Brimming with hilarious gardening anecdotes, To Boldly Grow: Finding Joy, Adventure and Dinner in Your Own Backyard by Tamar Haspel is an inspirational account of the author's improbable transformation from a city-dweller leading a life of the mind into an avid country gardener who built her own chicken coop, happy to roll up her sleeves and get dirty in pursuit of food-growing exploits. It is a metamorphosis filled with adventure, comedy and not a little drama that all began when Haspel challenged herself to consume at least one food item every day that she and her husband, Kevin, hunted or fished, gathered or grew themselves.
Haspel writes the James Beard Award-winning Washington Post column Unearthed. Having spent her career writing about what other people did with food, she decided 12 years ago to unleash her own "inner doer" after she and Kevin, a commodities trader with gardening experience, left Manhattan for a "shack on a lake" on Cape Cod. She planted kale, eggplants, cucumbers and tomatoes that tasted more delicious by virtue of being homegrown, and foraged for food, which led to raising chickens, ice fishing and hunting for venison.
As much as Haspel makes a compelling case for embracing one's inner hunter-gatherer, To Boldly Grow is also an intriguing glimpse into a successful marriage between two individuals with vastly different skills and the creative ways in which they tap into each other's strengths. Negotiation, compromise and humor form the pillars of a relationship that is tested in unusual ways, including the struggles of building a turkey plucker out of an old washing machine, learning to use a hammer and mistaking an igloo-shaped doghouse for a wood-fire oven insert.
Haspel combines advice for budding gardeners with incisive commentary on our food culture and the true meaning of self-reliance. "Learning to rely on ourselves to solve problems, rather than referring them to people who had solved them before, was the essence of our undertaking," she says, highlighting the happy interdependence and sharing of resources within their Cape Cod community.
Serving as a detailed six-part guide for readers who are considering food-gathering pursuits of their own and are curious about what it entails, Haspel's debut features all of the brilliant wit and lively storytelling that have made her a popular food and science writer. --Shahina Piyarali, reviewer
Shelf Talker: In this entertaining and practical guide to homegrown food, a journalist discovers the joys of gardening, keeping chickens and ice fishing after moving to Cape Cod from Manhattan.