Writer Profile
Books & Essays
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Title:
The Blueberry Years
Date Published:
Thomas Dunne Books 2010Description:
The Blueberry Years captures our experience creating and operating one of the mid-Atlantic's first certified-organic, pick-your-own blueberry farms. For a decade, Sarah, my wife, and I planted, pruned, and picked while also opening the field to hundreds of people who came to harvest berries. These pickers shared blueberry-flavored moonshine and sober religion, warm hugs and cool hats, and always bushels of stories. To give a larger context to our story, I include brief chapters on national issues such as organic foods and new farmers. I also include short interludes on all things blueberry, like the fruit's many health benefits, the woman who domesticated this plant, or the blueberry in literature. Ultimately, this book tells the story of a young couple pursuing their blueberry dream.
Of this book, Ron Rash has said: "There is so much to praise in this beautifully written memoir, but what I admire most is Jim Minick's utter lack of self-righteousness. In these pages we are given a wisdom that has, at its center, a quiet and abiding humility. What a fine, fine book The Blueberry Years is." Robert Morgan has called this book, "an intimate visit to a delightful place with an inspired guide." Sharyn McCrumb, Nina Planck, and Steven Hopp also praise this book, along with Ann Pancake, Joel Salatin, and Gene Logsdon. Naomi Wolf calls it "delicious reading" and the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance picked The Blueberry Years as one of the best new books for the summer of 2010.
Book Review #1:
Minick, a columnist for the Roanoke Times New River Current, chronicles how he and his wife, Sarah, pursued their dream of starting an organic, pick-your-own blueberry farm in Virginia. They hope that the experiment in new millennial homesteading will make them independent of their "off-farm" teaching jobs and lead to a simpler and environmentally responsible life that gives them the time to practice their arts (Jim writing, Sarah basket weaving). The chapters narrating their 12 years of farming are separated by interludes on the scientific and cultural history of the blueberry and the benefits of organic farming. Minick also expands the story beyond his personal experience to tell a larger story of the extreme financial challenges facing the independent American farmer, as well as exploring the negative effects of agrobusiness on American diets and health. Despite the headaches, loneliness, and unglamorous aspects of farming, Minick sees the farm as a holy place of fellowship between humans and the land. The narrative benefits from the charming stories of people who visit the farm, many driving hundreds of miles to pick blueberries, concluding with a collection of enticing blueberry recipes. from Publishers Weekly
Book Review #2:
Teacher and writer Minick moves his family to a Virginia farm, where he plants a thousand blueberry bushes. Learning the ins and outs of blueberry culture, they toil to make their farm an economic success while following rigorous principles of organic agriculture. Local farmers deride some of their practices and warn that rejecting modern pesticides and fertilizers will leave them vulnerable to blights and pests. The Minicks find their chosen methods not always easy, but they bask in the many rewards their efforts yield. The blueberries themselves have incomparable flavor, and, when conditions are perfect, yield abundantly. People drive hundreds of miles just to gather pristine berries in the warmth of a Virginia afternoon. And the daily and seasonal rhythms of the farm give the Minicks pride of ownership and of productive accomplishment so long as nature chooses to cooperate. Very useful for anyone eager to plunge into organic agriculture. Recipes included. --Mark Knoblauch, Booklist
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Title:
All There is to Keep
Date Published:
Iris Press and Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative 2008Description:
Jim Minick served as the editor for this collection of poems by Rita Sizemore Riddle.
Title:
Burning Heaven
Date Published:
Wind Publications 2008Description:
winner of the Book of the Year Award from The Virginia College Bookstores Association
Title:
Her Secret Song
Date Published:
Motes 2008Description:
In HER SECRET SONG, Jim Minick peers into the "hollow-hidden spring" of his aunt's life, exploring a continual seep "that sings her secret song." This collection of poems tells of the poet's Aunt Ruth, her struggles with poverty, "elephant man's disease," loneliness, cancer... and, inevitably, with the way of her death. HER SECRET SONG chronicles a story of connection that transcends the frailties of living and dying by revealing the essences of looking, loving and learning.
Title:
Finding a Clear Path
Date Published:
West Virginia University Press 2005Description:
Finding a Clear Path intertwines Appalachian literature, agriculture, and ecology as author Jim Minnick describes everything from the changing seasons to the beneficial black snakes. He takes the reader on many journeys, including a walk and a "drive". He also allows the reader to float, fly, gather, and grow. Using his background as a blueberry farmer and his own personal life experiences, Minick adds a touch home that will truly be enjoyed by those interested in the Appalachian region. Having studied ecology, Minick also introduces information that can be appreciated from a scientific point of view. Reading this collection of essays will allow you to relax into some armchair exploration of Appalachia or perhaps spark you to start some journeys of your own.
Book Review #1:
In FINDING A CLEAR PATH, Jim Minick maps the trails, real and metaphorical, that twine through the ancient Appalachian hills and through the hearts of those who love them, gracefully uniting the land, the wildlife and its people." -Scott Weidensaul, author of Mountains of the Heart
Book Review #2:
"In Finding a Clear Path, Jim Minick walks woods, gardens, and fields with a poet's eye; his seeing is sharp, his knowledge deep, his sentences tough and lean. And he is as practical as a farmer's almanac, too, offering not only observations and reflections, but advice on country matters of all kinds. Minick knows that on this lovely, flawed planet of ours, much is well." -Richard Hague, author of Ripenings and Milltown Natural
Book Review #3:
Another shining writer has emerged straight ouf of the Southern landscape. Here Jim Minick has written a simple and exquisitely beautiful book consecutively about the Appalachian farm he inhabits and his engagement in a life that makes sense. In impressive vignettes, Minick sketches one man's movement through his life in Rural Retreat, Virginia, and his desire to know the depths of it. "I need to name what I love," he writes. In exhilarating language and iwth merry deftness, Minick tells of making a birdhouse for his wife, picking wineberries, counting osprey along the river, growing beans, and finding box turtles, but beyond the immediate, his subjects outline a formula for a good life: community, rootedness, history, family, the beauty of nature. Minick has discovered wholeness. This book I highly recommend. It will surprise and delight and satisfy you to the last page; like his love of life, Minick's writing never flags. The Virginia mountains are lucky to have this new voice: would that every place find such a singer of praises. -Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, Wild Card Quilt: Taking a Chance on Home, and Pinhook: Finding Wholeness in a Fragmented Land