For more than four decades, the self-described “contrary farmer” and writer Gene Logsdon has commented on the state of American agriculture. In Letter to a Young Farmer, his final book of essays, Logsdon addresses the next generation—young people who are moving back to the land to enjoy a better way of life as small-scale “garden farmers.” It’s a lifestyle that isn’t defined by accumulating wealth or by the “get big or get out” agribusiness mindset. Instead, it’s one that recognizes the beauty of nature, cherishes the land, respects our fellow creatures, and values rural traditions. It’s one that also looks forward and embraces “right technologies, ” including new and innovative ways of working smarter, not harder, and avoiding premature burnout.
Completed only a few weeks before the author’s death, Letter to a Young Farmer is a remarkable testament to the life and wisdom of one of the greatest rural philosophers and writers of our time. Gene’s earthy wit and sometimes irreverent humor combines with his valuable perspectives on many wide-ranging subjects—everything from how to show a ram who’s boss to enjoying the almost churchlike calmness of a well-built livestock barn.
Reading this book is like sitting down on the porch with a neighbor who has learned the ways of farming through years of long observation and practice. Someone, in short, who has “seen it all” and has much to say, and much to teach us, if we only take the time to listen and learn. And Gene Logsdon was the best kind of teacher: equal parts storyteller, idealist, and rabble-rouser. His vision of a nation filled with garden farmers, based in cities, towns, and countrysides, will resonate with many people, both young and old, who long to create a more sustainable, meaningful life for themselves and a better world for all of us.
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Foreword
Preface
1. No Such Thing as ‘The’ American Farmer
2. It’s All About Money, Even When It Isn’t
3. The Decentralization of Nearly Everything
4. The Ripening of Our ‘Rurban’ Culture
5. The Barns at the Center of the Garden Farm Universe
6. Backyard Sheep
7. Hauling Livestock: The Test of Your Will to Farm
8. The Cow Stable: Health Spa of the Future
9. The Rise of the Modern Plowgirl
10. Finding and Keeping a Garden Farm Partner
11. Big Data and Robot Farming
12. The Invasion of the Paranoids
13. One Cow’s Forage Is Another Cow’s Poison
14. Pasture Farming as Part of Garden Farming
15. The Wild Plant Explorers
16. The Most Stubborn Farmer
17. Have We Deflowered Our Virgin Soils?
18. The Resurrection of a Really Free Market
19. Artisanal Food in the New Age of Garden Farming
20. Why Fake Steak Won’t Rule the Meat Market
21. The Homebodies
22. If Michelangelo Had to Drive to Work
23. A Fable About the End of ‘Get Big or Get Out’
24. The Real Background Behind the Death of Industrial Agriculture
25. In Praise of Rural Simplicity, Whatever That Is
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Over the course of his long life and career as a writer, farmer, and journalist, Gene Logsdon published more than two dozen books, both practical and philosophical, on all aspects of rural life and affairs. His nonfiction works include Gene Everlasting, A Sanctuary of Trees, and Living at Nature’s Pace. He wrote a popular blog, The Contrary Farmer, as well as an award-winning column for the Carey, Ohio, Progressor Times. Gene was also a contributor to Farming Magazine and The Draft Horse Journal. He lived and farmed in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, where he died in 2016, a few weeks after finishing his final book, Letter to a Young Farmer.
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