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Book Review: The Contrary Farmer by Gene Logsdon
I've mentioned before that one of my dreams is to live a closer-to-self-sufficient life, with us raising most of our own food and enough surplus to make a living. In short, I want to be a cottage farmer, and this book is an excellent starting point, offering three things to the would-be cottage farmer: practical advice, a philosophy of farming, and inspiring vignettes of such rural life.
In many ways, Logsdon defies easy categories. He criticizes modern chemical-intensive agriculture repeatedly, but isn't afraid to take ideas from these radically different farmers, if they serve his purpose. Likewise, much of what he does could be categorized as "organic" practices, but he refuses to be tied down to any "party line" there either just to be "certified organic."
In his first chapter, Logsdon not only lays the philosophical groundwork for the book to come, he also gives an overview of the year with what he does each month on the farm, while sprinkling in anecdotes throughout. In short, the first chapter is a microcosm of the book as a whole.
On the practical side, he not only gives recommendations (for instance, regarding which animals to raise and an order of preference--chickens, sheep, a cow or cows, and finally pigs, with other animals from draft animals to rare animals, bee-keeping, and aquaculture) but also discusses in detail the reasons behind those recommendation, working to give the reader the tools to make his or her own decision. That is, after all, in keeping with the spirit of a contrary farmer.
There isn't enough information here to simply head out and start farming just on the basis of this book (at least, not successfully!), but then that isn't really the point. This book is a starting point and a grand overview, and it serves those functions admirably.
The stories he tells are interesting, endearing, sometimes funny, and taken as a whole, quietly inspiring. In this way, too, it is a starting point, serving not only to guide but encourage. I have no doubt that I will read this book again when Lauren and I finally begin such a life, whenever that may be.