Writer's love rooted in family farm
New book serves up delicious memories, recipes
November, for most of us, marks the year closing in, the mad dash from Thanksgiving table to shopping mall to gift-wrapped presents and champagne toasts.
For farmers, November marks an end to the vegetable harvest — but it also is a beginning.
As Terra Brockman writes in The Seasons on Henry's Farm (Agate Surrey, $25), this month ushers in the first hard frost and the crucial first planting for the next season’s crops.
Fittingly, that’s where Brockman’s memoir begins, with the tedious inserting of garlic cloves, one by one, into the soil.
The book, an account of life on her brother’s Central Illinois farm, introduces us to the Brockman clan, whose ties to the land in Congerville go back four generations.
Brockman — founder of the Land Connection, an Evanston-based nonprofit that works to train and promote farmers — spent 15 years away from the family farm but eventually came back.
Her lush imagery and lyrical prose capture the daily and weekly rhythms of farming without romanticizing it (though Henry Brockman, as the quiet, hardworking, methodical steward of the land, takes on a sort of mythic stature).
You understand full well that this is physically grueling and emotionally draining work; 12- to 16-hour work days are the norm.
The book also functions as part field guide, as Brockman explains how and why plants react the way they do to rain, heat and cold.
She entertains with stories of duck sex (“the most ungainly and ridiculous in the entire animal kingdom”), and the touchy subject of doing away with plastic bags at the Evanston farmers market, where Henry Brockman sells.
And she offers a handful of simple, satisfying recipes of the less-is-more variety — corn slathered with marjoram-infused butter, an old-fashioned apple crisp.
Locavores will appreciate Brockman’s book as a testament to sustainable agriculture; those just looking for an engaging read won’t be left hungry, either.
Henry and Terry Brockman are the featured guests at a five-course dinner at 6 p.m. Thursday at June, 4450 N. Prospect Rd., Ste. S1, Peoria Heights; $95. A book signing will follow the dinner. (309) 682-5863.