Josh Kilmer-Purcell - The bucolic plague: how two manhattanites became gentlemen farmers

This book is not about living your dream. It will not inspire you. You will not be emboldened to attempt anything more than making a fresh pot of coffee.

The author reminds you that there are plenty of other memoirs out there written by courageous souls who have broken with their past, poetically leaving behind things such as:

1. Drugs and/or Drinking
2. Career Ennui
3. Bad Relationships

and have successfully achieved goals such as:

1. Creative Fulfillment
2. The Simple Life
3. Jesuss Approval

The author notes that those memoirs are generally full of more shit than a barn at the end of a long winter.

The last time I saw 4 A.M. , I was tottering home in high heels and a matted wig sipping from the tiny bottles of Absolut I always kept in my bag for emergencies. Emergencies like last call.

Now, a little more than a decade later, Im digging through the backpack Ive propped up on the front fender of my pickup truck, counting baby bottles of fresh milk.

Thirteen fourteen fifteen. Ive got fifteen bottles, I report to Farmer John, who, as a lifelong farmer, has seen every single 4 A.M. of his life with considerably more dignity than I ever had. I wonder if farm parents start to panic when their infants first attempt to sleep through the night. Whats wrong with our child?! It just lays there not working for eight hours at a time!

That should be enough. Just ration it out, John advises. They dont know when to stop. Theyll drink whatever you give them, and you dont want them to have upset stomachs.

How do I know if they have upset stomachs?

Youll know.

Now youre sure I dont need any permits or anything? I ask John. What if I get pulled over?

I looked online, John answers, wedging the oversize dog cage containing five three-week-old baby goats farther into the pickups backseat. I didnt see any laws about transporting livestock. Youre not crossing state lines or anything.

Its not the state lines Im worried about. Its the city one. I think its safe to say that Ill be the only commuter hauling five baby goats across the George Washington Bridge into New York City this morning for their daytime television debut.

As I pull out of the driveway of the farm, I adjust the rearview mirror to check on the five tiny napping goats. They inhale and exhale in unison in a tight pile in their cage on the backseat. The windshield begins to fog over as their breaths warm up the chilly April morning interior of the truck.

In the mirror I also see Farmer John still standing outside the barn watching me drive over the hill with his most precious possessionsthe first five kids born in 2008. As with most of the adventures my partner, Brent, and I cook up, the reticent and gentle John is dubious. As our co-farmer (liberal guilt keeps me from calling him our caretaker), John is often rightfully wary of our big-city ways. Its risky to transport livestock this young. Everything from feeding to exposure to drafts and jostling must be monitored. All of the savings of Johns forty-plus-year life have been invested in his eighty-head goat herd. And here I am, chief city slicker, driving off with this years potential profits.

I flick on the trucks heat to dissipate the condensation on the windshield. With all of the milk tankers that speed along our country road during the wee hours of the morning, I need to be able to see the hilly road clearly. Its been a lifelong goal of mine never to die ironically. I need to be alert, even though its a struggle. Its Wednesday morning, and Id made the three-and-a-half-hour trip to our weekend farm from the city last night after work, arriving around midnight. And now, after only three hours of sleep, Im on my way back into the city. Destination: The Martha Stewart Show studio. And then, after the taping, I have to head straight to the advertising agency where I work for a meeting with our most important client.

For weeks Id been dreading the logistics of this trip as much as Id been excited about it. But in the end, it was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

Brent, who as Dr. Brent works with Martha as her resident health and wellness expert, had given Martha several bars of our handmade goat milk soap for Christmas. She enjoyed it so much that she suggested that Brent and she do a segment together on her television show teaching viewers how to make their own soap at home.

Brent, with his MBA background, and me, with my advertising rsum, realized what an amazing opportunity had fallen into our laps. Companies like GE and Procter & Gamble pay fortunes for a mere mention on Marthas popular daytime show. Here we had two entire segments to promote a product. Sure, it wasnt a product wed actually begun manufacturing yet, but we had three weeks from the day Martha extended the invitation until the day of the filming. With our combined expertise, we could launch a company in that short time, couldnt we? Over-achievers that we are, we jumped into it without question. But secretly I had another motivation. Maybe, just maybe, it could be successful enough for me to finally slow down my life a little. Running a farm on the weekends, in addition to being a partner in a booming ad agency as well as writing books and magazine columns, was beginning to tally up to a colossal midlife crisis.

So I buckled down and got to work designing a logo and packaging, and spent hours online figuring out how to build a Web site for the farm. While online farming might not seem to be the most obvious route to riches, I was inspired by William Beekman himself, who had built our historic farm in 1802. He became successful not simply as a farmer, but also as a businessman who owned and ran a neighboring mercantile and a grain mill. On top of it all, hed been appointed by the governor as the first judge of Schoharie County. He was a nineteenth-century multitasker. Brent and I could relate. Then again, he had an army of slaves to help him. All we had was Farmer John and the Internet.

An hour into the three-and-a-half-hour drive to the studio, Im amazed at how docile the kids are. The trucks movement seems to be keeping them in a lulled sleep. Checking my watch, I pull over into a rest stop on the New York State thruway to give them their morning bottle-feeding at the exact hour John had instructed. I pull the cage out of the backseat and set it on the open tailgate of the pickup bed.

Even at that early hour I soon draw a small crowd of onlookers, cooing at the sight of five tiny goats lining up to poke their heads through the cage to fight over the bottles in my hands. Though I was only supposed to split two bottles between them, I go ahead and pass out three more so that the onlookers can feed them as well.