{"product_id":"9781933495262","title":"A Time to Plant: Life Lessons in Work, Prayer, and Dirt","description":"\u003cp\u003eKyle Kramer—writer, teacher, and farmer—presents the honest, humorous, and hope-infused story of his journey of coming to know God and himself. For Kramer, this came by rejecting a consumerist approach to life, starting an organic farm, and raising a family in rural southern Indiana.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn his moving debut book, America columnist Kyle Kramer recounts the sometimes-gritty story of how he came to experience the joys of real community through a journey of honest reckoning with his own ambitions. For Kramer, this story involves lots of dirt.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the summer of 1999, Kramer, an earnest and high-achieving private school teacher in Atlanta, decided to forego a promising academic career. Instead, he heeded the voices of the unlikely prophets in his life and purchased a block of hardscrabble land in southern Indiana in order to start a small farm. Tending it back to health—one difficult lesson at a time—Kramer founded Genesis Organic Farm, built a self-sustaining and environmentally friendly home, and began to fully embrace the Benedictine traditions of physical labor, prayer, and hospitality. A Time to Plant is a deeply human story of one man's attempt to make simple living a reality as a spiritual discipline for himself, as a model for his children, and for the good of creation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This book and the story it tells may seem in some sense quiet, mostly confined to a small parcel of land. But it strikes me as a fine and hopeful adventure, one that should give heart to all kinds of people as they try to figure out where they're called to be.\" —Bill McKibben, Author of Deep Economy (from the foreword)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"An important new voice in Catholic spirituality, a voice that is charming and challenging, filled with youthful energy and the wisdom of the ages.\" —Luke Timothy Johnson, Author of The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why It Matters\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Unlike many who extol the virtues of sustainable living for political or intellectual reasons, Kramer speaks gently here, making his argument with spiritual candor and a kind of humble, experiential passion that is itself endearing as well as persuasive.\" —Phyllis Tickle, Author of The Great Emergence\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Anyone who sets out to 'live with soul, head, and hands fully engaged,' as Kyle Kramer does, is bound to lead a strenuous life. Ten years into an experiment in homesteading, he offers us a moving record of his effort to answer the call of high ideals while meeting the demands of farming, house-building, marriage, fatherhood, neighborliness, and a full-time job. How he found time and energy to write these pages, and to write them so well, so honestly, so perceptively, is a wonder. One comes away feeling it was love that set Kramer's words flowing—love for a place, for his wife and their young children, for good work, and for the mysterious ground from which everything rises.\" —Scott Russell Sanders, Author of A Private History of Awe\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ave Maria Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47040386433264,"sku":"9781933495262","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781933495262_p0.jpg?v=1763640627","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781933495262","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}