When my mom told me how much she loved the first book on the list below saying it was the soothing read she craved in these troubled times, I knew I had to compile a list of great farm & garden books for her birthday. And of course, I had to share them with you as well.
Here’s that list of 12 fiction & nonfiction reads all focused on the farm or garden—all with great reviews. I hope these books bring you (& my mom!) great comfort.
A faded farmhouse, a devoted dog. One special season.
Melinda is already at a crossroads when the “for rent” sign beckons her down a dusty gravel lane. Facing forty, single and downsized from her stellar career at a big-city ad agency, she’s struggling to start over when a phone call brings her home to rural Iowa.
It's not long before she moves to the country, takes on a rundown farm and its headstrong animals, and lands behind the counter of her family’s hardware store in the community of Prosper, whose motto is “The Great Little Town That Didn’t.” And just like the sprawling garden she tends under the summer sun, Melinda begins to thrive. But when storm clouds arrive on her horizon, can she hold on to the new life she's worked so hard to create?
Filled with memorable characters, from a big-hearted farm dog to the weather-obsessed owner of the local co-op, Growing Season celebrates the twists and turns of small-town life. Discover the heartwarming series that’s filled with new friends, fresh starts and second chances.
“It's hard not to fall for the plucky Melinda and her quirky and kind friends and neighbors. ... Melinda's reinvention of herself isn't without its bumps, making her a relatable heroine whom readers will want to follow to her next adventure.” — Publishers Weekly
The beloved actress and star of One Tree Hill, White Collar, and Lethal Weapon, Hilarie Burton Morgan, tells the story of leaving Hollywood for a radically different kind of life in upstate New York with her actor husband—a celebration of community, family, and the value of hard work in small town America.
While Hilarie Burton Morgan's hectic lifestyle as an actress gave her a comfortable life, it did not fulfill her spiritually or emotionally. After the birth of their first son, she and her husband Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the star of The Walking Dead, decided to make a major change: they bought a working farm in Rhinebeck, New York, and began a new chapter in their lives.
The Rural Diaries chronicles her inspiring story of farm life: chopping wood, making dandelion wine, building chicken coops. Burton looks back at her transition from urban to country living—discovering how to manage a farm while raising her son and making friends with her new neighbors. She mixes charming stories of learning to raise alpacas and buying and revitalizing the town’s beloved candy store, Samuel’s Sweet Shop, with raw observations on the ups and downs of marriage and her struggles with secondary infertility. Burton also includes delicious recipes that can be made with fresh ingredients at home, as well as home renovation and gardening tips.
Burton’s charisma, wide eyed attitude, and fortitude—both internal and physical—propels this moving story of transformation and self-discovery. The Rural Diaries honors the values and lifestyle of small-town America and offers inspiration for anyone longing to embark on their own unconventional journey.
“From the realities of farm living, home renovations, and the struggles of growing a family and finding her footing after heartbreak, Hilarie’s warmth and humor are on full display. The Rural Diaries reads like a favorite girls’ night chat.” —Country Living
“This funny, insightful look at Hilarie's time on her family's farm is a a must-read for anyone dreaming about giving it all up to live off the land—but it's also a reality check and reminder that 'the simple life' isn't always so simple.” —Town & Country
Their husbands were gone, their families were grown, and the future stretched out before them like an unfulfilled promise...
Tired of always dreaming and never doing, Cici, Lindsay, and Bridget make a life-altering decision. Uprooting themselves from their comfortable lives in the suburbs, the three friends buy a run-down mansion and land, nestled in the picturesque Shenandoah Valley. They christen their new home “Ladybug Farm,” hoping that the name will bring them luck.
As the friends take on a home improvement challenge of epic proportions, they encounter disaster after disaster, from renegade sheep and garden thieves to a seemingly ghostly inhabitant. Over the course of a year, overwhelming obstacles make the women question their decision, but they ultimately learn that sometimes the best things can happen when everything goes wrong.
“A Year on Ladybug Farm is one of those books. You know the ones, they have you staying up late, reading into the wee hours of the morning with a hot cup of tea. I want to pull up my own rocker on the front porch watching the sun slowly set … joining Lindsey, Bridget and Ci Ci in conversation. A Year on Ladybug Farm will have you laughing out loud, wiping a tear from your eye.” —Bee Readin’
“A compelling cozy read … The characters were inviting, the dialog true and strong, the location welcoming and there were enough adventures that kept me turning the pages to see what on Earth was going to happen next [while] laughing aloud.” —Cozy Readers
Michael Perry meets David Sedaris in this riotous, moving, and entirely unique story of Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s attempt to tackle the next phase of life with his partner on a goat farm in upstate New York.
“Baby goats, diarrhea, and Martha Stewart. Former drag queen turned goat farmer Josh Kilmer-Purcell begins The Bucolic Plague, with a hilarious vignette involving all three. Clearly, the man has an interesting story to tell.” —Wisconsin State Journal
“Side-splitting.” —Wall Street Journal
“My Amtrak seat mate in the Quiet Car, a complete stranger, insisted that I read out loud the scene—a goat in labor—that was making me laugh so hard I was crying. . . . Kilmer-Purcell’s book is manically funny, sweetly open and trusting, and slick and snarky.” —NY Times Book Review
“I gobbled up this book like…well, like goat cheese on a cracker. Kilmer-Purcell’s genius lies in his ability to blindside the reader with heart-wrenching truths in the midst of the most outlandish scenarios. He makes you laugh until you care.” —Armistead Maupin
“Enter 60 goats and homemade soap, apple-picking and an heirloom vegetable garden. Hilarity follows. And trouble. But let’s not spoil the party. It’s fun.” —USA Today
“I adore the Beekman boys’ story. Their unlikely story of love, the land, and a herd of goats is hilariously honest. If these two can go from Manhattan to a goat farm in upstate New York, then I can’t help feeling there is hope for us all.” –Alice Water
“A hilarious memoir.” —Whole Living
The deliriously entertaining Cold Comfort Farm is “very probably the funniest book ever written” (The Sunday Times, London), a hilarious parody of D. H. Lawrence’s and Thomas Hardy’s earthy, melodramatic novels.
In Gibbons's classic tale, first published in 1932, a resourceful young heroine finds herself in the gloomy, overwrought world of a Bronte novel and proceeds to organize everyone out of their romantic tragedies into the pleasures of normal life. Flora Poste, orphaned at 19, chooses to live with relatives at Cold Comfort Farm in Sussex, where cows are named Feckless, Aimless, Pointless, and Graceless, and the proprietors, the dour Starkadder family, are tyrannized by Flora's mysterious aunt, who controls the household from a locked room. Flora's confident and clever management of an alarming cast of eccentrics is only half the pleasure of this novel. The other half is Gibbons's wicked sendup of romantic cliches, from the mad woman in the attic to the druidical peasants with their West Country accents and mystical herbs.” —Library Journal
A hilarious and ruthless parody of rural melodramas and purple prose, Cold Comfort Farm is one of the best-loved comic novels of all time.
“Quite simply one of the funniest satirical novels of the last century.” —NPR
“I tell of a time, a place, and a way of life long gone. For many years I have had the urge to describe that treasure trove, lest it vanish forever. So, partly in response to the basic human instinct to share feelings and experiences, and partly for the sheer joy and excitement of it all, I report on my early life. It was quite a romp.”
So begins Mildred Kalish’s story of growing up on her grandparents’ Iowa farm during the depths of the Great Depression. With her father banished from the household for mysterious transgressions, five-year-old Mildred and her family could easily have been overwhelmed by the challenge of simply trying to survive. This, however, is not a tale of suffering.
Kalish counts herself among the lucky of that era. She had caring grandparents who possessed—and valiantly tried to impose—all the pioneer virtues of their forebears, teachers who inspired and befriended her, and a barnyard full of animals ready to be tamed and loved. She and her siblings and their cousins from the farm across the way played as hard as they worked, running barefoot through the fields, as free and wild as they dared.
Filled with recipes and how-tos for everything from catching and skinning a rabbit to preparing homemade skin and hair beautifiers, apple cream pie, and the world’s best head cheese (start by scrubbing the head of the pig until it is pink and clean), Little Heathens portrays a world of hardship and hard work tempered by simple rewards. There was the unsurpassed flavor of tender new dandelion greens harvested as soon as the snow melted; the taste of crystal clear marble-sized balls of honey robbed from a bumblebee nest; the sweet smell from the body of a lamb sleeping on sun-warmed grass; and the magical quality of oat shocking under the light of a full harvest moon.
Little Heathens offers a loving but realistic portrait of a “hearty-handshake Methodist” family that gave its members a remarkable legacy of kinship, kindness, and remembered pleasures. Recounted in a luminous narrative filled with tenderness and humor, Kalish’s memoir of her childhood shows how the right stuff can make even the bleakest of times seem like “quite a romp.”
“Not only trustworthy and useful, but also polished by real, rare happiness. It is a very good book, indeed. In fact, it's averyveryverygoodbook.” —New York Times Book Review
Angela Fytton—wonderwife, supermother, bedroom vamp and business partner—has been unceremoniously dumped. Like many a good wife before her, she has been swapped by her husband for a younger model. One day, Angela knows, her husband will return especially if she has anything to say about it.
Moving to a rambling old house in the country to start making her own honey and keeping hens, she yields herself up to the notion that country life is pure and good, and that country people are next to angels. She soon discovers this is very far from the truth.
“The funniest and most beguiling townie-goes-to-the-country novel since Cold Comfort Farm.” —Daily Telegraph
”Fabulous! Why can't more books be this well-written, funny, and wise?” —R. Zimmerman
“Marvelously entertaining…Cheek’s writing is infused with terrific comic energy and she possesses the wickedly sharp eye of a born satirist.” —Mail on Sunday
“Side-splitting! One of the wittiest, brightest, funniest books I have read in a long, long time. Rejoice [in this] wildly funny British wit.” —Wendy Kaplan
“With an unerring instinct, Cheek gives the reader all the ingredients for a modern-day story of manners.” —Guardian
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Delve into the magical, unforgettable world of James Herriot, the world's most beloved veterinarian, and his menagerie of heartwarming, funny, and tragic animal patients.
Generations of readers have thrilled to Herriot's marvelous tales, deep love of life, and extraordinary storytelling abilities. For decades, Herriot roamed the remote, beautiful Yorkshire Dales, treating every patient that came his way from smallest to largest, and observing animals and humans alike with his keen, loving eye.
In All Creatures Great and Small, we meet the young Herriot as he takes up his calling and discovers that the realities of veterinary practice in rural Yorkshire are very different from the sterile setting of veterinary school. Some visits are some are lighthearted and fun, some are heart-wrenchingly difficult, and yet others are inspirational and enlightening. From seeing to his patients in the depths of winter on the remotest farms to dealing with uncooperative owners and critically ill animals, Herriot discovers the wondrous variety and never-ending challenges of veterinary practice as his humor, compassion, and love of the animal world shine forth.
“This warm, joyous and often hilarious first-person chronicle of a young animal doctor . . . shines with love of life. All Creatures Great and Small may well be the happiest book of the year.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Absolutely super, a rarity, magnificently written, insightful, unforgettable.” —Houston Chronicle
“One of the funniest and most likeable books around.” —The Atlantic Monthly
“Refreshingly original . . . as close to a novel as a chronicle of memoirs could be . . . hilarious, touching, athletic and warming.” —Los Angeles Times
“What the world needs now, and does every so often, is a warm, G-rated, down-home, unadrenalized prize of a book that sneaks onto the bestseller lists . . . James Herriot's memoirs qualify admirably.” —Time
New York television reporter Lucinda Trout is in search of greener pastures. Her self-imposed mission: move to the slower-paced, friendly, and vastly more affordable midwestern town of Prairie City, USA.
Her search includes, but is not limited to: a decently sized apartment with a few aesthetic qualities; a job that is not all about pleasing her conniving, urban terror of a boss; the love of a good man; and, maybe, a dog. And so, Lucinda departs with a plan to deliver televised reports to her New York audience about the sweeping landscapes, charming farmsteads, and quirky locals that will constitute her newfound quality of life.
But when Lucinda falls for eccentric local Mason Clay, her naïveté about the real world leads her down an unexpected path, where she encounters, among other things, a drafty old farmhouse filled with children, an ever-growing menagerie of farm animals, and the harshest winter the region has seen 20 years. In other words, simplicity just isn’t as simple as it is cracked up to be, and “quality of life,” Lucinda learns, is much more complicated than she ever imagined.
Meghan Daum brings her sharp wit and courageous social commentary to a wickedly funny, unforgettable novel—one that is redemptive, witty and heartbreaking all at once.
“Daum brings a crisp, wisecracking voice to her novel... an admirably nuanced view of the American heartland.” —The New Yorker
”Daums enormous comic gift and her ability to use it in the service of fundamentally serious issues is an unexpected delight.” —he New York Times Book Review
”[A] funny, literate... entertaining, and often touching story of a single woman lurching into her thirties.” —People
When Barbara Kingsolver and her family moved from suburban Arizona to rural Appalachia, they took on a new challenge: to spend a year on a locally-produced diet, paying close attention to the provenance of all they consume and also growing what food they could. Concerned about the environmental, social, and physical costs of American food culture, they hoped to recover what Barbara considers our nation's lost appreciation for farms and the natural processes of food production.
“Charming . . . Literary magic . . . If you love the narrative voice of Barbara Kingsolver, you will be thrilled.” —Houston Chronicle
“Cogent and illuminating...Without sentimentality, this book captures the pulse of the farm and the deep gratification it provides, as well as the intrinsic humor of the situation.” —NY Times
“Classy and disarming, substantive and entertaining, earnest and funny....Kingsolver takes the genre to a new literary level.” -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Kingsolver elegantly chronicles a year of back-to-the-land living…Readers...will take heart and inspiration here.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Full…of zest and sometimes ribald humor… Reading this book will make you hungry.” —Raleigh News & Observer
“Every bit as transporting as-and more ecologically relevant than-any Year In Provence-style escapism...Earthy...informative....[and] enlightened.” —Washington Post
“Provocative . . . Kingsolver evokes the sheer joy of producing one’s own food.”—People
“Charming...Each season-and chapter-unfolds with a natural rhythm and mouth-watering appeal.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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From a “graceful, luminous writer with an eye for detail” (Minneapolis Star Tribune), this riveting memoir explores a year on a sustainable farm.
When Kristin Kimball left New York City to interview a dynamic young farmer named Mark, her world changed. On an impulse, she shed her city self and started a new farm with him on 500 acres near Lake Champlain. The Dirty Life is the captivating chronicle of the couple’s first year on Essex Farm, from the cold North Country winter through their harvest-season wedding in the loft of the barn.
Kristin and Mark’s plan to grow everything needed to feed a community was an ambitious idea, and a bit romantic. It worked. Every Friday evening, all year round, over a hundred people travel to Essex Farm to pick up their weekly share of the “whole diet”—beef, pork, chicken, milk, eggs, maple syrup, grains, flours, dried beans, herbs, fruits, and forty different vegetables—produced by the farm. In The Dirty Life, Kristin discovers the wrenching pleasures of physical work, learns that good food is at the center of a good life, falls deeply in love, and finally finds the engagement and commitment she craved in the form of a man, a small town, and a beautiful piece of land.
“The truest, most hilarious, and most affirming story of a beginning farmer that you could possibly find.” —The Washington Post
“Kimball writes in vivid but unsentimental language, equal parts dirt and poetry.” —Burlington Free Press
The star of The Incredible Dr. Pol shares his amusing, and often poignant, tales from his four decades as a vet in rural Michigan.
Dr. Jan Pol is not your typical veterinarian. Born and raised the Netherlands on a dairy farm, he is the star of Nat Geo Wild’s hit show The Incredible Dr. Pol and has been treating animals in rural Michigan since the 1970s. Dr. Pol’s more than 20,000 patients have ranged from white mice to 2,600-pound horses and everything in between.
From the time he was twelve years old and helped deliver a litter of piglets on his family’s farm to the incredible moments captured on his hit TV show, Dr. Pol has amassed a wealth of stories of what it’s like caring for this menagerie of animals. He shares his own story of growing up surrounded by animals, training to be a vet in the Netherlands, and moving to Michigan to open his first practice. He has established himself as an empathetic yet no-nonsense vet who isn’t afraid to make the difficult decisions in order to do what’s best for his patients—and their hard-working owners. A sick pet can bring heartache, but a sick cow or horse could threaten the very livelihood of a farmer whose modest profits are dependent on healthy livestock.
Reminiscent of the classic books of James Herriot, Never Turn Your Back on an Angus Cow is a charming, fascinating, and funny memoir that will delight animal lovers everywhere.