Kristin Kimball’s writing style is engaging and infectious and you certainly feel as if you are part of her life, at least for the time you read the book. In fact, I read it in just 2 sittings, seemingly unable to put it down. However, I didn’t know quite how much of a good read it would be. I expected to enjoy it, given the subject material and my near on obsession with any farming or nature based books. The book was published in the UK by Portobello Books in 2011, a publishing house with a strong reputation for providing readers with innovative and individual stories. The book plots her journey from the writer’s desk to the dairy and the field, exploring the highs and lows of her first year on Essex Farm with her fiancee Mark.
The Dirty Life (A Story of Farming the Land and Falling in Love), tells the story of how she moved from her life of cafes and bars in New York City, combined with jetting around the world as a travel writer, to a new existence and a far more ‘simple’ life, now married with kids on a farm in the north of New York state. This is exactly what happened to Kristin Kimball, the author of The Dirty Life, albeit slightly later in life as a thirty something, urban dwelling writer. Sometimes you need to take a side jump onto a path that you didn’t previously know in order to be happier and more fulfilled in the longer term. You might meet someone or discover something that makes you re-evaluate your life. Now and then something happens that makes you rethink what it is that you are doing and where you are going. However, having ambitions and being open to change as your life develops is, I believe, vital. The bills need to be paid and life can’t always be experienced with a philosophy of ‘living for the moment’. Of course, a degree of direction and stability is vital.
The pressure that results from all of this often means that ‘the life list’ becomes longer and more rigid, removing any sense of fluidity of direction and increasing mental strain.
It seems that, for my generation, we expect or are expected to be high achievers in every ‘area’ of life – career, relationships and gaining that apparently oh so important first step on the property ladder. When you set out in your early adult life it is tempting to establish goals or to second guess the direction in which your life might head.
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