The Quarter-Acre Farm: How I Kept the Patio, Lost the Lawn, and Fed My Family for a Year

I thoroughly enjoyed The Quarter-Acre Farm. I originally looked for it on Amazon because I saw a comment by the author, Spring Warren, on a Facebook post about the White House garden, where she mentioned her new book. Once I found it and saw several positive reviews, I decided to get my own copy. I had a horrible time deciding between buying the Kindle edition so I could have it RIGHT AWAY or the print version so I could see the illustrations other reviewers mentioned. I finally sprang for the print version and am glad to have done so - Spring Warren's storytelling is wonderful, but Jesse Pruet's pictures add a whole new level of fun and intrigue to the book.As for my review title - Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is the standard I hold a lot of "homesteading" books to. That book taught me SO much about so many subjects that it's an excellent yardstick for me. Kingsolver's book is highly educational, makes me think, makes me feel involved due to her tone, and offers recipes that are approachable and "doable" for folks like me who aren't going to become pro chefs any time soon.Warren's format in The Quarter-Acre Farm is similar to the format of Kingsolver's book; a chapter full of personal stories and interesting insights and research, along with a recipe to top off each chapter. How did Warren bump Kingsolver from my top 3? With her humor. While Kingsolver shares some fantastic stories, Warren's tone is more approachable and less professorial. Even her chapter titles bring fun to the read: "Pole Dancing" (which gave me a chuckle but then taught me very important things via her pumpkin trellis experiment) - "Magical Fruit" (yes, that would be the beans, of course!) - all sorts of things made me chuckle, smirk, and in some cases try to roar with laughter as quietly as possible so I wouldn't wake my sleeping children.Spring Warren definitely shares plenty of insights from her own trials and triumphs in the garden that will be useful to me in my own garden; many authors in the gardening and homesteading arena do this. What she did that very few do is make everything educational AND fun to read. I highly recommend The Quarter-Acre Farm to anyone interested in gardening, whether on a hobby scale or for a full-scale local eating/self-sufficiency effort. I will be rereading this book and plan to have my children read it as one of our more non-traditional texts in our homeschool as well. I'm preparing now for the giggles from my 'tween daughter when we go over snail reproduction. (Trust me, it's worth a giggle - and who knew snails were that strong, too?) I suspect the story of her sister's hair dye venture will bring forth plenty of knowing nods from my kids as it did from me.The reviews on the back of the book say it all. One author described reading this book as being like sitting down for a chat with a friend over coffee; I would thoroughly agree, but I expect I'd be asked to weed a bit as well. (Which made me laugh all the harder to myself, because I think Warren would convince me quite easily to do so!)I'm not certain if the Kindle edition of this book includes the illustrations; I plan to find out in the near future by ordering it. If you want to be able to see those, I would highly recommend the print copy. But if you don't care about the pictures as much as just having a phenomenal read, get either version. Hopefully you'll learn as much and laugh as much as I did, and walk away hoping for more from Spring Warren and her garden.

I loved reading The Quarter-Acre Farm. I am sending an abundance of praise to Spring Warren for writing this book as it’s truly inspirational! For those of you who are eyeing your backyard and wondering about the farming possibilities, this book will be a guiding light.I have tiptoed around gardening for many years mainly due to a lack of time. In our own efforts to transform our suburban backyard into a producing mini-farm, my partner and I started slowly with our farming journey. We dallied with a couple of tomato plants, peppers and green onions. Then we planted two grapes and built an arbor around the deck perimeter for the grapevines to cling upon. To our joy and taste buds, those two little grape plants matured into a miniature vineyard. We pluck whole bunches of mouth-watering grapes and what we can't consume is delivered to our respective offices for our co-workers to enjoy. We also relish eating on the deck under the arbor with the hanging grape bunches overhead. I am almost dining al fresco in the verdant hills of Tuscany.As we ventured forth to grow more produce in our backyard, we were both filled with a passion for farming. To stoke this passion, I bought a dozen books on the subject matter. To my complete surprise and utter delight, Spring Warren's book: The Quarter Acre Farm caught me off guard. Let me explain, I was expecting a dry tome on farming not a hilariously funny book that was not only educating me on farming wisdom but had me laughing out loud. Spring’s writing style injects wit, wisdom and honesty in the many anecdotes that she shares regarding her farm experiment. Her test was to grow all of the food in her backyard that would feed 75% of the food her family consumed for one year. While reading her book, I was suddenly along for the ride and enthralled with Spring's journey into farming. By the end of the year Spring’s husband and sons were not only partaking in the homegrown meals but became her biggest supporters. On a side note, her description of the geese and their amped behavior regarding their favorite snack was sidesplitting. This is a book I will reference again and again as it is a treasure.Back to our lot, we planted a vegetable and herb garden, bee and hummingbird flowers, four fruit trees, a dozen blueberries, rose hips and raspberries. Our lawn is overrun with bee friendly clover. There are now a multitude of wildlife visitors such as garden snakes, squirrels, wild rabbits from the green space, a spotted owl, and hawks who rest on the bird feeders.After reading Spring's book, I think I entered the sisterhood of farming. And if you ever get a letter from your HOA complaining about the weeds in your front yard like we did, I did pull the dandelions but left the clover.Sincerely, Black Dog Organic Farm, Oregon.

The author committed to growing 75% of the food she would consume and her book is about her struggles and successes in doing that for a year. Her motivations are all things I worry about. A primary reason for her was food safety and not really knowing what has been done to industrially produced veggies. She worries about the excessive fossil fuels used to produce industrial food and to get it to our plates.Her northern California climate left me with plenty of garden envy, specifically citrus envy. I wish I could grow citrus. Excess olives are another problem I wish I had (if I did have this problem, Spring gives detailed instructions on how to salt cure them). I love her description of scrounging for the sake of her garden – gardens can cost a lot if you don’t do this. But, if you ask around plenty of things can be found for free.Spring ate her snails, albeit reluctantly, a delicious way to rid a garden of pests. Unfortunately, snail eating has been vetoed here. What is on my agenda is growing mushrooms – now I have a good idea of what to do and what not to do.The Quarter-Acre Farm isn’t really a how-to-book, although there are some instructions and plenty of recipes that look good (I think I’ll try her preserved lemons, but sadly not with homegrown lemons), but it is a good story and easy to read. I enjoyed the book and recommend it to anyone who thinks about growing some of their own food.

Really enjoyed this engaging funny and informative book. Spring Warren has an infectious enthusiasm and a charming self-deprecating manner which makes this a great read - loads of really useful information too.

I liked this book for the humor that she brought to it. It wasn't a how-to book by any stretch of the imagination but it was entertaining and, I think, illustrative of what can be done if you're willing to try. I'm not sure I learned anything really new, and it would have been nice to have pictures of her garden to better understand just what she was doing and dealing with. None the less her writing style and sense of humor carried me along to the end in just a couple of sittings.

The order of the chapters didn't have a logical flow. The recipes weren't interesting, the prose was adequate. There was less technical information than I'd hoped for.