归田园兮二十载，跌跌撞撞做农人
In the 22 years since Kurt Timmermeister bought four acres of rocky, suspect farmland here for $100,000, he has had his ribs broken by an amorous female cow, lost a lamb to a crow that pecked its eyes out, and recoiled from the cannibalism of his chickens (when they weren’t eating one another, they were picked off by raccoons), among other blood- and mud-flecked dramas.
二十二年前，库尔特·蒂默梅斯特(Kurt Timmermeister)以10万美元(约合人民币60.5万元)的价格买下4英亩(约合1.62公顷)乱石丛生、勉强称作“农场”的土地。这些年来，他曾被一头发情的母牛撞断肋骨，让一只小羊羔被乌鸦啄掉了眼睛，还曾经被母鸡之间的同类相残行为惊得连连后退(那些母鸡不是被对方吃掉，就会被浣熊叼走)，更不用说其它溅满鲜血与泥点的闹剧了。
He has learned that polar fleece is a terrible material to wear while working with bees (their feet get tangled in the hooked fabric, causing them to alert their hive mates, who will then divebomb the wearer). And he has also learned that the raw-milk market is a roiling tangle of regulation and zealotry, and the economics of the farmers’ market don’t add up for small growers of commodity crops like beans and carrots.
而现在他学到了，在照管蜜蜂的时候，穿着摇粒绒是件恐怖的事(蜜蜂的脚会缠在这种钩状纤维里，迫使它们对蜂巢里的同伴发出警告，然后，那些同伴就会对穿着摇粒绒的家伙俯冲而下)。他还了解到，在鲜奶市场里，规章制度与盲目的行为总是纠缠不清;而农贸市场里的营利准则并不适用于经营大豆、胡萝卜等经济作物的小种植者。
Yet Mr. Timmermeister, a 51-year-old recovering restaurateur who arrived on this island without knowing how to operate a car, is now a truck- and tractor-driving dairy farmer and cheese maker. He can shoot a pig, butcher it and make his own bacon.
蒂默梅斯特这位51岁东山再起的餐馆老板，刚来到这座岛上时甚至连怎么开车都不知道;而如今，他已是一位既会开卡车、也会驾驶拖拉机的奶农兼奶酪制造商了。他可以射杀一头猪，屠宰完毕，并且自己做成培根。
And finally, after two decades of experimentation and grindingly hard work, his farm, which has grown to nearly 13 acres, is solvent, if not wildly profitable. (He credits this to sales of a Camembert-style blooming rind cheese named for his first cow, a soulful Jersey called Dinah, which is aged in a Hobbit-ish cave in the side of a hill.)
经过二十年的尝试与努力，他那片已经扩展到近13英亩(约5.26公顷)的农场虽说还不太盈利，也总算清偿了债务。(他将此归功于一款卡芒贝尔式花皮奶酪[Camembert-style blooming rind]的畅销。他用自己的第一头奶牛命名这款奶酪，那头通人性的泽西奶牛名叫黛娜[Dinah]，最后终老在一处山坡上的一个霍比特式的山洞里。)
This farming coming-of-age story is both a cautionary tale and an inspiration to those who aspire to the farm life. His hard-won lessons — how he learned what he and his land had an affinity for (cows, not sheep) and how to profit from that (sell cheese, not vegetables) — were the subject of his first book, “Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live Off the Land,” out in 2011. It distinguished itself from the multitude of farm memoirs with titles like “Barnheart” and “The Dirty Life” with its scope and vantage point.
这个在摸索中成长的农场经营故事，对于那些渴望农耕生活的人来说，不但是警世恒言，也是一种鼓舞。他那些来之不易的经验教训包括怎样发现自己与这片土地最喜欢什么(牛，而不是羊)，以及怎样从中盈利(销售奶酪，而不是蔬菜)——这些，都变成了他于2011年出版的第一本书《一名农夫的成长：我怎样学会耕耘土地》(Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live Off the Land)的主题。这本书凭借自身的视野及优势，从众多名为“粮仓之心”和“泥土生活”之类的农场回忆录中脱颖而出。
Mr. Timmermeister, a sometimes tetchy but always passionate, detail-driven narrator, is now a seasoned professional. And while his first years of farming were colored by his own romantic notions about small-scale agriculture, his prose is never breathless. His new book, “Growing a Feast: The Chronicle of a Farm-to-Table Meal,” out next week from Norton, is the two-year back story of a single meal, an elaborate Sunday dinner for 20 (one of many he used to hold on the farm) that begins with the birth of a calf.
蒂默梅斯特是位偶尔有些急躁，但总是一腔热忱而又细致入微的叙述者。现在，他已经是一名经验丰富的专家了。虽然在农耕生活的最初几年，他对小规模农场还抱有自己浪漫的想法，但他的文章一点也不华丽。他的新书《举办一场盛宴：从农田到餐桌的饮食大事记》(Growing a Feast: The Chronicle of a Farm-to-Table Meal)，下周(即2013年12月30日当周——译注)将由诺顿(Norton)出版社推出。这是一个存乎于单单的一顿饭背后长达两年的故事。那顿煞费苦心的二十人周日家宴(他在农场里曾经举办过的众多餐会之一)，是从一头小牛犊的出生开始的。
In 1991, when he bought the land, he wasn’t looking to become a farmer. At the time, Mr. Timmermeister, who trained to be a pastry cook while studying international affairs at the American University of Paris, had a small, thriving cafe in downtown Seattle.
回想1991年，当他买下这片土地的时候，并没有打算成为一名农夫。蒂默梅斯特在巴黎美国大学(American University of Paris)学习国际关系期间，曾参加过面点师培训，购买土地的时候，他在西雅图(Seattle)市中心拥有一家生意兴隆的小咖啡馆。
But he knew that he did not want to be the guy who was still living in his studio apartment at 40 because he had squandered his profits partying into the night with his restaurant buddies. He also wanted a break from the city, and although he had never learned to drive, he chose Vashon Island, a rural community of 10,000 that was a two-hour round-trip commute, with a ferry ride, to his business.
但他知道，自己并不想成为一个由于把利润都挥霍在了与餐馆伙伴的派对夜生活中，所以直到40岁还住在单间公寓里的人。他还想暂别城市生活，于是便选择了瓦逊岛(Vashon Island)，一个有一万名居民的乡村社区。从那里搭乘轮渡往返他的咖啡馆要两小时的车程，虽然他从未学过开车。
The only property he could afford there was a four-acre thicket covered in rocks, agricultural debris and wild blackberries. Buried under all of that was a chicken coop someone had fitted out as human living quarters, along with an above-ground swimming pool and a rotting, rodent- and-insect-infested log cabin built in the 1880s.
他唯一能买得起的地产，是一片4英亩(约1.62公顷)的灌木丛，其间到处都是岩石、废农田和野黑莓。一处鸡舍改造的人类生活区隐藏在它们当中，还带有一方高出地面的游泳池和一栋建于19世纪80年代、鼠虫出没的腐烂原木小屋。
A friend showed him how to dispose of the moldy wallboard, shag carpet and insulation he pulled out of his new house (the chicken coop) by dousing the rank, sodden pile in gasoline and burning it in one huge toxic bonfire. And even then, he said, “I thought it was really glamorous.”
一个朋友向他展示如何处理他从这栋新房(鸡舍)里拖出来的发霉墙板、残破地毯和防护材料，那就是，把这一堆恶臭、潮湿的东西浸在汽油里，让它们在冒着毒烟的篝火中烧成灰烬。即使在那时候，他说，“我依然觉得这地方魅力十足。”
It took a decade to restore the log cabin, which turned out to be one of the oldest surviving pioneer log houses on the island, possibly built by an itinerant carpenter. Planted on the property line, it was slowly sinking into the soil and “probably should have been bulldozed,” said Mr. Timmermeister, who moved it to the center of the lot and onto a concrete foundation. Much of its timber had to be replaced; the new lumber was milled on the property, worked over with an adze and left outside to cure for a year.
小木屋的整修工作延续了十年时间。这栋房子最终成为岛上保存下来的最古老的拓荒时期木屋之一，其建造者可能是一位做散工的流动木匠。此屋原本位于这片土地的建筑红线上，地基一直在慢慢沉降，“或许早该被推土机夷平了，”蒂默梅斯特说，他把房屋挪到了那块地的中央，置于混凝土地基之上。房屋的大部分木料已被替换过;新木材都是在当地打磨，并用扁斧加工，然后在外面放了一年时间以使其干燥。
Along the way, the house earned landmark status and a $25,000 grant from the county. Mr. Timmermeister estimated that he has spent 10 times that on its restoration, which is why it took so long. “I would run out of money and have to stop,” he said.
在此期间，这栋房屋还赢得了“标志性建筑”(landmark)的地位，得到国家授予的2.5万美元(约合人民币15.1万元)奖金。蒂默梅斯特估算了一下，他在整修工程上的花费要十倍于此，这也是该工程耗时如此之长的原因。“我会把钱花得一文不剩，然后就不得不停工了。”他说。
Though it has no kitchen or bathroom, it is a remarkably elegant structure, a log cabin with airs. Its ceilings are high and its center staircase wide, and flanking the front door are grand, eight-paned single-hung windows (single-hung means the bottom window doesn’t open).
虽然没有厨房，也没浴室，这仍是一栋相当体面的建筑，一栋像模像样的木屋。天花板很高，中央楼梯很宽敞，正门两侧是气派的八窗格单悬窗(单悬指底部的窗户不打开)。
On the back porch, there is a bathtub with a view; under the stairs, a room for a toilet and sink, but no tank. (Mr. Timmermeister rigged one above the door outside.)
后门廊处置有一个可看风景的浴缸;楼梯下有个装了马桶和盥洗台的房间，但没有水箱(蒂默梅斯特在这扇门的外侧顶部装了一个)。
The house is sparsely furnished with beautiful, curious objects: an optometrist’s handmade desk, lamps made from taxidermied deer hooves, artwork by friends. On a Biedermeier table, a copy of Progressive Dairyman.
屋里零星摆了几件漂亮而奇特的家具：一张手工制作的验光师桌子，两盏鹿蹄标本做的台灯，以及来自朋友们的艺术品。在一张毕德麦雅式(Biedermeier，19世纪早期德国中产阶级流行的一种朴实的家具设计和室内装修风格——译注)书桌上，放着一本《先进的奶农》(Progressive Dairyman)杂志。
“I don’t need a lot of stuff,” said Mr. Timmermeister, who estimated that he clears about $24,000 a year. His boots are mud-spattered, but his house is clean and spartan. Outside, his raised planting beds are poured concrete, a tidy grid of rectangles more Donald Judd than funky farmer. The cow barn, fastened with pegs instead of nails, looks like a Shaker meeting house. (But his 1990 Toyota pickup, he assured a visitor, is a mess, matted with dog hair, parking tickets and farm receipts, its windows sticky with dog nose: “I promise, it’s disgusting.”)
“我不需要太多东西，”蒂默梅斯特说，他估算自己一年净赚大约2.4万美元(约合人民币14.5万元)。虽然他的靴子上沾满污泥，但他的家里却干净而简朴。屋外有几块以混凝土浇筑的花坛，是几个整齐的长方形格子，风格更像出自唐纳德·贾德(Donald Judd，美国“极简主义”雕塑家——译注)而非一位新潮农民之手。牛舍是用楔子而不是钉子加固的，看起来就像一间震颤派的礼拜堂(但他对一位来访者保证，自己那辆1990年的丰田皮卡[Toyota pickup]可是一团糟，里面有狗毛，还有停车票和农场收据，车窗上黏乎乎地沾着“狗鼻子[dog nose，一种由啤酒与杜松子酒混合的鸡尾酒——译注]”：“我保证，那很恶心。”)。
As Mr. Timmermeister learned to clear and work his land, hoping, at first, just to grow a few vegetables, he kept his restaurant in the city, shuttling home at night to his tiny chicken coop and its wood-burning stove. In 1994, he traded his cafe for a larger establishment with 120 seats, 25 employees and about $1.5 million in annual sales.
蒂默梅斯特逐渐学会了清理与耕作他的土地，于是，他起初希望只种上几种蔬菜，白天他在城里照看餐馆，晚上回到有狭小鸡舍与燃木炉子的家中。1994年，他把咖啡馆换成了一间更大的餐馆，有120个座位，25名员工和大约150万美元(约合人民币907万元)的年营业额。
That shift was a game-changer, he said. Its scale required cooking a tremendous amount of food, industrial-agribusiness products like Cryovac-ed pork loins and cases of pale, slippery chicken breasts. That process, cooking slick and slimy proteins, so revolted Mr. Timmermeister that he found himself unable to eat in his own restaurant. He vowed to not only grow his own food, but make a profit from it.
他说，那次转型改变了一切。新餐馆的规模就必须烹饪大量的食物，也就是那些快尔卫(Cryovac)包装的猪里脊肉，和一箱箱白嫩的鸡胸肉之类的工业化农产品。而烹饪又滑又黏的蛋白质让蒂默梅斯特感到十分反感，他发现他甚至无法在自己的餐馆里吃下东西。他发誓不仅要种出自己的食物，而且要从中获利。
Paradoxically, it was the restaurant that financed the farm while he found his feet. In 2004, he sold the restaurant, which meant for the next five years, he didn’t have to make any money from the farm. The restaurant was sold on contract, and his netted a $4,000 monthly check.
然而悖论是，在他逐步适应新环境的过程中，正是这家餐馆为农场提供了资助。2004年，他卖掉了餐馆，这意味着在接下来的五年里，他不得不依靠经营农场来赚钱。餐馆签约售出，他每月4000美元(约合人民币24183元)的净收益也到了账。
“It was an incredibly soft landing,” he said. “I could pay all my bills and experiment. I tried vegetables and apple cider and honey.”
“这是一次不可思议的软着陆，”他说，“我可以支付所有账单及实验的成本。我试过种蔬菜、做苹果酒和蜂蜜。”
He moved quickly from sheep, which he disliked, to pigs and dairy cows. His two seasons selling at the farmers’ market cost him $17,500. He spent a few years selling raw milk, until all the regulations and the worry about sickening a customer wore him out.
他不太喜欢羊，于是很快就转而饲养起猪和奶牛。他在农贸市场里两个季度的销售成本就花掉17500美元(约合人民币105804元)。他有几年时间是在销售生牛奶，直到一切规章制度和唯恐让哪位消费者吃坏肚子的忧虑让他筋疲力尽。
Finally, he learned to make cheese, and built an impressive cave to age his product, excavating a hill and implanting it with a concrete barrel-vaulted bunker fitted with two beautifully carved doors made by a neighbor.
最终，他学会了做奶酪，还建了一个令人叹为观止的山洞来发酵他的产品。他挖开一处山坡，将里面做成一个桶形穹顶的混凝土地窖，还为之配上一位邻居制作的雕工精美的双开大门。
As the cheese business was growing, he began hosting Sunday dinners, extravagant four-hour, eight-course meals that he and various Seattle chefs cooked using ingredients produced on his land, which he named Kurtwood Farms (Mr. Timmermeister named the farm the year he tried the farmers’ market; he hoped the plural “farms” would give a gloss to his produce.)
随着奶酪的生意越做越大，他开始举办周日餐会，也就是他和西雅图市各位大厨一起烹饪出的一顿有八道菜、长达四小时的奢侈大餐，用的都是被他命名为“科特伍德庄园”(蒂默梅斯特在农贸市场试水那年，为自己的农场取了这个名字;他希望“庄园”一词能让他的产品很有光彩)的自家土地上出产的原料。
These dinners, made and served in the concrete cookhouse he built on the footprint of his old chicken coop, quickly acquired a cult following. Foodies fell all over themselves to snag a seat. Even at $100 a head, they were so oversubscribed that Mr. Timmermeister started asking would-be diners to answer essay questions, in an attempt to winnow down their numbers.
这些餐会的烹制和用餐环节，都在他于鸡舍旧址上建造的混凝土户外厨房中进行，迅速吸引了一大批狂热的追随者。美食家们争先恐后地为一席之地展开抢夺，即使要收取每人100美元(约合人民币605元)的费用，订座者也依然爆满，以至于蒂默梅斯特已开始要求申请者回答一些简单的问题，以期精简就餐的人数。
“I got a lot of hate mail,” he said. “But some rose to the challenge. Of course, I didn’t realize how much work it would be to read 200 essays about corn on the cob and then prioritize them. Even then, I had to tell people, ‘You spent an hour writing and I still don’t have a seat for you.’ ”
“我收到了很多恐吓信，”他说，“但也有些人迎难而上。当然，我没意识到阅读200篇关于玉米棒的文章、并将作者排出优先级别会是多么大的工作量。即使那样，我也得对人们说，‘虽然你花了一个小时来写，但我还是没有座位给你。’”
The dinners ended three years ago. Now he concentrates on writing and cheese making, selling 400 Dinah’s Cheeses a week to more than 30 restaurants and 30 stores. (He makes the deliveries himself, on Mondays and Wednesdays.) “I’m wildly proud of its success,” he said. The farm has seven employees, and romance has blossomed: Kelsey Kozak, 24, is engaged to Benjamin Scott-Killian, 26.
这样的餐会活动在三年前终结了。现在，他专注于写作和制奶酪，每周，他会将400块“黛娜奶酪”(Dinah’s Cheeses)售往超过30家餐馆和30家商店(他亲自送货，时间安排在周一和周三)。“我对奶酪生意的成功感到十分骄傲，”他说。这座农场已经有了七名雇员，还绽放出了爱情之花：24岁的凯尔西·科扎克(Kelsey Kozak)与26岁的本杰明·斯科特-基利安(Benjamin Scott-Killian)已经订婚了。
On a recent stormy Thursday, Mr. Timmermeister served a visitor tomato soup and macaroni-and-cheese in the cookhouse, its windows steamed up from the pot of pork stock simmering on the stove. Ms. Kozak, on a break from cheese making, wandered in to ask Mr. Timmermeister if he could spare a calf for her wedding. “As a flower girl,” Ms. Kozak said.
不久前，在一个狂风大作的周四，蒂默梅斯特正在厨房里用西红柿汤与奶酪通心粉(macaroni-and-cheese)款待一位来客，厨房窗户上蒙了一层从炉子上沸腾的猪肉汤锅中冒出的水气。这时候，在制作奶酪的间歇，科扎克走了进来，问蒂默梅斯特是否可以腾出一头小牛犊来参加她的婚礼。“作为一名花童，”科扎克说。
The rain was coming down in sheets and Mr. Timmermeister handed a visitor a broken umbrella he extracted from the debris in his truck. Bareheaded, he led a squelchy tour through the mud: into the “make room,” where the cheeses are created; past the cow barn, where the cows stood in the rain with their doleful stares; into the tangy funk of the cheese cave; and then back into the warm cookhouse again.
大雨倾盆而下。蒂默梅斯特给来访者递了一把破雨伞，这是他从卡车中那堆破烂里拣出来的。而他则什么都没戴，就带领客人嘎吱嘎吱地穿过泥地，走入“制酪房”，也就是初制奶酪的地方;他们又路过牛舍，那些奶牛站在雨里，睁着它们忧郁的大眼睛;接着走进散发着刺鼻味道的奶酪洞穴中;然后再次回到温暖的厨房里。
These days, Mr. Timmermeister said, he does more managing and cheese selling than farming. And he takes only two of the 14 milking shifts; squatting under a cow to attach the milking device makes his knees ache.
近些日子，蒂默梅斯特说，他做得更多的是农场管理和奶酪销售的活儿，而不是农务。轮班挤奶的14头奶牛中，他只用到两头;蹲在奶牛身下接挤奶器令他膝盖疼。
He also avoids the tractor, because his depth perception is shot. A detached retina he suffered from the flick of a cow’s tail never properly healed, and not being able to gauge the distance between the tractor’s front bucket and anything else means he has crashed into the barn too many times.
他也不再开拖拉机，因为他的视觉受到了深度创伤。他的眼睛曾被牛尾抽打到，导致视网膜脱落，一直没有痊愈。由于不能目测拖拉机前方的铲斗与其它物体间的距离，他已经无数次撞进了牛舍里了。
Still, he considers himself a lucky guy, privileged, he said, with “a grand life that many envy.”
不过，他仍然认为自己是个幸运的人，享有“许多人都艳羡的美好生活，”他说。
There’s just one thing: Farm work and island living have been a barrier to romance. Not to sound ungrateful, he added, but the single part is getting old.
只有一件事例外：农场的工作和岛上的生活成为了爱情的屏障。倒不是有怨言，他补充说，只是，这位单身汉正在逐渐老去。
