When I was in my twenties I got it into my head that I wanted to be a part-time farmer — farm part time and write part time, a “career” I might still find ideal, if far less practical than I once thought. I don’t have a lot of interest in going “back to the land.” I like living within easy reach of libraries, art museums, Thai food, interesting music and a good tattoo shop. I also like producing some of my own food and being able to walk out of my door into the woods. This website is mostly about my efforts to have it both ways.

I have, at various times, been or called myself a writer, historian, editor, web developer, theoretical physicist, amateur farmer, and craftsman. I wrote a book about what it means to be rural and now I manage a website for teachers. I used to work with the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, served briefly on its board of directors, and then ran out of time after my daughter was born. I have threatened to be writing a history of sustainable agriculture, two novels, and a cookbook, none of which is likely to be finished anytime soon.

My wife and I have a small house near a medium-sized city, an acre and a quarter or mostly woods, a small garden and four ducks. We used to have a larger garden and seven ducks, but children are born and aging birds die, and balances shift. We built a nature trail through our woods, and from the middle of it I can almost not see my neighbors — my human neighbors, that is; I can see plenty of toads and squirrels and chickadees, and on a summer night the tree frogs and cicadas drown out the interstate. We also have two basset hounds, three cats, and four tanks of fish. The basset hounds are not drowned out by anything.

Some of my interests that you’ll find represented here:

• backyard poultry
• cooking
• dendrology
• gardening
• herpetology
• homebrewing
• Pennsylvania Dutch food
• pickles
• urban agriculture
• woodworking

Does all that add up to being a “new agrarian“? Maybe. I think if I knew exactly what that meant, I wouldn’t need a whole website to write about it.

— David Walbert