After finishing the whole book of Growing a Farmerby Kurt Timmermeister, I find the book tells stories not only about farming, but also closely related to business, art, and life.
About Business
Even though the author Kurt Timmermeister has always wanted his farm to become a profitable business, there are many other stories on the farm are business-related, even trivial things like cutting meat has some innate business logic. For example, when I first came to the sentence that “the other concept that surrounds meat cutting is that is a zero-sum game,” I was shocked because it was so surprising to hear this business concept that my professor Larry Harris repeated for a thousand of times in a book talking about farming. He always said that trading is a zero-sum game so that someone’s losses must be others’ gains. Therefore, there must be someone loses in the market. I understand the trading concept clearing, but I’ve never thought that this mechanism works for cutting meat as well. When applying to meat cutting, it teaches people a business lesson that when you make one cut, you must have forgone the opportunity of another different cut, which is the opportunity cost in business. After thinking through the whole process, I find it very interesting that, just like Professor Hansen mentioned in class, no matter what the topics of writing are, they come to business in the end.
About Art
Although Timmermeister keeps saying that he wants to be self-sufficient and profitable on his little farm, he continually does irrational things that he values a lot, which is a betrayal of the logical and rational essence of business, and finally becomes an unusual form of art. For me, the definition of art is a unique pursuit of something that is good, lofty, right, and influential based on the artist’s understanding without harming others, and nearly everything Timmermeister has done in his book fits perfectly into my definition of art. For example, his move from downtown Seattle to Vashon Island fulfills his desire to lead a natural and independent life. His farming activities on the island benefit the soil. The bee-raising helps to pollinate crops, vegetables, and fruits; his KurtHouse dinner gives people an opportunity to experience and enjoy the pleasure of farm life away from the noise and speed in the city. His resistance to artificial inputs like plastic and chemicals to his farm shows the pure pursuit of his art – naturalism – which is also the most crucial element that makes his “art practice” admirable and wishful.
About Life
Overall, the book tells many stories with which I resonate. To some extent, I had lived similar kind of life when I was very young, around five or seven years old. For years since then, I have never thought about going back to the lifestyle I was used to, helping my grandparents preserve tomato seeds, plant potatoes, and harvest pumpkins and going hiking with my family on weekends. On the contrary, I tried my best to accustom myself to the modern city life and gradually move from cities to big cities to bigger cities. When reading Growing a Famer, I recall all the memory in my childhood and the pure happiness I once had. I become eager to go back to the village my grandparents lived in and possibly would become a farmer like Timmermeister one day in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment