GROWING A FARMER

Personal yet practical, Growing a Farmer includes the specifics of making cheese, raising cows, and slaughtering pigs, and it will recast entirely the way we think about our relationship to the food we consume.

A bona-fide city dweller, Kurt Timmermeister never intended to run his own dairy farm. When he purchased four acres of land on Vashon Island, he was looking for an affordable home a ferry ride away from the restaurants he ran in Seattle. But as he continued to serve his customers frozen chicken breasts and packaged pork, he became aware of the connection between what he ate and where it came from: a hive of bees provided honey; a young cow could give fresh milk; an apple orchard allowed him to make vinegar. Told in Timmermeister's plainspoken voice, Growing a Farmer details with honesty the initial stumbles and subsequent realities he had to face in his quest to establish a profitable farm for himself. Kurt Timmermeister ran his own Seattle-based cafés before moving to Vashon Island twenty years ago. Kurtwood Farms, a former Grade A Raw Milk Dairy, now specializes in cheese-producing and hosts weekly local dinners of farm-raised products.