Henry's Farm" isn't full of peril. It doesn't warn away or beckon hither. It's a sober, clear-eyed assessment of what needs to get done, when, how and why. By describing a year's worth of chores on her brother's farm in central Illinois, Brockman give us an excellent idea of how demanding and profoundly rewarding farming can be. She cleverly opens the book in November, with the annual planting of some 40,000 cloves of garlic under the hunter's moon. Her prose is brisk, yet richly detailed. The chapter on the ice storm that felled a beloved oak, which gave Henry a way to propagate mushrooms, is a marvel of concise wisdom, and so is one called "Drakes Mount," for anyone who ever wondered exactly how birds do it. By the time spring arrived, I was eyeing my suitcase and seriously contemplating a stint as an intern. Brockman gives new meaning to the term "earth mother." She brooks no nonsense or misplaced sentimentality about life on a farm. She can be eloquent even on the life of swine, watching piglets suckling while "the mother sow's grunts and moans turned erotic." And then, in the next line, there's a reference to "the hogs we'll butcher" that same day. When Henry decides to charge customers for biodegradable plastic bags (and Brockman adroitly explains why even those aren't good), some of his customers are furious. She's wryly funny about how heresy quickly becomes practicality. Brockman is an avid reader: Shakespeare, William Carlos Williams, Marcel Proust and Gabriel García Márquez stride across Henry's fields. And their eloquence rubs off: her descriptions of winter's quiet make you want to try experiencing those grueling summer days on the farm, simply to deserve that rich relaxation when the crops are all in. Brockman's family is also an important part of the narrative. Her sister Teresa grows fruits and herbs and raises goats, hens and bees on her own farm five miles away. Henry's wife and three children do their part to help; his aging parents pitch in whenever they can. Even the dogs are skillful, dedicated workers. The children are such graceful writers that they, too, contribute to the book. "I remember how once Grandpa told me never to look forward at how much there is left to do," Brockman's niece Zoe writes about a particularly taxing session weeding lettuces, "just look back at how much you've accomplished." A valuable lesson for anyone who finds herself knee-deep in tomatoes - or goat manure - this summer. Many gardeners find it hard to ask for help. The excellent (and sturdy) WHAT'S WRONG WITH MY PLANT? (And How Do I Fix It?) (Timber Press, paper, $24.95), by David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth, will be indispensable to them, and to the rest of us as well. The information is concise: "A borer's hole and frass (poop) are obvious on this asparagus stem." (Thank you very much.) The illustrations are clear, the remedies organic. I promise you, things will go wrong. Be prepared. THE KEW PLANT GLOSSARY: An Illustrated Dictionary of Plant Terms (Kew Publishing/Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, paper, $30; available in July), by Henk Beentje, with drawings by Juliet Williamson, is catnip for the garden geek. But this fascinating, authoritative volume may seduce even the most casual browser into rolling around in Malpighian hairs, mamillated forms, petioloid tendencies and xeric habitats. Scrabble, anyone? Is there a gardener alive who doesn't stop after deadheading the hundredth day lily and wonder: "How long can I keep this up? What will I do when I'm 80?" Sydney Eddison has gardened in the same place for nearly 50 years. When her husband, an engineer who did most of the heavy lifting, died of cancer at the age of 83, she faced the question squarely. Now she shares her hard-won wisdom in GARDENING FOR A LIFETIME: How to Garden Wiser as You Grow Older (Timber Press, $19.95). Once she's on her own, taking care of her house, paying bills and supervising the maintenance of motorized equipment, Eddison finds that she's exhausted, and also worried about how to maintain an equilibrium of energy and savings: "It was a complete surprise to discover that it wasn't the garden that was weighing so heavily in the balance, it was the minutiae of life as an older single woman." On our recently introduced personality scale, Eddison would tip more to the Martha end of the spectrum. She's a perfectionist, and her book is really about learning to let go, to find satisfaction in simplicity. She recommends shrubs in the perennial borders, heartier primroses in the woodlands, and bonsai. I half-dreaded reading this book, expecting it to depress me, but it's full of cheer. From these pages, you can ferret out good sources for plants as well as useful out-of-print books, notably Ruth Stout's smart, influential writing about the organic gardening method she developed in the 1950s. I found it liberating to be given an excuse to ditch some of my backbreaking chores. Who's waiting to grow old? I'm preparing for the future right now. You can tuck this perfect gift into your basket, along with your gloves, trowel, secateurs and raffia, when you visit your mother. You are going over there to help, aren't you? Of course, no one can really give a gardener advice. We don't listen. We're a stubborn lot, out there digging and hauling rocks, eavesdropping on the peepers and listening to the foxes until it's too dark to see much of anything. Never mind the Good Things, the Best Life or the Sparkly Truths. The plain old simple fact is that great garden books will only get us started. It's the gardens that keep us going. Dominique Browning, the author of "Slow Love," writes a column for the Environmental Defense Fund Web site and blogs at slowlovelife.com.