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The Call of the Farm: An Unexpected Year of Getting Dirty, Home Cooking, and Finding Myself Paperback – September 23, 2014
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“A lively, charming coming-of-age story complete with farm-tested recipes.”
—Publishers Weekly
“[Rochelle] Bilow brings sensuality to every scene, with rich descriptions of food and farm life, from washing freshly laid eggs to rendering lard. [She] offers readers a slow-cooked story, with tenderness and intermingled flavors enriched over time.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Bilow’s love of food and cooking practically drips off the pages in mouth-watering detail.”
—Bust magazine
“Rochelle Bilow brings tantalizing insight into the behind-the-scenes operations of a CSA farm, but also into the intricacies of falling in love. Until Bilow’s book, I’d forgotten what a fragile dance it can be.”
—Catherine Friend, author of Hit by a Farm, The Compassionate Carnivore, and Sheepish
“A delicious memoir for anyone who has ever been drunk on the idea of farm love. You cannot help but cheer this farm girl on as she sings a bluesy ode to farm life and a complete love song to the table. The Blistered Tomato Gratin was amazing and the Bacon Maple Cornbread is going to be a regular around here for a long time. This girl can cook and write. It is a heady combination.”
—Ellen Stimson, author of Mud Season and Good Grief! Life in a Tiny Vermont Town
“Rochelle Bilow has done the impossible: make me want to live on a farm. I am not a farmer or a foodie or a female, and I couldn’t put this down. She somehow makes churning butter sexy.”
—Jeff Wilser, author of The Maxims of Manhood and It’s Okay to Sleep with Him on the First Date
“If you’re looking for a book intimately detailing the circle of life for all inhabitants on a farm, including animals, vegetables, and humans, Rochelle Bilow’s The Call of the Farm is the very thing. Covering a full year of living, working, cooking, and loving on a central NY farm, her book is candid, visceral, sincere, and delicious. I haven’t been able to look at farmers’ markets in the same way since reading it, and that’s a very good thing.”
—Ashley English, author of Handmade Living, A Year of Pies, Building Country Comforts, and the Homemade Living series
“As gripping as a novel, The Call of the Farm immerses you in an aspiring food writer’s journey from city to country as Rochelle Bilow falls in love with a farmer and learns to cook with real food. This beautifully written, honest, and vivid memoir sucks the reader in and lets us share Rochelle’s failed attempts at butter churning, cold days of rock picking in the spring mud, and moments of delight finding companionship with a crew of like-minded farmers.”
—Anna Hess, author of The Weekend Homesteader
“If you’ve ever had romantic notions of farm life, Rochelle Bilow plays them out season by season in this sweet tell-all. Her experience brings readers into a world they’ll likely never encounter first-hand, complete with honest-to-goodness farm-to-table living. The charming romance between her and a farmer (as well as the lifestyle itself) only heightens the storyline—and your appreciation for Bilow’s all-in emotional journey.”
—Erin Byers Murray, author of Shucked: Life on a New England Oyster Farm
“A delightful account of discovering the secret to health and happiness that so many people long for. Rochelle Bilow’s memoir is a celebration of real food, the value of hard work and, of course, unbridled love. If you’re intrigued by the simple, rural life, this book is for you!”
—Tim Young, author of The Accidental Farmers
“A wonderfully entertaining story, pulling the reader ever deeper into Rochelle Bilow’s year of farming and romance. Humorous, honest, and poignant, it is a compelling look into her life of cooking, loving, and living on a CSA farm.”
—Leigh Tate, author of 5 Acres & A Dream
—Publishers Weekly
“[Rochelle] Bilow brings sensuality to every scene, with rich descriptions of food and farm life, from washing freshly laid eggs to rendering lard. [She] offers readers a slow-cooked story, with tenderness and intermingled flavors enriched over time.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Bilow’s love of food and cooking practically drips off the pages in mouth-watering detail.”
—Bust magazine
“Rochelle Bilow brings tantalizing insight into the behind-the-scenes operations of a CSA farm, but also into the intricacies of falling in love. Until Bilow’s book, I’d forgotten what a fragile dance it can be.”
—Catherine Friend, author of Hit by a Farm, The Compassionate Carnivore, and Sheepish
“A delicious memoir for anyone who has ever been drunk on the idea of farm love. You cannot help but cheer this farm girl on as she sings a bluesy ode to farm life and a complete love song to the table. The Blistered Tomato Gratin was amazing and the Bacon Maple Cornbread is going to be a regular around here for a long time. This girl can cook and write. It is a heady combination.”
—Ellen Stimson, author of Mud Season and Good Grief! Life in a Tiny Vermont Town
“Rochelle Bilow has done the impossible: make me want to live on a farm. I am not a farmer or a foodie or a female, and I couldn’t put this down. She somehow makes churning butter sexy.”
—Jeff Wilser, author of The Maxims of Manhood and It’s Okay to Sleep with Him on the First Date
“If you’re looking for a book intimately detailing the circle of life for all inhabitants on a farm, including animals, vegetables, and humans, Rochelle Bilow’s The Call of the Farm is the very thing. Covering a full year of living, working, cooking, and loving on a central NY farm, her book is candid, visceral, sincere, and delicious. I haven’t been able to look at farmers’ markets in the same way since reading it, and that’s a very good thing.”
—Ashley English, author of Handmade Living, A Year of Pies, Building Country Comforts, and the Homemade Living series
“As gripping as a novel, The Call of the Farm immerses you in an aspiring food writer’s journey from city to country as Rochelle Bilow falls in love with a farmer and learns to cook with real food. This beautifully written, honest, and vivid memoir sucks the reader in and lets us share Rochelle’s failed attempts at butter churning, cold days of rock picking in the spring mud, and moments of delight finding companionship with a crew of like-minded farmers.”
—Anna Hess, author of The Weekend Homesteader
“If you’ve ever had romantic notions of farm life, Rochelle Bilow plays them out season by season in this sweet tell-all. Her experience brings readers into a world they’ll likely never encounter first-hand, complete with honest-to-goodness farm-to-table living. The charming romance between her and a farmer (as well as the lifestyle itself) only heightens the storyline—and your appreciation for Bilow’s all-in emotional journey.”
—Erin Byers Murray, author of Shucked: Life on a New England Oyster Farm
“A delightful account of discovering the secret to health and happiness that so many people long for. Rochelle Bilow’s memoir is a celebration of real food, the value of hard work and, of course, unbridled love. If you’re intrigued by the simple, rural life, this book is for you!”
—Tim Young, author of The Accidental Farmers
“A wonderfully entertaining story, pulling the reader ever deeper into Rochelle Bilow’s year of farming and romance. Humorous, honest, and poignant, it is a compelling look into her life of cooking, loving, and living on a CSA farm.”
—Leigh Tate, author of 5 Acres & A Dream
About the Author
ROCHELLE BILOW is a food writer and a classically trained cook with a Grand Diplome in Classic Culinary Arts from the French Culinary Institute. As a staff writer at Bon Appétit, she interviews chefs and covers food trends and seasonal cooking. Her writing has also appeared in Edible Finger Lakes, USA Today, the Syracuse Post-Standard, Food Traveler, and others. She lives in Brooklyn.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By
Jenny @ Reading on the Farm
on September 21, 2014
Format: Paperback
Comment
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As most of you know, I live on a small farm. My husband's family grew up farming and one of our goals has always been to own a small operating farm. We'd love to be self-sustainable, growing and raising what we use. We're not there yet, not even close, but we've gotten started. We have a dairy cow and goats, and we have chickens for eggs. We also raise chickens for meat. So when I saw this book was an account of Rochelle Bilow's year of living and working on a small "full-diet" farm, I was intrigued. Part of what's interesting me, and I think a lot of people, is their journey. How do you get from point A to point B? Since Rochelle was a professionally trained chef, I was interested to see how her cooking skills would serve her on the farm.
Rochelle is immediately thrown into the farm life as soon as she shows up to write an article for the magazine she was writing for. She finds excuses to keep going back and eventually starts volunteering there so she can spend more time learning and working on the farm. One of the things I really enjoyed in this book was the joy that came through Rochelle's writing when she was writing about the farm. You could really tell how much she was committed to learning as much as possible about being a responsible farmer. Many of the insecurities about not knowing how to do things, and the fear of doing them wrong spoke to me in particular. It can be intimidating to work with people who have been doing something professionally. To get over that hurdle and throw yourself into work anyway takes guts and it's what inspires me when it comes to farming. I want to learn everything!
Having said that, I was a little disappointed in the lack of detail about the day to day of farm life.Read more ›
Rochelle is immediately thrown into the farm life as soon as she shows up to write an article for the magazine she was writing for. She finds excuses to keep going back and eventually starts volunteering there so she can spend more time learning and working on the farm. One of the things I really enjoyed in this book was the joy that came through Rochelle's writing when she was writing about the farm. You could really tell how much she was committed to learning as much as possible about being a responsible farmer. Many of the insecurities about not knowing how to do things, and the fear of doing them wrong spoke to me in particular. It can be intimidating to work with people who have been doing something professionally. To get over that hurdle and throw yourself into work anyway takes guts and it's what inspires me when it comes to farming. I want to learn everything!
Having said that, I was a little disappointed in the lack of detail about the day to day of farm life.Read more ›
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By
Jaylia3
TOP 1000 REVIEWER on September 20, 2014
Format: Paperback
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With a culinary school degree and experience as a restaurant chef Rochelle Bilow hoped to make a career out of food writing, but it wasn’t happening as quickly as she wanted. Looking for a breakthrough article she set up interviews at a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm to gather information and surprised herself by falling in love with everything she saw--the small farm group lifestyle, the farm fresh cooking ingredients, and a particularly appealing farmer who caught her eye. She hung around for about a year, eventually moving in and becoming part of the crew, and this memoir recounts her farming, cooking, and romantic experiences.
CSA farms have members or subscribers from the local community who come out once a week during harvest season for shares of whatever the farm produces, and Bilow’s farm supplied everything from vegetables to meats so the farm experiences she details range from weeding to slaughter, but for me the best part of the book are her descriptions of what she cooked for the rest of the workers. She created lavish meals fit for rural gods, gods who don’t have cholesterol issues that is, with abundant amounts of uber-fresh vegetables and meats enhanced with generous portions of animal derived fats like lard and butter. The book is divided by the time of the year, and season appropriate recipes are included at the end of each section.
As a vegetarian I appreciated the humane treatment of the farm animals, but squinched my eyes and skimmed over the sections about converting them from living creatures to food.Read more ›
CSA farms have members or subscribers from the local community who come out once a week during harvest season for shares of whatever the farm produces, and Bilow’s farm supplied everything from vegetables to meats so the farm experiences she details range from weeding to slaughter, but for me the best part of the book are her descriptions of what she cooked for the rest of the workers. She created lavish meals fit for rural gods, gods who don’t have cholesterol issues that is, with abundant amounts of uber-fresh vegetables and meats enhanced with generous portions of animal derived fats like lard and butter. The book is divided by the time of the year, and season appropriate recipes are included at the end of each section.
As a vegetarian I appreciated the humane treatment of the farm animals, but squinched my eyes and skimmed over the sections about converting them from living creatures to food.Read more ›
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By
Homesteader
on September 19, 2014
Format: Paperback
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As gripping as a novel, The Call of the Farm immerses you in an aspiring-food-writer's journey from city to country as Rochelle Bilow falls in love with a farmer and learns to cook with real food. This beautifully written, honest, and vivid memoir sucks the reader in and lets us share Rochelle's failed attempts at butter churning, cold days of rock-picking in the spring mud, and moments of delight finding companionship with a crew of like-minded farmers.
Like The Dirty Life, Bilow's memoir is set on a full-diet, draft-powered CSA farm in the northeast. Along with four acres of organic veggies, the crew raises layers, milk cows, and chickens, pigs, sheep, and cattle for meat. CSA members are invited to take home as much as they can eat, and the whole operation is run by idealistic young people who consider 60 hours of farm work per week to be a part-time job. Bilow ends up becoming immersed in the farm, where she spends most of her time cooking, sharing her favorite dishes in both story and recipe form throughout the book.
The setting aside, the heart of Bilow's memoir follows her "emotions-first" love affair with a man and a farm. If you're like me, you'll be unable to put the book down once you start, and will end up reading long into the night. I owe you two pieces of warning, though, before you pick up this riveting memoir. First, strong language and moderately explicit sex would garner an R rating if The Call of the Farm were a movie --- use your own judgment if you prefer your books to be squeaky clean. Second, the ending might depress you as much as it did me, and you will definitely spoil the story if you read the about-the-author blurb on the back of the book. On the other hand, if you enjoyed This Life is in Your Hands, The Call of the Farm will be right up your alley.
Like The Dirty Life, Bilow's memoir is set on a full-diet, draft-powered CSA farm in the northeast. Along with four acres of organic veggies, the crew raises layers, milk cows, and chickens, pigs, sheep, and cattle for meat. CSA members are invited to take home as much as they can eat, and the whole operation is run by idealistic young people who consider 60 hours of farm work per week to be a part-time job. Bilow ends up becoming immersed in the farm, where she spends most of her time cooking, sharing her favorite dishes in both story and recipe form throughout the book.
The setting aside, the heart of Bilow's memoir follows her "emotions-first" love affair with a man and a farm. If you're like me, you'll be unable to put the book down once you start, and will end up reading long into the night. I owe you two pieces of warning, though, before you pick up this riveting memoir. First, strong language and moderately explicit sex would garner an R rating if The Call of the Farm were a movie --- use your own judgment if you prefer your books to be squeaky clean. Second, the ending might depress you as much as it did me, and you will definitely spoil the story if you read the about-the-author blurb on the back of the book. On the other hand, if you enjoyed This Life is in Your Hands, The Call of the Farm will be right up your alley.
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