The New Farm

Our Ten Years on the Front Lines of the Good Food Revolution

Hardcover, 336 pages

Published May 2, 2017 by Random House Canada.

ISBN:
978-0-345-81185-1
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You know those books where the city folks move to the country and have all kinds of crazy misadventures? Where the barnyard is a place of bucolic harmony and each passing season brings the author closer to understanding his proper place in the natural order? You know those books where the primary objective is not so much farming, but writing about farming?

This isn’t that kind of book.

It’s true that Brent Preston and Gillian Flies did leave the city and move to the country, and they did make a lot of stupid mistakes, some of which are pretty funny in hindsight. But their goal from the beginning was to build a real farm, one that would sustain their family, heal their environment, and nourish their community. It was a goal that was achieved not through bucolic self-reflection, but through a decade of grinding toil and perseverance.

Told with humour …

3 editions

Review of 'The New Farm' on 'Goodreads'

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A lot of the time when you read memoirs about people moving away from the city and starting a farm they stop the story after a few years.  This book chronicles ten years of the ups and downs of a small organic farm.  What I found most interesting was the multiple times that they found that they needed to stray from small organic farm "orthodoxy" in order to have a viable and profitable business. 







  • They tried growing a large number of crops but realized that most people don't want the exotic stuff so now they grow mostly greens and cucumbers.

  • They abandoned farmers' markets and CSAs to sell directly to restaurants

  • They tried using wannabe farmers as interns for farm labor but they were such bad workers that they ended up hiring Mexican workers instead.  

I was interested in the difference between the experience of Mexican migrant farm workers on …