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Land Rich, Cash Poor: My Family’s Hope and the Untold History of the Disappearing American Farmer by Brian Reisinger

September 25th, 2024/0 Comments

Land Rich, Cash Poor: My Family’s Hope and the Untold History of the Disappearing American Farmer by Brian Reisinger

As a new farmer in southwest Wisconsin, I read this book as a cautionary tale as well as motivation to keep doing what we are doing – trying to create a model for a mid-sized farm based on a regenerative, diversified operating plan. This story is told well. It is both personal and family memoir as well as a history of the ups and downs of the societal and geopolitical issues that have greatly impacted the American farmer over the past hundred years. Required reading for the frustrated citizen wondering how we got to this point!!

About Land Rich Cash Poor:

The hidden history of an economic and cultural catastrophe that is threatening our very food supply—the disappearance of the American farmer.

Taking on this story of heart and hardship, award-winning journalist Brian Reisinger weaves forgotten eras of American history with his own family’s four-generation fight for survival in Midwestern farm country. Readers learn the truth about America’s most detrimental and unexplained socioeconomic How the family farms that feed us went from cutting a middle-class path through the Great Depression to barely making ends meet in modern America. Along the way, they’ll see what it truly takes to feed our accidents that can kill or maim; weather that blesses or threatens; resilience in the face of crushing economic crises, from inflation to COVID-19; and the tradition that presses down on each generation when you’re not just fighting for your job, you’re fighting for your heritage.

With newly analyzed data, sharp historical analysis, honest debate, and personal storytelling, Reisinger reveals the roots of a problem with stakes as high as they come. A vulnerable food supply, soaring prices for American families, environmental and ecological decay, farmer suicides, addictions, a deepening urban-rural divide, and more worries than ever about what’s for dinner. These are all becoming the hallmarks of a food system that has long stood as a modern miracle. Land Rich, Cash Poor offers the honest truth about these issues, and a candid look at what we can do about them—before it’s too late.

If you enjoyed Jeannie’s review of Colored Television, read more of her book reviews on her blog, on Goodreads or StoryGraph, or on the New York Journal of Books. For more TBR inspiration, check out Jeannie’s curated book lists at Bookshop.org and Shepherd.com.

The Processing

September 25th, 2024/0 Comments

The essay “The Processing” originally appeared on Jeannie’s Substack, Constantly Curating. Subscribe here for monthly updates!

Happy Autumnal Equinox to those who celebrate 🙂 It’s book festival season. I’ve recently returned from Chicago’s Printers Row Lit Fest and looking forward to the Brooklyn and Boston Book Festivals in the coming weeks. Please come see me!! Spending time with other authors, meeting readers and signing copies of my novels is always a great time. I rushed back to the farm from Chicago, however, because I’d left John processing hundreds of pounds of tomatoes. You see, in addition to book festival season, it’s tomato season with our harvest outpacing what Forage Kitchens can take at one time… and that means preserving them in forms that extend the bounty into the winter.

Chicago, Printers Row Lit Fest So fun to hang with fellow authors, added another half dozen books to my reading pile!

Processing… aren’t we always? Whether it’s information, experiences, or vegetables we are faced with infinite raw data – and the decision whether to synthesize into something usable, or hit the proverbial “delete” button. I am afraid when it comes to my email inbox I am guilty of the latter these days, but in real life I generally process, or should I say, attempt to make meaning. Finding the space to make someting, to create, well that is the magic.

Although an abundance of anything is a blessing, with these tomatoes (and now peppers and squash) I am infused with an urgent sense of panic to process, hoping to strike the right balance between what we should preserve and what goes onto the compost pile. This is hard for me because I was raised on the notion waste is evil.

As I write, I’m going into my third consecutive weekend of freezing. and dehydrating, the slicer tomatoes, making sauces and savory jams with the Romas, and blistering the skin off Italian fryer peppers over a flame. I’m channeling a little Barbara Kingsolver – not at the writing desk, but because she is also a role model for us September tomato mavens!! I have to take deep breaths and remind myself that what can’t be preserved will be donated (already sent 40 pounds to the local fire house) and the rest will contribute to our beautiful, rich compost used to promote next year’s growth….the beauty of a regenerative system.

Processing and making meaning is also what I attempt do as a writer… These days I am having an internal debate over what is more satisfying… canning 32 oz jars of tomato sauce to be enjoyed in the mountains on snowy winter evenings or writing the next chapter of my work-in-progress…. hmmmm

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The drive to and from Chicago provided an opportunity to think about some challenges we are facing on the farm. As usual, I was kept company by an audiobook. This time it was LAND RICH CASH POOR by Paul Reisinger. Narrated by the author, this memoir describes the perils faced not only by his family farm, but by our nation’s food system in part because of the gradual disappearance of mid-sized family farms.

It concludes with observations I could relate to even at our early stage of the game. Many mid to small sized farms have problems finding markets for their products. Organic vegetable farmers routinely set up CSA’s or sell food at a farmer’s markets but those are not the most reliable and consistent source of revenue. How many times have you gone to a farmers’ market to really stock up on what your family needs for the week? If you do congratulations you’re in the minority. For so many it’s a weekend stroll or curiosity where one might find something unusual for a special meal. It’s not a dependable way for small organic farmers to count on revenue. The CSA model in which consumers buy shares in a farmer’s crops at the beginning of the season has many shortcomings as well. So, what excited John and I so much about the opportunity with Flynn Creek Farm was that being vertically integrated with a fast-casual chain of restaurants in Forage Kitchens meant a steady and stable customer and thus revenue stream. It was also a distribution model that would get our nutrient dense food into the mouths of average people.

Tomatoes dried as sauces and jams, a variety of Romas on the vine, and our beautiful Midnight variety which is turning into a rich delicious sauce.

Unfortunately, we are learning how difficult this is. Number one is price. Farmers have historically been price takers instead of price makers and the true cost of local organic vegetables is proving hard to pass on. That’s even before getting skittish about passing on the true price of food in an economy where so many are grumbling about exploding food prices. Consumers in the United States have been trained to expect cheap food as is demonstrated by campaign promises to lower food costs by both Presidential candidates.

The second obstacle is logistics. We are realizing that grocery stores and restaurants are set up to order conventional produce from the likes of the Sysco truck with Amazon-like ordering the night before. Anything taking more thought is a hoop most restaurant managers don’t want to jump through. Especially managers of fast-casual. In addition, their kitchens are small with limited cooler space, their inability to store food for more than two days becoming another reason they order “off the truck.” John and I have learned so much about the planning and timeline that goes into growing our crops, it’s no wonder that the management of a fast-casual restaurant chain isn’t up to speed yet, even a restaurant chain based on the values of fresh, healthy food.

Drying shishito peppers, planting lettuce at the end of September, our bumper crop of squash

We are making progress, but it certainly feels like we spend as much effort educating our partners and customers as we do growing outstanding product. My prior two newsletters have centered on my personal growth on the farm, but I want you to hear about all the challenges too! Don’t worry, we are pressing on with this important work. And I will continue to PROCESS what comes my way as if it is my prayer, my primary expression of faith in a crazy world, my belief in the promise of tomorrow.

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Why Farming? Looking Back to Move Forward

August 27th, 2024/0 Comments

The essay “Why Farming? Looking Back to Move Forward” originally appeared on Jeannie’s Substack. Subscribe here for monthly updates!

Last month’s newsletter addressed “Why Wisconsin?” but I probably should have answered this one first, “Why Farming?”

There are many possible answers …. some I use to satisfy people who need a logical explanation because the truth to “why farming?” is still slowly revealing itself. Would it make sense if I told you John and I had an idea, and given our health, energy and resources felt prepared for an ambitious next act, so we took the leap into something we knew embarrassingly little about, only to later understand why it was meant to be?

Writing and publishing has inured me to fear and helped me develop very personal definitions around what is success and what is failure. Writing and farming both require listening and openness, both require approaching the world with a creative mindset.

THE ILLUMINATION CODE by Kim Chestney encourages finding spaciousness and stillness in order to connect with your innate wisdom and intuition. During COVID, we achieved something akin to that right brain focus while driving thousands of miles around the country, imagining our future. In her book, Chestney makes the point we are all connected by universal energy and a piece of each of us simply knows… everything. She explains “When you activate your connection to the nonlocal dimension, you open up your faculties of sensing, thinking and feeling as channels for expansive information sharing. In this way, the universe becomes a kind of guide, constantly course correcting toward its implicit truth.” I don’t mean to claim farming is our truth, but we are becoming more and more certain it is a critical next step on our path.

Listen:

Many have stopped reading by now or are shaking their heads, but I believe it requires a rearview mirror perspective to comprehend the plan. Also, it requires an understanding that our journeys are not linear. So, while it is extremely validating to feel healing and peace on the farm at present, there were also clues in my past that I can now point to:

An obsession with my vegetable garden and growing food for my family
the way references to Madison, WI inexplicably made my ears perk up as, it was more than a curious sensation, but something inside that said “take note.” It was the same when my husband told me we had the opportunity to move to Switzerland. In my mind’s eye I already knew it was going to happen.
John and I talking for decades about starting a business in the health and wellness space, or the food space, or creating healthy consumer products, maybe something plant based….
A lack of trust in the food system, lending to a dysfunctional relationship with food.
A deep concern for the environment,
As a little girl, dreaming of being a scientist, of inventing something and conducting experiments.
Vegetarianism becoming more than a dietary choice for me. It now feels political as well as spiritual.
And then there’s the fact that I am most happy problem solving as part of a team… This solitary writing life comes with a price 🙂

Listen:

In another recent read, Alicia Kennedy’s NO MEAT REQUIRED: THE CULTURAL HISTORY & CULINARY FUTURE of PLANT-BASED EATING, I learned the term “Ecofeminism.” It gels with my sense that women will be the ones to lead the way out of this broken food system and environmental crisis. Making another point, Kennedy asserts, “The food that is broadly consumed in our country is created to fulfill the desires of capitalism not our bodies, with no regard for the long term health consequences.” Becoming a farmer is a productive and positive way to take a stand against industrial, corporate farming in favor of regional, seasonal food systems that emphasizes biodiversity and dignified lives for farmers.

Listen:

Interestingly, I’ve come to think of my writing career as the necessary gateway into farming. Writing and publishing has inured me to fear and helped me develop very personal definitions around what is success and what is failure. Writing and farming both require listening and openness, both require approaching the world with a creative mindset. Being close to the land offers daily ways to be creative, take our diet for example—it is incredible how much on our farm can be foraged for meals, not to mention how a bumper crop of zucchini or tomato has us brainstorming ways to preserve and prepare. We are constantly addressing challenges – a day something doesn’t break on a farm is an unusually great day! The generosity in a rural setting is heart-warming. I am in awe of the people I have met in my new community: independent, self-reliant geniuses who look out for one another. In this setting, I am a complete beginner which is very rejuvenating.

I conclude with a plug for a new writing project (it’s relevant!!) :

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Honored to have an essay included in this powerful anthology

To preorder or learn more about ON BEING JEWISH NOW

It’s relevant because the passage below, although meant to be taken metaphorically, is one I have always been drawn to in our liturgy. It recalls our ancestors’ agrarian mindset and expresses a Jewish value I aim to live by:

And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field, neither shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger.

Listen:

COME SEE ME:

On Tour with DAUGHTER OF A PROMISE:

Sept 7/8 Printer’s Row Literary Festival, Chicago, IL

September 29, The Brooklyn Book Festival Brooklyn, NY

October 26, The Boston Book Festival. Boston, MA

and TALKING FARMING:

October 12, National Farmer’s Day, Flynn Creek Farm is one of the sponsors of the COMMON GROUND screening and will have a table at Monona Terrace in Madison, WI

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Great companions on our recent boat trip

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Colored Television by Danzy Senna

July 30th, 2024/0 Comments

This review of Colored Television by Danzy Senna was originally published in the New York Journal of Books.

Colored Television by Danzy Senna

Colored Television is a sharp, comedic novel about the competing drives to make money and make art in one woman’s pursuit of her “American Dream.” Most of all, it is a novel that explores race and racial identities, portraying protagonist Jane, a mixed-race middle-aged mother, as she struggles for belonging in a society that seems either black or white. The mixed-race (white and Black) experience defines her life’s work, writing for the prior decade what her husband, Lenny, terms her “Mulatto War and Peace,” as well as how she thinks of her life, being born into an in-between place, perennially straddling a gap. Her actions in the novel are motivated by a desire for rootedness, epitomized by her young eyes in the perfect pages of home décor catalogs, and later manifested as a craftsman-style home surrounded by a picket fence, owning a labradoodle, in “Multiracial Mulberry,” where she’d be able to send her two children, Ruby and Finn, to a “blue-ribbon” public school.

Her character waffles between grit and confidence and an underlying insecurity that stems from her parents “[raising] her and her sister in a ghetto of artists and poets, guaranteeing that they would be alienated from rich children and poor children alike, thanks to a cultural and political vocabulary that suggested class and privilege without actual class and privilege – gauche caviar without the actual caviar. Jane remembered wishing at a certain point, Ruby’s age maybe, that she came from a dignified working-class immigrant family. Her kind of poverty was the loneliest kind, the least dignified kind, because her parents had chosen it. They had picked poetry over profit.”

In addition, she reflects on her own grade school experience as her daughter is the same age as when “Jane and her sister had been part of a program called METCO that bused a select group of Black children—a talented two percent as it were—from the inner city of Boston to the suburbs. Not too many, just enough to sprinkle those suburban white schools with seasoning. Jane had been sent to a school in Brookline, where she made a friend, a wan white girl with a funny laugh named Emma.”

A particularly poignant scene drives home Jane’s yearning on behalf of her children. She hosts Ruby’s birthday party in the glitzy home in which they are house-sitters, joined by guests they have met only recently, and presents her daughter with an expensive American Girl doll the family can’t afford, sending Ruby up to her bedroom in tears because if it was going to be her only American Doll she didn’t want the dark-skinned one.

It is Jane’s desire to provide stability for her children that makes her often cringe-worthy tactics redeemable. She is an academic on sabbatical aiming to finish her long-awaited second novel, the publication of which will help her rise in status at the college where she teaches, allowing her family to stop bouncing around Los Angeles in sublets and borrowed spaces.

“an important book by an important author who understands only too well that heavy topics are most accessible when delivered with a spoonful of sugar.”

As Danzy Senna’s novel opens, Jane sits in her friend’s borrowed home, in his borrowed office and borrowed desk, drinking up his wine and wearing his wife’s clothing. She finally feels motivated, gaining steam and ambition with the completion of her novel in sight, adding complexity to this multilayered opus that weaves together past and present voices of the mixed-race experience.

In the weeks between the submitted manuscript first impressing her agent (who obviously had yet to read it) and being brutally rejected by her editor, she indulges in optimistic house-hunting and spending. After accepting the rejection, although hiding it from her husband, she musters an earnest instinct to hustle, albeit dishonestly, justifying her actions as necessary to salvage her dreams for her family.

Jane is a complex yet sympathetic protagonist for whom the reader roots while also feeling dread as she lies to Lenny, pitches her friend’s TV agent, avoids his texts and calls, then takes meetings with players in the industry under false pretenses. Her idea is to turn the underlying themes of her novel into a comedic series, and she wins the opportunity to work with the up and coming showrunner, Hampton Ford. He is a Black man who senses he is benefitting from “a moment” and operates with the urgency to not squander the opportunity.

Together, they have high hopes of delivering something meaningful and profound that will push the TV watching public to be entertained by racial truths. When Jane feels guilt over her tenuous path, she justifies her actions by fixating on Lenny’s inability to make money from his art and the ticking clock of needing to find a home for her family. Jane’s father had instilled in her “Race is about money and money is about race. Black people don’t want to be white, they just want what white people have.”

Danzy Senna’s observant eye and humor result in many brilliant, laugh-out-loud moments. Whether it be with regard to the arduous journey of the novelist as compared to the faster roll-out of TV shows, Jane’s insecurity in the face of her son’s special needs diagnosis, the absurdity of Los Angeles’s special brand of superficiality, or the way she used a psychic to help snare Lenny as her husband, this novel uses comedy to deliver the racial truths Jane had hoped a future TV series might.

Don’t let the comedic epitaph fool you. This is an important book by an important author who understands only too well that heavy topics are most accessible when delivered with a spoonful of sugar.

About Colored Television:

A brilliant dark comedy about second acts, creative appropriation, and the racial identity–industrial complex.

Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she, her painter husband, Lenny, and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home high in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,” she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp. But things don’t work out quite as hoped. In search of a plan B, like countless writers before her Jane turns her desperate gaze to Hollywood. When she finagles a meeting with a hot young producer with a seven-figure deal to create “diverse content” for a streaming network, he seems excited to work with a “real writer” to create what he envisions as the greatest biracial comedy ever to hit the small screen. Things finally seem to be going right for Jane—until they go terribly wrong. Funny, piercing, and page-turning, this is Senna’s most on-the-money novel yet.

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Why Wisconsin? Inheritance, Migration, and Finding Home

July 24th, 2024/0 Comments

The essay “Why Wisconsin? Inheritance, Migration, and Finding Home” originally appeared on Jeannie’s Substack. Subscribe here for monthly updates!

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UW vs Minnesota Men’s Ice Hockey, January 2024

It’s a question I get a lot these days. “Do you or John have family in Wisconsin?”

People seem truly puzzled about our migration when I explain never having set foot into the state until three years ago… that we had been searching for a way to get into farming when we reconnected with an old family friend who encouraged us to visit Madison. One thing led to another, and we trusted the opportunities that kept showing up on our path. We love where we’ve landed, the rolling hills and water, the food culture, and the civic pride.

I’m one of those people who can’t easily answer the question, “Where are you from?” And, “Why Wisconsin?” follows suit, but the question has had me reflecting on my weird relationships with place…

My first novel, EDEN, is about a family’s devotion to their summer tradition, specifically a matriarch’s dedication to a home and the small seaside town where her family goes back for generations. I wrote it from a desk in such a community, feeling the outsider, while observing and envying the generational ties I witnessed all around.

A recent visit to the Ocean House in Watch Hill, RI to discuss DAUGHTER OF A PROMISE. This place was the inspiration for Long Harbor, a setting featured in all three of my novels.

A few months before EDEN’s publication, John and I traveled to Iceland where we spent a day with a guide named Thor. At the end of an adventurous afternoon, he showed us a plaque with a picture of farmers. “These are my ancestors, and this was their farm,” he said.

“How long has your family been in Iceland?” I asked. It’s the type of question that rolls off my tongue naturally, or maybe any American’s tongue, but he looked at me confused. I realized my foolishness when he answered, “My family has always been in Iceland, since the beginning.”

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Exploring Iceland in 2017

Much as DAUGHTER OF A PROMISE’s protagonist, Betsabé, wonders what her outlook would have been if she’d been raised differently, I never got over Thor’s reply. How might my human experience have been shaped if I’d felt such a connection to one specific place? If I walked the same land as my ancestors since the beginning of time! Before my grandparents, I don’t have much knowledge of the places my ancestors lived.

The closest thing for me was when John and I moved to Boston in 1994. I looked forward to living in a city where his family was established, where our last name meant something. Upon meeting me, people would ask, “Oh, are you related to Arthur? Are you married to his son?”

And I would answer “Yes,” and when they asked which son I was married to, the simplest reply was “Not the doctor.”

At that time in my life, stability was medicine. It was healing to raise our children with a sense of tradition which included schools, a congregation, and “our” beloved Chinese restaurant, three generations gathered around a large round table in the corner, spinning a Lazy Susan’s bounty, sharing a weekly feast. I made the city home for twenty-five years, interrupted only by a three-year stint in Switzerland.

I once considered my parents’ moving around as unfortunate, New York, Newport Beach, Dallas, Naples, as preventing my feeling connected to any one place. I’m sure others can resonate. Our country is one of immigrants or descendants of immigrants, with brave stories that make mine sound frivolous. There is something distinctly American about moving. (According to the US Census Bureau, about 1 in 10 people move every year. In 2022, about 8.2 million people moved between states.)

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The beauty of tomatoes ready to burst at Flynn Creek Farm, July 2024

At the age of 58, I consider my willingness and ability to move a blessing. I think of the perspective that comes with being a stranger in a new land as character building. I know COVID inspired many people to move and also made moving possible. For example, we landed in Utah in the winter of 2021 although to a mixed reception. Salt Lake City and Park City represent a region with limited natural resources and a massive influx of people. Montrose Township, Wisconsin with its population of 1,100, however, was a different story. Although many in our new community can’t quite figure out why we’re here, most are pleased we are preserving 420 acres as agricultural, even if our regenerative, organic veggie farming might have them scratching their heads.

Why Wisconsin? I don’t have a logical answer, but as crazy as it seems, in all of my uprootedness, this place feels like a place to blossom. If you’ve made a move or have a point of view on moving, I’d love to hear from you in the comments!!

If you enjoyed Jeannie’s recommendations of COVID novels, read more of her book reviews on her blog, on Goodreads or StoryGraph, or on the New York Journal of Books. For more TBR inspiration, check out Jeannie’s curated book lists at Bookshop.org and Shepherd.com.

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Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg’s 3 favorite reads in 2023

July 3rd, 2024/0 Comments

This article on Jeannie’s Best Books of 2023 was originally published on Shepherd.com.

My favorite read in 2023…

Wellness

By Nathan Hill

Why did I love this book?

Wellness is the first of my best books for 2023. Nathan Hill writes with the wisdom and life knowledge of a person much older but with his generation’s funny, dry, cutting language. His observations about diets and tech, to name just two societal staples, are hysterical. And yet, while being funny and amusing, the book is heartbreakingly poignant on themes of loss and disappointment.

I toggled between reading and listening to the audiobook because Ari Fliakos is my all-time favorite narrator. His tone captures the wry wit of Hill’s characters and commentary. The best kind of book is one you can’t wait to share, and as my husband read before bed at night, I would ask him to read it aloud so we could share a good laugh.

My 2nd favorite read in 2023…

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

By Gabrielle Zevin

Why did I love this book?

So much more than a coming-of-age journey, next up in my list of best books is Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. This novel’s two main characters, Sadie and Sam, develop from a childhood friendship centered on early-generation video games like Mario Bros and Donkey Kong to designing their own and starting a company together. Combining a history of gaming with themes of unrequited love, class, and parents’ expectations, this novel delivers on multiple dimensions.

The various settings were highly provocative, from Harvard and MIT in Cambridge to Los Angeles and the virtual world of gaming narratives. My favorite line was when Sam asks Sadie at the novel’s end while she thought they never became romantically involved (he had assumed it was because he was poor, Korean, or disabled). Sadie replies, “Romantic love is so common.” Indeed, the collaborative connection between artists this book so deftly portrays is one on a higher plane.

My 3rd favorite read in 2023…

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

By Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver

Why did I love this book?

I was inspired and shocked that it took me this long to find this book. Both because I am beginning my own agricultural journey and because Barbara Kingsolver is an all-time favorite, I loved this book’s calendar-following content and the voice it employs. The family’s pact to eat local and seasonal food for a year is portrayed honestly with humor and joy instead of preachiness.

It speaks to the things we dive into full-bore without completely appreciating how much work it entails. With determination and intentionality, they commune with the land and find a community- truly aspirational.

Plus, check out my book…

If you enjoyed Jeannie’s recommendations of COVID novels, jead more of her book reviews on her blog, on Goodreads or StoryGraph, or on the New York Journal of Books. For more TBR inspiration, check out Jeannie’s curated book lists at Bookshop.org and Shepherd.com.

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I’m okay with not knowing… or at least that’s what I tell myself.

June 24th, 2024/0 Comments

This essay originally appeared on Jeannie’s Substack. Subscribe here for monthly updates!

A beautiful view of one of Flynn Creek Farm’s produce fields

I need to revise last month’s newsletter in which I kvetched about my struggles with agricultural vocabulary…. because you were probably smart enough to discern the subtext – that I’ve been striving to absorb, whether it be through classes, video, apps or books, what I lack in experience. Afraid of being an imposter…. of not being taken seriously… at the root of it… fear.

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This Buddha on my dresser is a reminder that worrying and planning are futile… do I pay attention? No.

Thank you to friends who have reminded me of the grace in being WILLING NOT TO KNOW, to rely on and trust my colleagues to guide the process as experts in their fields, confident I am bringing my own unique skills to the party. Thank you to the farmer who assured me at dinner last night that it’s okay to not understand why the fireflies do what they do, just enjoy the mystery.

The NOT KNOWING also pertains to where I am going to be. Friends ask, “How much time will you be spending ______” (insert on the farm, in Rhode Island, or in Park City) And despite the fact I was once like Becca Meister in EDEN, a devotee to sacred summer traditions, I have to respond that I will be wherever I need to be. So if you see me IRL, let’s not put off that cup of coffee.

I feel remiss in not having cited this work earlier as I devoured it while camping with my daughter during her final weeks of #vanlife. It went right to my bloodstream and I took its wisdom for granted, but this is a paradigm shifting piece of writing if there ever was one….

All kidding aside, THIS IS NOT EASY FOR ME!! Acknowledging and working through my planning and controlling issues has been a lifelong challenge. Any child of an addict knows what I am talking about. I grew up without being able to trust a situation and invested myself in the art of worrying like I could sway an outcome. I have a deep seated (or shouldn’t it be deep-seeded??) yearning for certainty in a world that continues to laugh in my face. (Even so, as I write about the need to NOT KNOW everything, I am about to binge watch Season 3 of Clarkson’s Farm – yes I’ve read tons of books, but in all honesty I’ve learned a ton watching this show!!)

What better way to practice surrender than to immerse myself in an endeavor reliant on the weather? What a better place for me to recover from past trauma than on a farm? As Robin Kimmerer wrote in BRAIDING SWEETGRASS, “As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.” No truer words.

My own writing reiterates the qualities I want to embody. The protagonist of DAUGHTER OF A PROMISE, Betsabé Ruiz, is broken open to her innate wisdom in the novel’s final chapters. She quotes Gabriel Garcia Márquez saying, “Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, ….life obliges them over and over to give birth to themselves.” And so with each self-induced rebirth, I am hopefully hatching a more enlightened, worry-free version of Jeannie.

“Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, ….life obliges them over and over to give birth to themselves.” —Gabriel Garcia Márquez

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Foraged mulberries mixed in with raspberries from bushes planted last summer.

I’m on the farm after a week of book events and family celebrations. I will kayak Madison’s beautiful waterways, celebrating the Strawberry Full Moon and the summer solstice. I will pick many pounds of mulberries, making syrups and pesto from the basil and garlic in the field. I will spend more nights in the yurt, listening to the coyotes while possibly worrying a little bit for the goats. We are blessed.

And you are too…. My latest novel might be a 23-year-old’s coming-of-age-story, but aren’t we all always coming of age? And even better when we we are re-birthing ourselves by leaps and bounds.

As always, I am appreciative of your kind replies and if you are so inclined, spreading the news of my novel and posting an online review!! If you are anywhere near Watch Hill on July 1, please come to the Ocean House! I will be there in the flesh!!

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The Best Books that Utilize COVID in the Plot

June 5th, 2024/0 Comments

This article about five of Jeannie’s favorite COVID novels was originally published on Shepherd.com.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an author who also penned a novel during the pandemic, with a timeline that stretched into the first six months of the pandemic–against the advice of my agent and the publishing industry at large. I know many authors choose not to write about intense political and social happenings, but that “life will never be the same again” feeling was something I couldn’t avoid. The pandemic threw people together and kept us apart at the same time. I was intensely interested in its incubator effect as well as the silo aspect quarantining had on all of our lives. COVID novels reflect that and allow us to reflect on those early days and years and their world-shifting changes as we move forward.

What is my book about?

My third novel, Daughter of a Promise, was published in April 2024.

Days after graduating college in the spring of 2019, Betsabé Ruiz’s life is turning out to be nothing less than cinematic. Although her job at a white-shoe Wall Street investment bank is the opportunity of a lifetime, she is not prepared for the magnitude of wealth swirling about her, the long hours and close quarters that infuse her professional relationships with intimacy, nor an unexpected attraction to her boss. And like all great films, Betsabé’s New York dream comes with a twist that challenges her to find a balance between where she came from and where she’s going.

When Bets begins her first post-college job at First Provident in the summer of 2019, she has no idea how drastically the world will change within the year—or where the rollercoaster of life will take her relationships, with friends, family, romances, and most importantly with herself. Daughter of a Promise is a COVID novel, but also a coming of age story, a love story, and a modern retelling of a timeless classic tale.

COVID Novels I Recommend

Tom Lake

By Ann Patchett

Why did I love this book?

As the mother of three grown children who also returned home during the pandemic, I loved Patchett’s usage of an unanticipated reunion to tell her children a long, drawn-out story.

I love novels that explore the theme of inheritance, not of material possessions, but the emotional skills that are handed down between generations. Patchett explores what we share and what we hold back, as well as our children’s seemingly insatiable appetite for stories about our young lives.

This book is also a love story about Northern Michigan and a life dedicated to farming orchards. The protagonist’s point of view may be that of a grown woman in her fifties, but in recounting the love affair of one summer, she reaffirms her own life choices.

For more about my first recommendation for COVID novels, read my initial review.

What is this book about?

In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family’s orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.

Day

By Michael Cunningham

Why did I love this book?

As if relationships between siblings and spouses aren’t already complicated enough, Cunningham throws the isolation and distance of COVID into the mix.

I love this author’s ability to turn extremely authentic and simple domestic dramas occurring on one day into revelatory ideas about child-rearing and the expectations family members have of one another. A generation of young parents, their inquisitive children, the devotion of a brother and sister, and an infatuation between brothers-in-law are the subjects of this well-paced work.

The effect of the pandemic on a marriage, on family members’ psyches, and the aftermath of one of their deaths is written with tenderness and insight. This is a fabulous read depicting the new age in which we live.

Read my initial review here.

What is this book about?

As the world changes around them, a family weathers the storms of growing up, growing older, falling in and out of love, losing the things that are most precious—and learning to go on—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hours

April 5, 2019 : In a cozy brownstone in Brooklyn, the veneer of domestic bliss is beginning to crack. Dan and Isabel, troubled husband and wife, are both a little bit in love with Isabel’s younger brother, Robbie. Robbie, wayward soul of the family, who still lives in the attic loft; Robbie, who, trying to get over his most recent boyfriend, has created a glamorous avatar online; Robbie, who now has to move out of the house—and whose departure threatens to break the family apart. Meanwhile Nathan, age ten, is taking his first uncertain steps toward independence, while Violet, five, does her best not to notice the growing rift between her parents.

April 5, 2020: As the world goes into lockdown, the brownstone is feeling more like a prison. Violet is terrified of leaving the windows open, obsessed with keeping her family safe, while Nathan attempts to skirt her rules. Isabel and Dan communicate mostly in veiled jabs and frustrated sighs. And beloved Robbie is stranded in Iceland, alone in a mountain cabin with nothing but his thoughts—and his secret Instagram life—for company.

April 5, 2021: Emerging from the worst of the crisis, the family reckons with a new, very different reality—with what they’ve learned, what they’ve lost, and how they might go on.

From the brilliant mind of Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham, Day is a searing, exquisitely crafted meditation on love and loss and the struggles and limitations of family life—how to live together and apart.

Lucy by the Sea

By Elizabeth Strout

Why did I love this book?

Elizabeth Strout is perfecting a practice I’m sold on–the literary recasting of characters from one novel to the next.

In the third of my COVID novels recommendations, I got to return to Lucy Barton and her ex-husband, William, who were thrown together in a cabin in Maine due to the pandemic. Writing the novel from the first-person perspective of the protagonist, Strout includes this pragmatic character’s interior musings, specifically the things we increasingly noticed as time slowed down during COVID.

I could so relate to Lucy’s quirky character: give me ornery, critical, and desperate any day! Weren’t we all?

What is this book about?

As a panicked world goes into lockdown, Lucy Barton is uprooted from her life in Manhattan and bundled away to a small town in Maine by her ex-husband and on-again, off-again friend, William. For the next several months, it’s just Lucy, William, and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the moody, swirling sea.

Rich with empathy and emotion, Lucy by the Sea vividly captures the fear and struggles that come with isolation, as well as the hope, peace, and possibilities that those long, quiet days can inspire. At the heart of this story are the deep human connections that unite us even when we’re apart–the pain of a beloved daughter’s suffering, the emptiness that comes from the death of a loved one, the promise of a new friendship, and the comfort of an old, enduring love.

Zero O’clock

By C.J. Farley

Why did I love this book?

This YA novel was the first I read set during COVID times, and it hit me with the urgency of The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas.

I loved the author’s unwavering courage in tackling the racial subject matter head-on. Heartbreaking and whip-smart, it taught me what teens were going through with regard to virtual friendship, classrooms, and pop stardom. Farley’s novel captures a moment in time during the pandemic while others were still processing it.

Like a photo album I wasn’t quite ready to revisit, it portrays the importance of a difficult time in our nation’s history coupled with that uneasy age of adolescence. Entertaining, yes, but like many COVID novels, a historical artifact, definitely.

Read my official blurb for Zero O’Clock.

What is this book about?

Sixteen-year-old Geth Montego must carve a new path for herself in a world turned upside down by the COVID pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests.

Geth Montego only has three friends. There’s her best friend Tovah, who’s been acting weird ever since they started applying to the same colleges. Then there’s Diego, who she wants to ask to prom, but if she does it could ruin everything. And there’s the K-pop band BTS, who she’s never seen up close but she’s certain she’d be BFFs with every member of the group if she ever met them for real.

Then Geth’s small town of New Rochelle, New York, becomes the center of a virus sweeping the world. Schools are closed, jobs are lost, and the only human contact she has is over Zoom. After a confrontation with cops, Geth gets caught up in the Black Lives Matter movement and finds herself having to brave the dangers she’s spent months in quarantine trying to avoid.

Geth’s friends, family, and hometown are upended by the pandemic and the protests. Geth faces a choice: Is she willing to risk everything to fight for her beliefs? And what exactly does she believe in, anyway?

Leave the World Behind

By Rumaan Alam

Why did I love this book?

The opening of this book knocked me out, and I was hooked.

I usually veer toward literary, slower, familial dramas (true of some of the other COVID novels I recommend), but this book combined what I love in literary family dynamics with the frightening premise of an inexplicable disaster occurring in the outside world. The suspicion we were quick to possess about others during the early days of the pandemic is heightened to a new level with two couples pitted against each other, one preoccupied with the welfare and antics of their children.

I loved the construct that had even spouses second-guessing each other. The intensity of the situation brought out the worst and eventually the better sides of all the characters, a phenomenon that resonated as I read this book during the first year of the pandemic, at the same time rioters invaded our nation’s capital.

Read my initial review.

What is this book about?

A magnetic novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong

Amanda and Clay head to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they’ve rented for the week. But with a late-night knock on the door, the spell is broken. Ruth and G. H., an older couple who claim to own the home, have arrived there in a panic. These strangers say that a sudden power outage has swept the city, and – with nowhere else to turn – they have come to the country in search of shelter.

But with the TV and internet down, and no phone service, the facts are unknowable. Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple – and vice versa? What has happened back in New York? Is the holiday home, isolated from civilization, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one another?

Learning a New Language: The Lexicon of the Farm

June 1st, 2024/0 Comments

The essay “Learning a New Language: The Lexicon of the Farm” originally appeared on Jeannie’s Substack. Subscribe here for monthly updates!

It’s no surprise to learn I love language, but what if I told you I’ve been struggling with new vocabulary? … the lexicon of the farm.

I’m back on the farm after an action-packed ten days in Boston! I attended GrubStreet’s Muse & The Marketplace and and taught a craft session on Making Ancient Texts Your Own, in other words, writing retellings. GrubStreet and Porter Square Books hosted a launch party for Daughter of a Promise at the Calderwood Writers’ Stage. (If you missed it, you can watch a replay on my YouTube channel!) I attended book clubs and galas where my book was featured and had the joy of discussing my novel’s themes at Temple Israel, Boston. The best part, as always, was reconnecting with friends: the dinners, walks, and squash games!!

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Party in the Park, Kathy Sherbrooke and me on the Grub Street stage, a favorite bookclub!!

I returned to Wisconsin in time to experience tornado warnings and bunkering in our basement. Phew, our newly arrived sheep are okay, but the storms will be a topic for a future essay, because today I planned to write about language. It’s no surprise to learn I love language, but what if I told you I’ve been struggling with new vocabulary? It’s not during my Spanish lessons, or with the NYT crossword puzzle, but the lexicon of the farm.

I can’t be too hard on myself, as it’s coming with firehose velocity: new names, terms, and expressions. The most sacred, in my opinion, belong to the birds I’ve identified using Cornell’s Merlin app. I record their songs every morning to catalog who’s passing through our prairie. Today I added a Yellow-bellied Flycatcher to the list. (Have a listen.) The idea is that consistent, albeit amateur data collection will show our land management techniques are leading to increased biodiversity, with birds as a bellwether.

Great forage for our new sheep, spring status of veggie beds, our new Dorpers

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You will be blown away by Tan’s illustrations

Literary tangent – I am absolutely adoring Amy Tan’s new release The Backyard Bird Chronicles in which she writes, “…my impulse to observe birds comes from the same one that led me to become a fiction writer. By disposition, I am an observer. I want to know why things happen… I am drawn to see details, patterns, and aberrations that suggest a more interesting truth….”

Tan’s words resonated with me. (I was jumping in my seat, thinking me too! me too!) During the pandemic, many of us reconnected with nature, as a result birding may be at an all-time high. For my list-oriented brain, observing and identifying animals feels like a comfortable portal into a life on the land. Along with birds, I’m identifying plants (and weeds) using the Seek app from iNaturalist. I’ve gotten to the stage where I quiz myself as I walk about. The only problem is that plants look different every couple of days!!

It’s not just fluency I’m after but a need to communicate.

It’s not just fluency I’m after, but a need to communicate. Interacting with our farm managers, our crew, our neighbors, consultants in forestry and landscaping, earth movers and engineers can feel like listening to insiders’ shorthand with me interrupting every few sentences for a translation. These folks are competent regarding not only flora and fauna but with regard to the names of the tools, farming methods, farm vehicles, tractors and all the implements that are attached to them.

My neighbor to the north has owned her farm for decades, home-birthed her five children there, raised animals, drives tractors, and takes midnight joy rides in her gator during the full moon. She rattles off the names of every berry, shrub, and edible mushroom, solutions for weed suppression, when to mow to eradicate them. I’m like the person who was supposed to take six months of intensive Berlitz before heading off on a foreign assignment, yet as in any decent nightmare, I’ve arrived in the strange land where my mouth moves and no sound comes out. My neighbor kindly changes the topic from foraging for morels to her favorite restaurants in town.

Three images: brown oblong morel mushrooms in a bowl, a bright green field and feel red-purple flowers, a dozen eggs in different colors in a cardboard egg carton

Favorite springtime farm features include foraged morels, the color of the prairie, and fresh turkey eggs from our wonderful neighbor (also she found the morels!!)

Let’s face it, knowing the lingo is the first step toward shedding the feeling of imposter, somebody who’s landed on a beautiful piece of Wisconsin farmland without a clue. And just when I think I’m making headway, I’m on a walk with a logger and refer to the cedar grove as the cyprus grove and lose all credibility. I can talk the talk in a domesticated, cultivated garden, but a regenerative farm is all about knowing what is indigenous and what is invasive and culling out the latter.

…learning this language is not purely academic: it goes hand in hand with getting dirty.

Topics I have blundered my way through in the past two years: The engineering of wells and stormwater retention ponds, paths of erosion, grading, and gravel. Solar power and battery storage, compost and chicken manure, fencing, cover crop and crop cover, high tunnels, caterpillar tunnels, transplants, seedlings, cold houses and hot houses, seed variety, skid steers, water wheel transplanters and rinse conveyors. Every construction project in my past involved professionals whose job it was to take care of the pesky details. But a responsible agricultural steward (me) needs to be on top of all the above. I now find myself in a community of extremely self-reliant people where one’s street cred goes way down when the amount of horsepower for each of your tractors isn’t on the tip of your tongue.

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A lyrical classic

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A funny book. You’d be crazy to get into farming after reading it!

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An agitating treatise

While I may have once pictured myself reading Aldo Leopold and Wendell Berry, canning tomatoes, preserving berries, meditating to birdsong, and doing yoga on our screened porch, learning this new language is not purely academic: it goes hand in hand with getting dirty. As I manager the tension between experiencing the bucolic and doing the work… I remember Amy Tan’s mantra to “be the bird.”

Do you operate in a world with a unique language? Make me feel better and tell me your story!!

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Sustainability in Publishing and in Life

April 22nd, 2024/0 Comments

The essay “Sustainability in Publishing and in Life” originally appeared on Jeannie’s Substack. Subscribe here for monthly updates!

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April 17, 2024 at Beacon Hill Bookstore and Cafe

Sustainability was a primary motivation for our getting into farming, however, the principles have seeped into every aspect of my life, including the way I think about book publishing.

Each year about 4 million book titles are released, about half of which are self-published and either e-readers or Print-on-Demand. The remainder generate print runs which are estimated in advance of a book’s release. Often, those estimates are way off. Creating physical books consumes pulp, water, glue, energy, transportation, and physical space for storage. With an average sell-through rate of 50%, that equates to hundreds of thousands of new books being returned to publishers and destroyed each year. This “traditional system” has been publicly scrutinized recently for a wide array of antiquated practices, but maybe not as much as it should be for the tons of waste it is responsible for.

Taking a more sustainable approach, my publisher and I decided to forgo a hard-cover release and were conservative with the initial print run. When stock runs out, we will opt for a print-on-demand model. I strongly encourage my readers to download digital e-reader copies or audiobooks (the narrators are phenomenal by the way!!) and start to transition to a reading life that consumes fewer natural resources.

Check out an excerpt of the audio version here:

Then there’s the human dimension of sustainability. Please don’t interpret the fact that I am not running around the country on a frenzied book tour as me not caring as much. I am committed more than ever to my work: to creation, expression, art, and leaving the earth a better place.

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Flynn Creek Farm in all its earthy glory.

I hope you have a meaningful Earth Day and incorporate one new practice into your life — compost food waste, forego insecticides in your yard, or just buy less stuff.

As always, thanks for reading!

PS – I just finished JAMES by Percival Everett and I’m finishing up SOLITO by Javier Zamora, both of which I highly recommend!!