How I Came to Live in a Barn: Part 4

Welcome to Friday and another edition of "How I Came to Live in a Barn," the series that strives to connect drinking to farming as relevantly as humanly possible.

As a quick preface to this series, from April to December of 2010 I lived in a barn. No electricity, no running water, no kidding. During that time I worked on a legitimately (though proudly uncertified) organic farm in Southern Kentucky. This series is about the many whims, fascinations and revelations that eventually inspired me to drop everything and go farming. Once we catch up to the present, I'll use the occasion to explain what I'm up to now, beyond the blaug. Is this preface going to appear at the beginning of the entire series? Damn straight. Ready? Wunderbar.

How I Came to Live in a Barn: Books

A great book begets great curiosity. You find yourself in places like restaurants cooking; in New York City drinking; in the vineyards of France tasting dirt; and living in a barn because books exist, and because they beget such powerful curiosity. A bartender friend of mine once suggested that a good book should change you––this is an homage to a few of those books.

As I sat in the garden that fall in Burgundy, minding my own business, I was suddenly accosted by Michael Pollan's genius. Sometimes a good book is just well-written and I've experienced many of those, but sometimes a good book is both well-written and well-timed, and those books can become something more than just books, but revelations. "The Omnivore's Dilemma" was precisely that.

The book had been exhaustingly recommended to me, I just hadn't got to it yet. Finally a good friend shoved it in my hands and demanded I read it while in France. When I opened the book, I had just come from tasting dirt at Bertrand Gautherot's house (see last week's post), and was more-than-a-little vulnerable. I was familiar with the issues Pollan focuses on––conventional agriculture, big-organic, localvorism, etc.––but I'd never paid any real attention to them. Having gained the perspective of Bertrand's methods versus those of his neighbor's, the subject was suddenly tangible. Also, Pollan has this way of writing that makes it seem like your super-logical buddy Mike is just saying "Hey dude, this conventional farming shit is kinda messed up," and then proceeds to detail why––masterfully and without pretension. After this book, I became annoyingly fastidious in my food choices. I read labels intensely, went to the farmer's market often, and began to read more about food––not just wine. In a lot of ways, this book was the beginning of my road to the farm, and as I heard time and time again last year, I was not alone in this.

Kermit Lynch did a number on me as well. The first time I read "Adventures on the Wine Route" I was way too impressionable. Not only did the sentiment of the book speak to my convictions, but the style with which it was written spoke to my sensibilities as a reader. At the time I first read it, I was progressively drinking more French and Italian wines, mostly organic, and wasn't sure exactly what made them so different––so much better. Kermit helped me to understand.

Like all great works, it's timeless. It was first published in 1988 but reads like it could've been published yesterday. I devour it once a year, and take something new from it each time. If you ask me what my favorite book is, I'd be hard pressed to say another. It's a book about wine, but it's also about everything. To me, it's about wine in the way "The Sun Also Rises" is about bullfighting, and I write, sell, think and drink the way I do with many nods to Kermit.

Lastly (I say lastly because I'm limiting myself to three here) is Masanobu Fukuoka's "One Straw Revolution" which I mention just as much for the book as for how I was introduced to it. A man by the name of Eric Texier recommended I read it, and afterward I realized something I'd never realized before: I know nothing about nature. It's a wonderfully poetic read, endlessly quotable and never overly technical, but it's mainly about nature. I loved the book but knew I'd love it more if I could understand it's subject, and felt compelled to follow Fukuoka's example.

Fukuoka was an everyday man turned farmer who developed a style of no-till natural farming that works with nature's example, rather than trying to control it. It's another timeless classic and a word you will increasinly begin to hear in reference to farming practices: Fukuoka-style. More and more farmers are moving towards no-till, non-intervention, permaculture-like methods and Fukuoka is among the most widely-known voices. Texier was inspired by his writings and next week, we'll talk about the role he and another natural winemaker played in my future... as if introducing me to Fukuoka wasn't enough.

But there are so many books that belong here, so many writers. If you were to traverse the route from my living in a barn to my childhood, you could simply follow the trail of books (as well as breadcrumbs, respectfully) until you arrived at a skateboarding young Fraust rocking a Wu-Tang t-shirt and baggy-ass jeans quoting "Ishmael" wildly, because that's more or less where it all began.

Postscript: The best part about writing this was that the only book I mentioned that I don't have a copy lent out, is Kermit's. It's the only one I never lend.