Growing a Farmer Blog 1

I have been intrigued as to how Kurt Timmermeister will describe his various farming projects while reading his book "Growing a Farmer." In the first two pages alone, Timmermeister was already vividly painting images in my head with how he described the biscuit that he served to his customers. His choice to include what the biscuit lacked intensified the image in my mind, as I could feel that the biscuit he made was freshly made from his own hands. The second instance of this in the first chapter came a couple pages later in a different way. When Timmermeister wrote that the real estate office sent him a catalogue of listings in a manila cover, I could imagine my own interpretation of the scene in my head. I used whatever knowledge I have of manila covers to visualize what the cover might have looked like. I heard a ‘thud’ in my head as Timmermeister tossed the cover onto his desk. Even though these were two small moments within the first ten pages of the book, I have already gotten a general sense of how Timmermeister would write for the rest of the book.

Indeed, for the remainder of my reading, I saw this carry on throughout the pages I read. When I was reading the chapter on bees, I could see a clear image of a short description of the queen bee. Even though there were words that were too complex for me to visualize accurately such as “cavities,” other words associated with it such as “hexagonal” helped me create a general image of where the queen bee deposited eggs. I figured that I did not need to know every detail about what Timmermeister was describing. If I could capture simple but effective words in the passage, then my mind could fill in everything, and I could provide my own interpretation of what Timmermeister was talking about. One thing I realized when reading the chapter on fruit, apples, and vinegar was that Timmermeister focuses his farming projects more on the actual process as opposed to the time. I was more interested in his descriptions of cherry blossom trees or the paragraph long discussion of loquat trees than I was with his brief mention of the time it took for fruit trees to grow. So far, this book has been entertaining and insightful, and I can’t wait to hear more from what Timmermeister has to say.