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Title: Heirloom: Notes from an Accidental Tomato Farmer
ISBN: 0767927060
Author:
Tim Stark
Publicate Date: 2008-07-15
Publish: 2008-07-15
List Price: $24.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $14.97
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $15.00
Amazon Merchant Price: $16.32
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Exploits of crazy, for gardeners/foodies who need to know
Heirloom is perhaps best served in the hands of obsessed foodies who crave behind-the-scenes tours of small organic farms, beyond what Food & Wine magazine teases. For gardeners, Heirloom is welcome and amusing company of crazy.
Without pretense or rehearsed narrative, Stark recounts his humble initiations into organic farming (and supplying top chefs in NYC), knowing very little about it, other than what his obsessions demand. His misadventures amuse. It's not perfect writing, yet it is exactly those imperfections that endear this find.
Detours from the narrative will surprise and delight. Unexpected passages include how Mennonite neighbors coach Stark in farming, auction etiquette and small engine repair. (The last paragraph in that chapter is especially moving.) And vignettes give depth and color to an unlikely cast of characters who help Stark plant, pick, sell and save his crops. Best of all, Stark unearths a family history that gives context and perhaps motivation to his madness. While it is all true, it reads like fiction, a story that you'll surely recommend and remember.
A fantastic late-summer read and welcome winter remedy for gardening/foody obsessives that crave the first signs of Spring.
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2: A Good Read
I enjoyed this book. It's a quick read, well-written, very personal. If you're interested in knowing more about the reasons a person might become an heirloom tomato farmer when the economic indicators for such a major life change are all negative, read this book. The perils of small-farming are apparent, but somehow, so are the joys. I read the book on a day when I should have been working my own tomatoes, but we've had a rough year and I needed a break. This was it, so I have to say "Thank you Tim!"
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3: Requirement: be a Foodie....
Chances are, you'll find this book a disappointment if you're not a Foodie. I'm borderline, so the book had it's moments for me. It's fairly repetitive, as if the author wrote chapters independent of each other without making any references back to previous writings. If you live in the NY Metro area (which I do), you'll have a deeper appreciation for the locales and events. You can only mention the Newtown Pippin apple so many times.....
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4: Delicious Read
Being interested in one day changing careers from financial industry to the vegetable industry, I could identify with the author. This is really a "How To" book on starting an Heirloom vegetable business, only written in a storytelling fashion. Every chapter exudes the author's passion.
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5: Uneven and monotonous
I had such high hopes for this book, but, I was disappointed about 30 pages into it--I had hoped that Stark would talk about the connection to the land, the familial joys of being an accidental farmer, allow the reader to bask in the beauty of heirloom tomatoes, but he didn't. I started to believe that I had heard the best part of the book in his NPR interview. There are moments of beautiful writing, but, it's not consistent. Page after page about sitting in traffic, pulling weeds and remembering tractors begins to wear on any reader, even an interested one. Unless you've got lots of mental time to kill, I wouldn't recommend it!
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