For anyone even vaguely interested in small-scale agriculture or a back-to-the-land lifestyle, Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live Off the Land by Kurt Timmermeister (W. W. Norton & Company, 2011; $25) is an engaging and informative read.

Timmermeister, who began his career as a Seattle urbanite and restaurateur, now owns and operates Kurtwood Farms, a small yet thriving 12-acre farm and cheesemaking operation on Vashon Island, Washington.

In the course of recounting his journey from chef and landowner to farmer and cheesemaker, Timmermeister delivers a great deal of useful and interesting information in an honest, accessible voice. Chapters are arranged by topic: Beekeeping, Dairying, Vegetables, Fowl, Pigs, the Slaughter, Butchering, the Table—the last being a treatise on Timmermeister’s philosophy toward food and his farm dinners.

While the book makes no claim to being a comprehensive guide to building one’s own farm or an agricultural reference or even a cookbook, it does contain elements of all three, proving that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Watch more