Turn Here Sweet Corn: Organic Farming Works (Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage)

Atina Diffley is an organic farmer, mother, and warrior. This rapidly unfolding memoir gracefully moves through the author's entire career span, as well as covering a good bit of family history and some of her deepest influences. The final chapters describe a battle between the small family farm and the oil corporation. Ms. Diffley readily captures the rhythmic poetry innate in the life of a small scale, family-oriented organic truck farmer. She also includes a lot of philosophical detail about organic/permaculture farming itself, which explains some of the techniques she and her husband used in vegetable production. Really interesting and well articulated explanations.In the interest of keeping the story to a manageable length, some personal details are understandably missing. There is a beautiful arc through the book where she talks about the evolution of her relationship with her daughter. There were certainly times I had questions about how she mastered certain practical skills, how she came to certain conclusions as a woman and as a parent, how she saw herself, how she related to her staff, how she balanced family and work... While these things are referenced briefly in the book, they are not, understandably, the focus. Personally, I would have loved a bit more detail on how these details were managed, to balance the poetic passages and the tactical information about how they defended their farm from various development projects. On some level with this book and with Kristin Kimball's A Dirty Life, I found it lighter than I'd like on the insights and descriptions of the emotional struggles, awkward mistakes and learning curves that are a part of mastering the skills of farming (and parenting) -- insights that make the author's story more accessible and relatable.I'm not quibbling over the value of this book. Ms. Diffley is definitely a very powerful, decisive and inspiring warrior and she has broken new legislative ground with her sheer passion, will and determination, which is evident in her character from the very beginning of her story. I'm so grateful she has written this book to inspire us to follow this movement in protecting organic farms. Perhaps the more mundane aspects of her inner life and growth as a farmer seemed less important in the editing process. Well worth reading.

This book is so amazingly well written, I expect it to become a national best-seller. The stories themselves are magical, and then Atina takes them and weaves a magically realistic tapestry that between plain speak and practical farming advice combine to make one of the best books I have read in years. It inspired me to write my first Amazon review, ever.Admittedly, I'm an aspiring farmer, but I have also read a good number of farming memoirs, and this one takes the cake. If you want to be inspired, read this book. If you want to follow the story of what it takes to become/remember how to be a farmer, and remain a farmer, read this book. If you want to better understand the current climate of farming in the U.S., read this book. If you want some examples on how to keep your children connected to Nature, read this book. If you want to read some incredible examples of how truth can be stranger than science-fiction, read Turn Here Sweet Corn: Organic Farming Works.If you live in an urban or rural area, have farming in your family, or eat food, you need to read this book. It's an important one, and it will surprise you.

Based on the true story of raising a family while running an organic farm, Atina Diffley has written one of the defining books of our time about food, family, culture and power. The Amazon description of the book is pretty good, so I will not repeat it here.I am a nature teacher with Green Spiral Tours in Saint Louis, and have read many, many books on nature and the environment; this is one of the very best books in the field and points the way forward, towards cultivating the 'culture' in agriculture. What's most remarkable is that it is based on a true story; thus Atina is one of the Sheros of our time.I believe "Turn Here, Sweet Corn" to be a modern classic, and one that belongs on the shelves of every professor teaching Education for Sustainability, on the reading lists of High Schools who want to become relevant, and indeed, on the kindles of young families who care about food and what they are feeding their children. Beyond that, it's a heartwarming and enjoyable read, where the "little guy" gets to win for a change. As the sub-title says, "Organic Farming Works!"

Atina Diffley writes beautifully about her experience farming organically and how that improves our nutrition and the soil. This book is not just for farmers but for the general public because her writing is lyrical and moving! I love not only what she writes about farming and vegetables but also about relationships; her relationships with her first and second husband, her children, her workers, and her customers. I first borrowed this book from the library and then had to have it for my own. I would recommend it to anyone who eats and cares about what they eat and also about what we are doing to that limited resource, our land. Atina (and her family) are definitely fighters and she writes exquisitely about two fights she had trying to save their farmland, first from developers and then from a pipeline that was set to cross their land. It is an uplifting read, one that shows that one person/family/community can make a difference