Growing Tomorrow - Book 1 2017

Growing Tomorrow is not a book that should be read on the Kindle.  It has lots of photos and recipes that just don't work well in the Kindle format.  The book is a great idea.  Farmer Forrest Pritchard decided to travel around the country visiting and interviewing small farms that focus on being organic and sustainable.  They don't do it for the money, but out of dedication to the health of the food they grow and for the benefit of the people they feed.  It takes stubborn perseverance and a devotion to the life of the land to persist in this lifestyle.  Most of the farmers are in their 50s to 70s.  In fact the average age of a farmer is 59 years!!!  We desperately need likeminded younger folks for them to pass the baton to.  Many of the farmers have children or grandchildren who are involved, but it seems we need, as a nation, to expand the numbers of these types of food producers.

The farmers (and one fisherman from New England) do all types of different farming from an inner city program in Detroit, trying to grow fruits and vegetables in the heart of urban blight, or beekeepers with hives on the rooftops of Dallas TX to a mushroom farm in the Ozarks, to citrus groves in Southern CA, the farms represented here span the country and all types of food.  What tickled me was the very first farm represented was my own CSA, Potomac Vegetable Farms.  That was really fun!  Knowing what I know about PVF, the chapter on them doesn't go too deep.  And this was true of all the articles, they felt more like glossy magazine articles on each farm, not necessarily hard-hitting reporting.  But the purpose of the book is a friendly one.  Get to know the farmers who grows your organic food!  See the joy and the hardship of their lives.  They are doing this for YOU and ME and because they see the bigger picture and find it compelling enough that they are willing to dedicate their lives to it.  These are people of moral vision and integrity, who sacrifice a lot for the good they can contribute.

This is an enjoyable travelogue of farms in America.  The recipes all looked wonderful.

Two (green) thumbs up! For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Here's a video of the author's farm, which is located just about 45 minutes from me!!!  I had never even heard of it before.  Now I want to visit the Bed and Breakfast and tour his farm.