The author of Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live Off the Land and Growing a Feast: The Chronicle of a Farm-to-Table Meal (both W.W. Norton), Kurt Timmermeister is a former Seattle restaurateur turned farmer. He still holds weekly dinners at his farm on Vashon Island, where he produces farmstead cheeses and puts a focus on sustainable farming.
“Timmermeister begins his enterprise with little farming know-how. As he cultivates his agrarian education (often through trial and error), he reflects on self-sufficiency, sustainability, and the industrialization of food production. While narrating over two decades of the farm's history, he describes such tasks as installing bees in a new hive, making apple cider, buying livestock, and slaughtering a pig ... Part memoir, part manual, this refreshingly candid account doesn't oversell its author or a political message.”
—Lisa Campbell, Library Journal