Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life

Mix a little of James Herriot (All Creatures Great and Small), Garrison Keillor (Lake Wobegon Days), Michael Pollan (The Omnivores Dilemma), and David Sedaris, and you have Trauma Farm. It's a passionate argument on the defense of the small, mixed family farm in the face of smothering regulations. The absurdity of life on a farm is presented in short stories that are at times so amusing that I caught myself laughing out loud in on the train during my morning commute; I can't recall a book ever getting me to laugh during that grim stretch of time between breakfast and work. As one of the most enjoyable books I've ever read, it well deserves a space on your bookshelf. It's a shame it's not gotten the recognition it deserves.

Even if you've never been to Canada, or Salt Spring Island, B.C. or lived on a farm you will enjoy this tightly written book which reminds me of the writing of Garrison Keillor, a little of Tom Wolfe and a little Whole Earth Catalog. It must remind someone of William Saroyon as now it is on the short list for Stanford University's William Saroyan prize for new writers (though Brian Brett has written other things.) If you have an interest in where our food comes from and shouldn't come from it is a non-polemic but full of facts narrative written in such a fashion to make us feel we are getting up in the morning to do the chores on Trauma Farm, a tongue in cheek reference to his learn by doing approach to farming. We also get to know the community of SSI (we share the same vet) and how things get done on an island dedicated to a sustainable life style. Too bad Canadian books get such short notice in the U.S. (I, a former Californian) because this book would have great appeal to the U.S. It's so good I have started reading it for a second time even though I am only part way through the entire book.

had ever collaborated on a book, it might have been Brian Brett's Trauma Farm. On an idyllic, rural (but rapidly gentrifying) island off the west coast of Canada, Brett, a poet and potter, and his wife Sharon, a nurse, negotiate a precarious living out of a 10-acre farm. While the economics of such small-scale farming are Quixotic, the lessons Brett draws from the land in all its moods and seasons are, by turns, practical, prophetic, and poetic. This is a beautifully written, honest, and, I think, very wise meditation on the realities of how we feed ourselves, how we nurture (or don't nurture) the land that in turn nurtures us, and our relationships with the animals and humans with whom we live and work. If you've ever entertained fantasies of "going back to the land", or even just baked your own bread for the sheer satisfaction of feeding yourself through your own efforts, this book will speak to you. Erudite, witty, poetic, hard-nosed, Brett doesn't sugar coat the hard realities of farming, nor does he exaggerate the difficulties. This is a life, and a style of life, he has chosen, and which he celebrates, even as he laments the wide scale loss of such small, intricate farms, and the prevailing decline in biodiversity that is the legacy of industrial agriculture. If you've read Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, or have been intrigued by the 100 Mile Diet, or haunt your local farmer's market in search of tomatoes that taste like tomatoes, or care about the conditions in which your daily meat lives and dies, then reading Trauma Farm is a logical next step in your evolution towards being a conscious and optimistic foodie.