Julian Strauss, HOME FARM: The Love of Place in a Changing World

Presented in partnership with Oblong Books.

Registration encouraged, not required.

In conversation with David Stanford.

Julian Stauss, local farmer, veterinarian, and artist, will talk about his memoir, which is rich in local history, farm lore, poetry, and thoughts on agrarianism, rural community, and the past and future of agriculture. He calls his presentation (and slideshow) "Is there a book in you?"

Structured around an 1867 daily work diary by Amenia Union farmer Ed Dean, Home Farm is elaborately enriched by Julian's own farm diary entries, commentaries, poems, stories, and observations, including how-to's and farm-life fundamentals — fence-building, machinery-loving, tool-using, everything-fixing, hard-working, maple-syruping, and good-neighboring. It is rich in local history, and expresses Julian's passion for agrarianism, for rural community, and for the past and future of agriculture. Essays by his grown children add further perspective to this wide-ranging consideration of the changes and continuities of farming, from the 1800s to now. 

Julian Strauss was born in Amenia in 1936, just as his German father and French mother, fleeing the rise of Nazism in Europe, arrived and bought a farm that had been founded in 1767. Growing up on a dairy farm shaped Julian's interests, and led him to study at Cornell and become a veterinarian, which led to 14 years working abroad in tropical and exotic environments, followed by a period in academia. In 1976 his father retired. Julian returned to Home Farm and opened a farm vet practice which he pursued for over 40 years. Retired as a veterinarian, he continues to fix fences, raise animals, make maple syrup, turn fallen trees into lumber, do woodworking, and create art.bHe and his wife Betsy, an experienced local historian, live on Home Farm near Amenia.

Copies of Home Farm will be available for purchase at this event.