This Common Ground : Seasons on an Organic Farm

In the tradition of Michael Pollan, Joan Gussow, and Verlyn Klinkenborg’s The Rural Life, This Common Groundis an inspirational evocation of a life lived close to the earth, written by the head farmer at one of the country’s first community-supported farms. By reflecting on four seasons of activity at his beloved Quail Hill Farm in eastern Long Island, Scott Chaskey offers stirring insight into the connections between land and the human family. Whether writing about the voice of a small wren nesting in the lemon balm or a meadow of oats, millet, and peas rising to silver and green after a fresh rain, this poet-farmer’s contagious sense of wonder brings us back to our bond with the soil.

Scott Chaskey has grown crops for the Peconic Land Trust at Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett, New York, for the last fifteen years and has worked as poet-in-residence in numerous schools and museums.