Introduction

At the end of my first year of farming, I was as poor as I’ve ever been, having plunged my savings into starting a business. I had two weeks before returning to Chicago, to a job that paid me in greenbacks instead of leafy greens. Trying to save my pennies, I was eating the last of our farm’s vegetables that hadn’t sold at the final market. There were carrots still in the ground to overwinter and harvest in the spring. The kale plants, which we had chopped down because they were covered in aphids, had unfurled little baby leaves, all tender and green. The chickens had been relocated to another farm for the winter, but I still had eighteen eggs from their last few layings.