I laughed my way through most of this book. There was a "suspenseful" part in the middle where I didn't know what was going to happen, but other than that, I laughed. Laskas writes about buying a farm, literally, with her husband-to-be in rural Pennsylvania. She and Alex are about as city as people can be. Thankfully, they both had a sense of humor to handle all the ups and downs of being on a farm. I admire the drive to achieve a dream and to stick with it. Great book! ( )

I read this book the same week I read "Hit by a Farm" and when I first started this one, I didn't think I'd enjoy it nearly as much as I did the other one. But I kept going and found that it's a very good story - and very similar to "Hit by...". I don't care much for the author's writing style - it sounds too much like a blonde valley-girl, but the stories are very entertaining. This lady and her boyfriend go "farm shopping" as a date and end up buying 50 acres in rural PA. Of course, they know nothing and I mean NOTHING about rural life at all, so you can see where humorous situations can occur. There is also some real drama in the story in events that happen to the 2 of them. Enjoyable. ( )

I highly recommend this. A very thoughtful, contemplative, oddly spiritual without intending to be so, sort of book. Very readable. Funny, sad, real. ( )

I enjoyed this memoir of finding a new life on a farm. I liked Laskas' discovery that what looks like a postcard from a distance is a lot more complicated in real life. ( )

What a surprise, that this book should jump off the shelves of a second-hand store and into my wife's hands. Back in the late 90s, when Laskas was writing up her transition to farm life in essays for the Washington Post Magazine on Sundays, my then-girlfriend and I would hand them back and forth, commenting on the writing, commenting on the unfolding story. And my girlfriend, a rural Ohioan at heart, would rhapsodize about chucking all our suburban life and getting a farm. And I would say something insensitive like "did you read the part where it says sheep are stupid?"

Flash forward to 2013. My girlfriend is now my wife, and we live on a 2-acre spread in a little town in Ohio. Running into Laskas after all these years, then, was a little like running into an old college friend who just happens to have made some very similar choices to your own. No, a 2-acre yard is exactly nothing like a farm, and yet I fear that I recognized some of Laskas's struggles with "what am I going to do with all this space?" Moreso, I found myself shaking my head at her urbanite's missteps in rural culture, and then I found myself remembering the times I've put my foot in my mouth.

By turns funny and sad, this is an honest and well-crafted memoir. It's probably not the kind of thing which would appeal to me if I didn't recognize the author, but let me introduce you to my old friend Jeanne... she has some interesting things to say. ( )