Ellen Stimson is blessed with a wild pack of children; not-so-wild but completely adorable husband; and a very civilized group of chickens, dogs, and cats. Lately she's decided that she really wants a pig. She writes about the whole catastrophe from an old farmhouse in Vermont.
"Get your schadenfreude ready. Stimson’s fish-out-of-water memoir
is chockablock with self-deprecating, belly-laughable vignettes.
Not since Betty MacDonald’s The Egg and I (1945) has anybody seemed
more ill-suited to country life. And yet this born-and-bred
Midwestern city dweller, having run up an enormous tab at her local
Vermont country store, thinks, “Maybe I could run a quaint country
store.” Visions of herself, husband John, and their Bernese
Mountain dog, Eloise, greeting delighted customers with homemade
breads and soups and cozy woodstove fires eclipsed all logic. They
bought the store. Which sounds ominously like the phrase, they
bought the farm. Which it may as well have been in the case of this
former wholesale book businesswoman who seemed hell-bent on proving
she had more money and credit than brains. Naturally, first thing,
Stimson rearranged the store to suit her well-intentioned yuppie
sensibilities. The locals stayed away in droves. Indeed, her first
customers—staid, khaki-and-sensible-shoe-wearing native
Vermonters—took one look at her “swingy” orange and purple outfit
accessorized with jangly jewelry and thought she was a fortune
teller. The experience foretold a very long acclimation and heaps
of hilarious anecdotes. As for this book—come for the humor, stay
for the recipes."
*Booklist [STARRED REVIEW]*
"A picturesque family vacation in rural Vermont inspires Stimson
and her husband to pay a visit to what they call the “Life Store”
to shop for a new adventure: packing up their city life in St.
Louis and moving into an old farmhouse in Dorset, VT (pop. 2,036).
After taking over the old country store, they try to keep it afloat
through the five Vermont seasons: spring, summer, fall, winter, and
mud. But these city mice discover that country life is not exactly
what they imagined. Moving the bread in the store inspires
town-wide gossip. A hen in their “yuppie chicken coop” turns out to
be a rooster. Stimson chases a goat while wearing a bathing suit
and is forced to face the fragility of life when her family takes
in lamb orphans. Mishap after mishap, Stimson compares their new
life to “putting out a fire using a hose of gasoline.” VERDICT:
Written with self-deprecating honesty, this memoir is for anyone
who has ever gone on vacation and fantasized about staying."
*Library Journal*
"In her debut, former bookseller Stimson recounts relocating her
family from St. Louis to the bucolic beauty of Vermont. The author
and her husband John fell in love with Vermont on a getaway
weekend. Years later, financially stable and in need of a change,
they settled into a small Vermont town to enjoy the simplicity and
beauty of the Green Mountains. That is when the trouble began, as
Stimson brought in an out-of-state contractor and crew rather than
hire local folks to fix her house. Then, in an impulsive moment,
she bought the local country store with hopes of turning it into a
high-volume gourmet shop. Though nothing really went as planned,
the beauty of Vermont and its changing seasons gave Stimson solace.
“There is no more naturally beautiful place I have ever been,” she
writes, “and I have been to a bunch of them.” The author dramatizes
the age-old conundrum of newcomers versus old-timers and the
difficulties of fitting in—even if acceptance, in this case, only
meant that the locals would not boycott the store after she moved
the bread rack from the back of the store to the front, near the
registers. Meanwhile, cats, dogs, sheep, chickens, goats and skunks
traipsed through their idyllic setting, biting the minister and
generally running amok. In a humorous, self-deprecating style, the
author examines a variety of questions about her new life: In
Vermont, what constitutes an emergency? When can you call 911? With
aplomb, Stimson describes her rural Vermont setting, the changing
seasons and what drew her to the state. A section of
recipes—including “Lovely Fluffy Quiche” and “John’s Grandmother’s
Roszke Cookies”—and the obituaries of three pets round out the
volume. A quick, light book to keep around as a pick-me-up."
*Kirkus Reviews*
"Ellen Stimson is funny. Darned funny. And she knows how to spin a
good, old-fashioned yarn. Stimson tells her tales with clear-eyed,
self-deprecating humor, which makes Mud Season a breeze to read in
a single sitting."
*Washington Post*
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