Our September Front Porch Book Club Selection is Sarah Frey's The Growing Season
Grab that sweet tea and pull up a seat as we dive in to one book each month with the Country Living Front Porch Book Club, capping each month with a chat with the authors themselves. Our September selection is Sarah Frey's The Growing Season!
"When I was a little girl, I felt like part of the earth," writes Sarah Frey in her new memoir, The Growing Season. I read this while standing on my back porch, the bottoms of my bare feet slightly scorched by the sun-warmed concrete. It was nearly a hundred degrees and I felt like, as Sarah says so perfectly, so simply, part of the earth. It was a sentiment that called to me. I had to keep reading.
One of 21 children, Sarah grows up on her family's small farm in rural southern Illinois, spending much of her childhood chasing after her older brothers, earning her stripes with every opportunity afforded her. She's a young girl in love with the land and the animals they care for, idealistic in the way we all are as children. But as Sarah gets older, she begins to recognize the cycle of poverty the farm is caught in and dreams of an escape. So at 15, she does just that, moving out with nothing more than a pickup truck—and a whole lot of grit—to sustain her.
And sustain her it does, but before Sarah can chase other dreams outside of her small hometown, life on the farm beckons again, and she faces a choice: Escape home—and watch the land be sold to the bank in foreclosure—or take over the farm herself, keeping the place she has come to love in the family and beginning the hard work of turning strife-filled childhood memories into something new.
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The Growing Season chronicles this journey—and so much more. Farmers have to "struggle and fight and understand that it might all come to nothing," writes Sarah. It's a sentiment reflected in these pages, as Sarah's tenacity is put to the test again and again. Along the way, she forged a farming empire (of pumpkins!) spread across the United States, started a family of her own, and became a leading Harvard case study.
Sarah's writing is sharp and clear and sprinkled with thoughts begging to be highlighted for remembering. As a woman farmer, she offers encouragement with her words and strength with her example. Reading her story made me to want to get my hands in the dirt and wrestle with the hard work and deep reward of growing things again. Whether fighting her way into boardrooms, challenging sexism, defending her farm laborers, or just plain daring to do things in her own way, Sarah's story is one of sheer will: the will to love the land, to love each other, and to love the life she's built—literally—from the ground up.
COUNTRY LIVING FRONT PORCH BOOK CLUB FOR SEPTEMBER 2020
Selection: The Growing Season by Sarah Frey (available via local bookstores, Amazon, or Bookshop)
Start reading with us September 1.
Send Sarah your questions! September 22 and 23 via Country Living's Instagram Stories.
Tune in to our Instagram Stories as Sarah answers your questions and chats about The Growing Season on September 30.
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