Forthcoming · Southern Legends

Company of Farmers

The people who taught me to love the land — and the farm I dreamed, built, and did not keep.

Before I owned an acre, I owned a shelf of farmers.

I collected them during the years my wife and I were building a flower farm on nine acres in Northeast Alabama. I read them looking for permission. Each one said yes in a different way. Some said yes to the hard thing. Some said yes to the small thing. A few said yes and then showed you the back side of the yes — the debt, the drought, the year it didn't work.

Then I lost the farm. This is not a how-to. It is a book about why the land pulls at a certain kind of person, and what it costs to answer the pull, or to answer it and still come up short. The credential is the wreckage, not the podium.

Each chapter is a farmer. Each farmer is a mirror.