My Empire of Dirt: How One Man Turned His Big-City Backyard into a Farm

· Sold by Simon and Schuster
5.0
1 review
Ebook
288
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

For seven months, Manny Howard—a lifelong urbanite—woke up every morning and ventured into his eight-hundred-square-foot backyard to maintain the first farm in Flatbush, Brooklyn, in generations. His goal was simple: to subsist on what he could produce on this farm, and only this farm, for at least a month. The project came at a time in Manny’s life when he most needed it—even if his family, and especially his wife, seemingly did not. But a farmer’s life, he discovered—after a string of catastrophes, including a tornado, countless animal deaths (natural, accidental, and inflicted), and even a severed finger—is not an easy one. And it can be just as hard on those he shares it with.

Manny’s James Beard Foundation Award–winning New York magazine cover story—the impetus for this project—began as an assessment of the locavore movement. We now think more about what we eat than ever before, buying organic for our health and local for the environment, often making those decisions into political statements in the process. My Empire of Dirt is a ground-level examination—trenchant, touching, and outrageous—of the cultural reflex to control one of the most elemental aspects of our lives: feeding ourselves.

Unlike most foodies with a farm fetish, Manny didn’t put on overalls with much of a philosophy in mind, save a healthy dose of skepticism about some of the more doctrinaire tendencies of locavores. He did not set out to grow all of his own food because he thought it was the right thing to do or because he thought the rest of us should do the same. Rather, he did it because he was just crazy enough to want to find out how hard it would actually be to take on a challenge based on a radical interpretation of a trendy (if well-meaning) idea and see if he could rise to the occasion.

A chronicle of the experiment that took slow-food to the extreme, My Empire of Dirt tells the story of one man’s struggle against environmental, familial, and agricultural chaos, and in the process asks us to consider what it really takes (and what it really means) to produce our own food. It’s one thing to know the farmer, it turns out—it’s another thing entirely to be the farmer. For most of us, farming is about food. For the farmer, and his family, it’s about work.

Ratings and reviews

5.0
1 review
A Google user
May 13, 2010
This book is probably not one I would have picked out at the book store. I am a huge reader, but I am more of a fiction reader and I would never have guessed a true life account of a man's attempt to create a farm in his backyard would interest me. My husband bought the book and, with nothing new left in the house to read and a long subway ride to work, I grabbed it on my way out the door on Monday. I have to tell you, it hooked me. It was well written and interesting. The personal details with respect to his life and his family rang true and were heartfelt. Although I learned a lot of fascinating details about soil, farming, raising animals and the history of Brooklyn, the story was really about a person going through one of those periods of doubt and self-evaluation we all go through on occasion in life. A period when something hits you in the face and forces you to better understand yourself, your strengths and your limits, and to eventually come to peace with it all. He managed to tell the story with great humor and numerous amusing anecdotes without losing the serious thread beneath. I highly recommend this book, even for those with no interest in soil erosion or the castration of roosters!
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About the author

Manny Howard is a veteran of the magazine world, having written and/or edited for New York, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Esquire, Harper's, Rolling Stone, Gourmet, Food & Wine, Details, Men's Journal, Men's Health, Harper's Bazaar, Elle, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Us Weekly, National Geographic, and Travel & Leisure, among many others. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, two children, and a dwindling number of farm animals.

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