In forty short and charming chapters, a former "great books" teacher from New York City adapts to his new role on a small Southern farm by observing the natural world and drawing connections to his reading life. In late middle-age, Harry Kavros and his wife, Peri, pack up all the household belongings that will fit into their car and leave Manhattan, bound for their new home on a twenty-two-acre patch of pine-filled land in Hillsborough, North Carolina. As Mr. Kavros spends long hours clearing the acreage, not for farming but for sightlines, he muses about the land, the exhausting work it requires, and the rewards the effort offers. Every task he undertakes prompts him to recall and meditate over scenes from his reading life. From the great Greek epics to the writings of Frederick Law Olmstead on landscape, to Thoreau, to modern poets, to a veritable treasury of references, for the author life in the country is also life in among his reading.

Witty and perceptive, Observations of an Accidental Farmer--and a Mindful Reader is about cultivation, of one's land and one's life.