The wisdom of the radish And other lessons learned on a small farm

*Starred Review* With the average age of America's farmers at an all-time high of 58, who's going to rear the radishes in coming years? Enter the Greenhorns: a new breed of young, idealistic, rarely farm-raised growers who are establishing small farms in both urban and rural areas. Newbies like Hopkins and Emmett, both educated environmentalists, see organic farming as a way to restore both land and community. If that sounds like a recipe for a preachy tome, fear not: Hopkins is the Erma Bombeck of organic farming, and that's high praise if you remember the midcentury housewife and stealth feminist with 30 million readers. Hopkins paints herself as a citified klutz with a black thumb whose first crop of bug-eaten greens gets disdainful looks from shoppers. But farming changes her. She starts as a vegan with a hankering for eggs and discovers, in one hysterically funny chapter, that those cute chicks hatch into hens (good for eggs) or roosters (who like to gang-rape the hens) until they find new homes as dinner. Her relationship with Emmett changes, too, but that romantic tale is left to Hopkins. Earthy but urbane, and addictively readable.--Monaghan, Patricia Copyright 2010 Booklist

As a young, idealistic graduate from a Stanford University master's program in journalism, Hopkins went along with her boyfriend's plan to start an organic farm, Foggy River Farm, in Healdsburg, CA, on his grandparents' property, though neither had traditional agricultural training. That lack of experience and the inherent frustration is the theme of their first year of farming-this is farming via Google (not as successful as training from childhood or a visit from the county extension service might be). Hopkins covers some of the themes familiar from Michael Pollan's books as well as Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle about the virtues of local food and sustainable agriculture. Far more interesting, however, is Hopkins's consideration of the personal decisions that led a suburbanite who hates vegetables to a farming life long since abandoned by most Americans. Similar to her blog of the same title (wisdomoftheradish.com), Hopkins's writing is informal and contains swearing. VERDICT The tone here is definitely younger and more casual than most farming books; a good choice for devotees of farming books as well as for lovers of good narrative nonfiction or memoir.-Margaret Heller, Dominican Univ. Lib., River Forest, IL (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.