Used with author's permission. Photographer: Claire Barboza

Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live Off the Land.  By Kurt Timmermeister.  New York : W W Norton, 2011. 335 p.

Recommendation by:
Carolyn Petersen, CLRS Project Manager, Tumwater, WA.

This recent memoir reads like having an interesting friend sit down to relate how he made the intriguingly insane choice to change from being a city guy on Capitol Hill who ran a successful restaurant (He didn’t even know how to drive a car, let alone own one) to establishing and running Kurtwood Farms on Vashon Island—with no previous experience whatsoever as a farmer.  Each chapter details a new challenge in his life as a farmer. (Who knew that when  dairy cows are in heat they will try to mount anything—including the farmer leading them from one pasture to the next?) Kurt Timmermeister hopes by honestly sharing his struggles to produce quality products on a small 13 acre farm that consumers will appreciate even more the local produce that comes to market.

ISBN-13: 978 0393070859

Available at the Washington State Library,  NW 630.92 TIMMERM 2011
Available as an eReader edition.
Not available as an talking book, or as a Braille edition.

Essential wines and wineries of the Pacific Northwest : a guide to the wine countries of Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, and Idaho. By Cole Danehower ; photography by Andrea Johnson. Portland, Or. : Timber Press, 2010. 308 p.

Review submitted by:
Rand Simmons, Acting Washington State Librarian, Tumwater, WA

Whether you’re simply curious, an aspiring wine connoisseur, or an aficionado, you will be charmed by this book. It is a solid book, 308 pages, and worth a first reading for the photographs and captions alone. It is a travelogue through the wine countries of Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and Idaho. It is a curriculum on the geography, geology climatology and edaphology of the Pacific Northwest and yet it is not academic.

The text is readable and interesting. Articles such as “Surviving Disaster Together” (p. 52), “Sustainable Viticulture,” (p. 143) and “Biodynamic Wine” (p. 134-135) tell the story of growing grapes and making wine in our corner of the world. Each state or province section begins with a wine country at a glance section for ready reference and each wine country (DVA or designated viticultural area) has the same. “Wineries and Wines to Sample” provides the stories of 160 wineries of the more that 1,000 wineries of the Pacific Northwest.

As a reference source, the book includes a glossary, list of wine grape varieties grown in the Pacific Northwest, a bibliography and an index. Missing from the index are references to towns and cities to which the wineries are attached. The book is not a hardback but is pleasingly flexible and easy to handle. At $24.95 this is a good choice both for libraries and the individual reader.
ISBN-13: 978-0881929669

Available at the Washington State Library, NW 641.2209 DANEHOW 2010
Not available in Braille, Talking Book or eReader editions.