Field Days by Jonah Raskin
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Jonah Raskin’s Field Days: A Year of Farming, Eating and Drinking Wine in California (2009) is a poetic love letter to Sonoma County. Readers will most definitely fall hard for the area’s agricultural history, idyllic landscape, hard-working people and fresh food as described by Raskin.
The memoir recounts a year’s worth of experiences traveling throughout Sonoma working on sustainable farms, most notably Oak Hill Farm in Glen Ellen, California. Raskin meets an array of people who are passionate about growing food that is healthy for us and the planet, and he eloquently shares each of their stories. The strongest aspect of the text is the focus on immigrant workers and the role they play in supporting our food system.
Raskin captures the romantic notions and realities of small-scale sustainable farming in a book the San Francisco Chronicle named one of the “50 notable Bay Area books of 2009.” Anyone who has felt a tug to escape a conventional lifestyle and connect with the land that sustains us will appreciate Raskin’s journey.
