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Harvesting Legacies From The Land
Free Press
August 2009
On Sale: August 4, 2009
256 pages
ISBN: 1416599304
EAN: 9781416599302
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
It was when David Mas Masumoto's father had a stroke on the
sprawling fields of their farm that the son looked with new
eyes on the land where he and generations of his family have
toiled for decades. Masumoto -- an organic farmer working
the land in California's Central Valley -- farms stories as
he farms peaches. In Wisdom of the Last Farmer, an
impassioned memoir of revitalization and redemption, he
finds the natural connections between generation and
succession, fathers and children, booms and declines as he
tells the story of his family and their farm. He brings us
to the rich earth of America's Fruit Basket, under the vine
trellises and canes where grapes are grown, and to the fruit
orchards flush with green before harvest, where he uncovers
and preserves the age-old wisdom that is fast disappearing
in our modern, information-driven world -- and that is
urgently needed in this time of food crises and social
disruption.Masumoto sees the price the family has paid to
grow complex heirloom peaches -- when the market rewards
tasteless, big, and red fruits -- and the challenges of
maintaining traditions and integrity while working in the
modern, high-pressure agricultural marketplace. As his
father's health declines along with the profitability of the
family farm, Masumoto has the further hard work of nursing
his father back to health -- becoming master to the teacher
who once schooled him -- and is driven beyond economic
concerns to even larger questions of life, death, and
renewal.In his gorgeous, lyrical prose, Masumoto conjures
the realities of farming life while weaving in the history
of American agriculture over the past century, encapsulating
universal themes of work along with wisdom that could be
gleaned only from the earth. By the end of the workday, he
understands the feeling of accomplishment when you've done
your best...and discovers that it's when he lets go -- of
both his father and control of nature -- that wisdom
manifests itself. And, when Masumoto's daughter intends to
return to the family farm, hope is found in the generations.
In the quiet eloquence of Wisdom of the Last Farmer, you
will see how your own destiny is involved in the future of
your food, the land, and the farm.
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