Essay Collection

Freedom Farm

“It’s astonishing how much is packed into this entertaining account of the idiosyncratic Family Neves over three generations of Maine farm life. Freedom Farm is a compelling meditation on family, identity, place, farming, nature, memory, time itself. Most of all, it’s a celebration of what stories are, how they arise, how they create human meaning to help us face a future that is unknowable. (At one point, the author invents a new genre: Speculative Nonfiction.) A shrewd and gutsy truth-teller, Neves is a superb narrator with the ability to flex her voice easily over a wide register. A wry self-knowledge bonds us to her, a smart and capable woman prone to throw herself impulsively into any task with gusto and confidence, often lacking the preparation she knows is necessary (“I enjoy the uncalculated risk”). Neves’ sharply observant eye catches the precarious balance and human comedy of the present, while sifting the past and imagining the future. Always there’s an appreciation of multiple points of view, of other lives which she feels responsible to, be they plants, animals, unruly pets, or the four children who emerge with distinct personalities in the second half of the book when the author and her husband restore an old Maine farm, recreating the spirit of the original where she grew up. The polished individual chapters are self-contained units, whether describing a real world process like harvesting beans, or unintended farce, or moving scenes that can catch your breath. Each has a truth of its own. The transformative magic of Neves’ mind and heart weaves these separate pieces into an interconnected, multifaceted whole, the way successful families—and the best stories– do. Freedom Farm has the surety and wisdom of an instant classic.”

– Stan Sanvel Rubin, author of There. Here. and Hidden Sequel

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More Praise for Freedom Farm

“In these pages, Neves reveals herself as a wordsmith whose long, twisty sentences are consistently enticing…A thoughtful, entertaining exploration of the joys and grittiness of country life.”

Kirkus Reviews

“Funny, affecting, and wise, Freedom Farm is a romp and also a Valentine – to place, weather, family, and the power of memory and imagination – accomplished not only with love, but with vigor and verve. A book for all seasons and all creatures great and small.”

Dinah Lenney, author of Coffee and The Object Parade

“Jennifer Neves is our modern-day E.B. White! In delightful essays that make us both laugh and cry, Neves ruminates on a wide range of topics from beans to goats to children, always with an eye toward how our stories make us who we are. As she says, “I am hoping to go beyond the surface, to work toward the impossible goal of capturing the whole of something – myself.” Neves has done that, and more. Freedom Farm is one of the most satisfying collections I’ve read in a very long time.”

Brenda Miller, author of An Earlier Life

“Freedom Farm begins with the story of Jennifer Neves’s father engaging in a childhood act of rebellion and ends with stories of her children growing into themselves in the landscapes surrounding their centuries-old home in Maine. In between, Neves tells her own stories of seeing, working, and becoming. By its end, Freedom Farm proves Neves’s claim that home isn’t so much a place as it is a gathering of stories that hold people close and tell them who they are. With equal doses of lyricism, clarity, and humor, Neves has written an achingly good book about the fullness of being in the world – a fullness of body and mind, of lament and love.”

Rick Barot, author of The Galleons, Chord, and Darker Fall

“Within the pages of Neves’s Freedom Farm, everything bristles with life – each family member, each goat and pig and stone and bean and windrow, each acre of the Maine farm of her childhood where she learns the difference between wanting and having, where “pleasure comes in being able to provide for yourself.” Neves is a born storyteller with a personal essayist’s pitch-perfect voice, a generous and self-deprecating humor, and a rare gift for digressions that lead us, her lucky readers, into the deepest landscapes of the human heart.”

Rebecca McClanahan, author of In the Key of New York City: A Memoir in Essays and The Tribal Knot: A Memoir of Family, Community, and a Century of Change

“In Neves’s hands, and through her words, these essays are far more than retellings of family lore, or a repository for family history — they are each, unto themselves, explorations of pressing questions, and investigations into authenticity, and a way of honoring the beliefs and objects we inherit from our elders and family members that outlast time and place.”

Lia Purpura, author of Rough Likeness, and All the Fierce Tethers

“Living on a Maine farm is not for the faint-of-heart or those without backbone and opinions. Jennifer Neves has both, and in her memoir Freedom Farm, we see her grow from a strong farmer’s daughter to a fierce, loving mother now raising her own family within spitting distance of the farm she was raised on. Neves writes with humor, honesty, and an innate storytelling ability. As we move with her through farm seasons and years, we see not only the “cyclical nature of raising crops” but the cycle of a human life, too. This memoir takes us into a world so few have ventured and is a true pleasure to read.”

Jessica Barksdale, author of The Burning Hour and the forthcoming The Play’s the Thing