Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I truly did not find this book useful, and found it so annoying I gave it away after the first read. The book is a constant reminder of the grind and sacrifice the author put his family through to achieve his dream of living on a farm. Let me be the first to mention this: abject poverty is not a prerequisite to building up your farm. While the ability to scrimp, recycle, reclaim, and generally make do, may save you a few bucks... we've found it generally isn't worth it. Better to have one member of the household maintain an off farm income and just buy the power you need to get on with the job. In his delight at displaying the discomfort his family was willing to endure, day in and day out, the author creates the opportunity for the reader to dismiss, utterly, the underlying message. To whit: the average farm family (this probably means you, dear reader) can expect a drop in income and purchasing power if they decide to make a go of small scale agriculture. Or large scale, but that is a topic for another book. Whether or not a drop in purchasing power will impact mightily on your lifestyle and ambitions is a question to ask yourself before leaping into any business venture, farming or otherwise. But probably the most annoying feature of this book was its flat statement that you need to be young to get into farming. Wrong. You can be 65 with a full career behind you, and decide you want to farm as a retirement income. What you lack in physical strength and stamina can more than be replaced by the judicious use of internal combustion. Honestly. You'd think the man had no idea we'd advanced beyond the iron shovel.