Hay Fever: How Chasing a Dream on a Vermont Farm Changed My Life
The compelling, funny story of a high-powered professional’s life-changing journey from Manhattan big cheese to Vermont goat cheesemaker\ In the tradition of food memoirs like Under the Tuscan Sun and A Year in Provence, Hay Fever tells the story of New York City literary agent Angela Miller and how looking for tranquility on a Vermont farm turned into an eye-opening, life-changing experience. Seeking solace in the midst of midlife strife brought on by family stress and a high-stakes career,...
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Do you dream of escaping the big city for a bucolic farm in the country? To grow vegetables, raise a few animals, and maybe even learn to make cheese? It would be a relaxing, simple life . . . wouldn’t it? Hay Fever tells the story of one prominent Manhattan professional who gave it a shot—and discovered that the “simple life” is often anything but. Seeking escape and diversion from family pressures, a demanding career, and an unfulfilling social life, Angela Miller and her husband set their sites on a charming nineteenth-century farm in Vermont. They got much more than they bargained for. What began as an innocent project to restore their new country home became a full-blown obsession that led to a successful artisanal cheese-making business—all while Miller kept her job in New York City. Starting with a small herd of goats (the “girls”), Consider Bardwell Farm has grown to become one of the country’s best artisanal cheese producers—but with plenty of hard work and minor disasters along the way. Today, Miller’s cheeses are served in many of the finest restaurants, including Daniel and The French Laundry. This inspiring and funny tale reveals the inner workings of a growing, award-winning dairy farm and the painstaking effort and attention to detail that goes into every bite of cheese. For the cheese cravings the book is bound to stir up, Miller includes a handful of her own delicious recipes and those of food celebrities like Mark Bittman and Jean-Georges Vongerichten. Miller is constantly asked: How do you sustain both a challenging career in the city and life in the country while ultimately making such great cheese? Hay Fever is her personal, entertaining story—perhaps a cautionary tale for some, but for many others just the motivation needed to explore a new culinary adventure, form a closer connection to food, and ultimately pursue a second or third “act” in life that is more fulfilling than simple “work.” Publishers Weekly For those with dreams of starting over again in a bucolic countryside setting, Miller's account of her double life as a successful literary agent and owner of a Vermont goat farm is a bracing dose of reality featuring hard work, frustration and financial straits. In painful (sometimes monotonous) detail, Miller welcomes readers into the barn with tales of her education in farming and cheese-making, introducing them to the kid-birthing process, the problem of bloated goats, and some of her favorite animals. The intricacies of milking and cheese-making, dealing with temperamental equipment, and day-to-day drama among employees should prove informative (and cautionary) to gourmands and dissatisfied office drones considering a move to the farm, but she spends far more time on minutiae than general readers will have patience for. Her warts-and-all account even includes details of her financial struggles, but, strangely, gives comparatively little attention to her two-year stint as the manager of a small-town cafe, a missed opportunity to expand on her tale of entrepreneurship. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION: From Where I Stand. ONE: Green Mountain High. TWO: As Far as the Eye Can See. THREE: Farm Team. FOUR: The New Kids. FIVE: Milk Maids. SIX: What West Pawlet Needs is a Café. SEVEN: Chasing the Cheese Maker. EIGHT: The Little Farm that Could. NINE: Husbandry. TEN: The Way of the Cheese Master. ELEVEN: Mating Game. TWELVE: Is Anyone Tasting the Cheese? THIRTEEN: Trimming Trees and Costs. FOURTEEN: Guests at the Farm. FIFTEEN: Sell, Cut, or Perish. SIXTEEN: Accolades and Accusations. SEVENTEEN: Endings and Beginnings RECIPES. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. INDEX.
\ Publishers Weekly - Library Journal\ For those with dreams of starting over again in a bucolic countryside setting, Miller's account of her double life as a successful literary agent and owner of a Vermont goat farm is a bracing dose of reality featuring hard work, frustration and financial straits. In painful (sometimes monotonous) detail, Miller welcomes readers into the barn with tales of her education in farming and cheese-making, introducing them to the kid-birthing process, the problem of bloated goats, and some of her favorite animals. The intricacies of milking and cheese-making, dealing with temperamental equipment, and day-to-day drama among employees should prove informative (and cautionary) to gourmands and dissatisfied office drones considering a move to the farm, but she spends far more time on minutiae than general readers will have patience for. Her warts-and-all account even includes details of her financial struggles, but, strangely, gives comparatively little attention to her two-year stint as the manager of a small-town cafe, a missed opportunity to expand on her tale of entrepreneurship. \ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.\ \
