"This is the story of the two love affairs that interrupted the trajectory of my life: one with farming and the other with a complicated and exasperating farmer." The Dirty Life is the captivating chronicle of their first year on Essex Farm, from the cold North Country winter through the following harvest season--complete with their wedding in the loft of the barn. Kimball and her husband had a plan: to grow everything needed to feed a community. It was an ambitious idea, a bit romantic, and it worked.