From James Joyce to Organic Farming, A Memoir By Maynard Kaufmann

Maynard Kaufman was born in 1929 and raised by Mennonite parents on a small farm in South Dakota. Growing up during the depression and dust storms on the plains, he resolved not to be a farmer. After graduating from college, he went on for graduate work in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago where he began writing his doctoral dissertation, James Joyce and The Temptation of Modern Gnosticism. He began teaching at Western Michigan University in 1963, and in 1973 took a half-time leave of absence from the classroom to begin conducting a School of homesteading on his farm near Bangor, Michigan. The farm was among the first to be certified organic, and he played a central role in the organic movement in Michigan from 1973 until his retirement in 2006. In this book, he uncovers the forces that shaped his evolution from a promising young academic to a seasoned environmentalist, and finally a part-time farmer.