What do you think?
Rate this book
Landings: A Crooked Creek Farm Year
A hybrid memoir / art book, with an introduction by New York Times Bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver.
In 130 ink-and-watercolor drawings, the story of one year on a family farm in Kentucky unfolds in captured moments of daily life: Donahue’s husband chopping wood, a cow sniffing her head, her daughter tending to goats after a hard day at school. Each visual is paired with a written reflection on the day’s doings, interwoven with the longer-arc history of her family, the farm, and their community. In telling the story of a farm family’s struggle to survive and thrive, Landings grapples with the legacy of our cultural divide between art and land, and celebrates the beauty discovered along the way.
In 130 ink-and-watercolor drawings, the story of one year on a family farm in Kentucky unfolds in captured moments of daily life: Donahue’s husband chopping wood, a cow sniffing her head, her daughter tending to goats after a hard day at school. Each visual is paired with a written reflection on the day’s doings, interwoven with the longer-arc history of her family, the farm, and their community. In telling the story of a farm family’s struggle to survive and thrive, Landings grapples with the legacy of our cultural divide between art and land, and celebrates the beauty discovered along the way.
280 pages, Paperback
Published October 4, 2022
15 people are currently reading
716 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
Read
August 11, 2023Gorgeous. A meditation. Food, land, people.
March 19, 2025
This is a book that will stay with me forever. There is incredible beauty in both the illustrations and the dialogue and I could not recommend it more. I just bought several copies to gift to my friends bc this is truly a treasure that should be owned and read repeatedly.
December 10, 2022
I met Ms Donahue at a KY Book Festival in Lexington where I came with the intention of purchasing this book. Having read her book, I'd like to meet her again. I'd like to sit down with her and have a long conversation.
I'd never heard of Ms Donahue until reading the blurb about this book in the ad for the festival. I've lived in Eastern KY for 20 years working in higher education and healthcare but I've become fascinated with the agrarian side of the culture of my adopted home. I want to know where my food comes from. I want to know how the people that I serve in healthcare can work so hard and eat such good food only to end up in my hospital, sick and dying. I want to know why. And I believe our farmers have the answers. I believe they see things in regards to climate change, mining, land and water management, the changing of weather patterns, etc that can explain what's happening to the people I have embraced as my own.
Ms Donahue is a detail oriented introvert. I think she has witnessed and observed her world in a way that could be incredibly beneficial to the bigger picture perspective.
Landings. Daily snapshots both in words and stunning artwork of a year on a farm in Kentucky is a wonderful book. Ms Donahue combines her daily physical work with her inner thoughts and feelings and the dynamics of her family to create a moving narrative.
She's a human with a Jewish heritage living among people who claim Christianity but whose theology is severely skewed by ignorance causing them to live their lives as practicing atheists and accidental hypocrites. She appears to be easily offended by these people and their anti-semetic views and I can't help but wonder if she might find peace by simply recognizing that these people are backward and ignorant when it comes to theology.
Like I said, I'd like to meet Ms Donahue again. I'd like to sit with her and have a long conversation.
I'd never heard of Ms Donahue until reading the blurb about this book in the ad for the festival. I've lived in Eastern KY for 20 years working in higher education and healthcare but I've become fascinated with the agrarian side of the culture of my adopted home. I want to know where my food comes from. I want to know how the people that I serve in healthcare can work so hard and eat such good food only to end up in my hospital, sick and dying. I want to know why. And I believe our farmers have the answers. I believe they see things in regards to climate change, mining, land and water management, the changing of weather patterns, etc that can explain what's happening to the people I have embraced as my own.
Ms Donahue is a detail oriented introvert. I think she has witnessed and observed her world in a way that could be incredibly beneficial to the bigger picture perspective.
Landings. Daily snapshots both in words and stunning artwork of a year on a farm in Kentucky is a wonderful book. Ms Donahue combines her daily physical work with her inner thoughts and feelings and the dynamics of her family to create a moving narrative.
She's a human with a Jewish heritage living among people who claim Christianity but whose theology is severely skewed by ignorance causing them to live their lives as practicing atheists and accidental hypocrites. She appears to be easily offended by these people and their anti-semetic views and I can't help but wonder if she might find peace by simply recognizing that these people are backward and ignorant when it comes to theology.
Like I said, I'd like to meet Ms Donahue again. I'd like to sit with her and have a long conversation.
Read
February 15, 2023There's a long tradition of romanticizing rural life for your city audience and it's sometimes called the pastoral fallacy. It's as old as the Romans, at least. Real farm life is very hard work, trying to make something of value from the weather, community, animals and land. This book is both beautiful and honest about a year on a Kentucky farm that sells CSA shares. You can see the author's love for the place in the way she sees it clearly, in her naming of the wild plants and sensitivity to the seasons, and in her art.
April 5, 2023
I always enjoy reading diary/journal books. Add the writer's own illustrations, it's the best. I enjoyed reading about her connection to the land and appreciated how hard and challenging it is to be a small farmer. She didn't hold back. But it wasn't emotional, it was matter of fact. She writes that her drawings lead her deeper into her life on her land. Through this book she shares with us that beautiful partnership
August 23, 2025
A nice quick read. The entries were thoughtful and short, never too "fart-sniffing", for lack of a better term. The writer has a really interesting context of both being quite connected to the land historically, and also being Jewish and vegetarian-adjacent, and thus an outsider. The book doesn't follow a narrative, which I like--when someone says something unkind to her or her child has a bad day, it just passes, like it does in real life. You really feel how in summer the abundance is overwhelming to the point of being unable to manage all of it, and the winter provides a welcome reprieve from the treadmill of planting and harvesting. The most frustrating parts to me were when she would vent about a kind of demonization of the rural countryside in the same breath as thinking about how her daughter would need to probably move to somewhere with more opportunities. Very unsympathetically, I don't have a lot of patience for that kind of thing. A beautiful portrait of the rhythms of a working farm.
May 6, 2025
Such a treat with so many insightful musings
“A well-kept flower garden creates the illusion of leisurely living, of a life in which beauty is a priority. I toil to live in that illusion for a day or two.”
Ugh. Her writing is just *chef’s kiss*
“A well-kept flower garden creates the illusion of leisurely living, of a life in which beauty is a priority. I toil to live in that illusion for a day or two.”
Ugh. Her writing is just *chef’s kiss*
December 29, 2023
Stunning and really makes me want to go give it all up to be a sustainable farmer
August 9, 2023
For all the reasons states previously, I liked the book. However, there was a certain hypocrisy that wove its way throughout that still bothers me. The author accuses urban folks of having assumptions about farmers living a life of struggle and poverty… and then she demonstrates how hard living off the land is and that they need federal funding for bigger projects and improvements.
Her husband doesn’t want to use interns and their free labor (and presumably more produce & profit) because he doesn’t want to manage them. 🤔 They don’t have money (or savings, or health insurance, or money for retirement), but she wants federal grants for farm upgrades.
She and her husband both went to college. They homeschooled their daughter until they sent her to a public high school in Lexington that had a robust art program (unlike the local rural school with lots of needy kids and no art program.) Her kid benefited from being raised by two parents who valued education and unlike her neighbors, she had the means to provide a better education than the local rural school. Does that make her one of the elitist urban people being condescending to rural education? I see both sides.
She says she doesn’t have ice skates because she couldn’t find any in her size at the local thrift store, but then goes to Lexington to stay at her mom’s house occasionally, and her mom buys her things like a washing machine. Clearly, she has the means. It’s like she’s playing at being poor with the privilege & safety net of knowing that she can leave the farm whenever she wants and whenever it’s best for her child. Most of her neighbors don’t have that luxury.
As an avid gardener, I appreciated her connection and the satisfaction of connecting to nature and the seasons. I appreciate that our government should give more practical support to smaller farms and enable people to be more efficient and self-sufficient. Also, Americans in general should be more appreciative of where (and how) their food is grown. However, the problems with rural America isn’t just a bunch of inaccurate assumptions and stereotypes formed by “elites” in the cities. By her own account, they seem to be very real.
Her husband doesn’t want to use interns and their free labor (and presumably more produce & profit) because he doesn’t want to manage them. 🤔 They don’t have money (or savings, or health insurance, or money for retirement), but she wants federal grants for farm upgrades.
She and her husband both went to college. They homeschooled their daughter until they sent her to a public high school in Lexington that had a robust art program (unlike the local rural school with lots of needy kids and no art program.) Her kid benefited from being raised by two parents who valued education and unlike her neighbors, she had the means to provide a better education than the local rural school. Does that make her one of the elitist urban people being condescending to rural education? I see both sides.
She says she doesn’t have ice skates because she couldn’t find any in her size at the local thrift store, but then goes to Lexington to stay at her mom’s house occasionally, and her mom buys her things like a washing machine. Clearly, she has the means. It’s like she’s playing at being poor with the privilege & safety net of knowing that she can leave the farm whenever she wants and whenever it’s best for her child. Most of her neighbors don’t have that luxury.
As an avid gardener, I appreciated her connection and the satisfaction of connecting to nature and the seasons. I appreciate that our government should give more practical support to smaller farms and enable people to be more efficient and self-sufficient. Also, Americans in general should be more appreciative of where (and how) their food is grown. However, the problems with rural America isn’t just a bunch of inaccurate assumptions and stereotypes formed by “elites” in the cities. By her own account, they seem to be very real.
December 30, 2023
I loved this book more with each entry/drawing. I have long been an avid supporter of my local farm markets and thought I had some small idea of the challenges local farmers face from brief conversations with the farmers, but Arwen Donahue's beautiful meditation on a year of farm life was really an eye opener.
I give her credit for humoring her spouse David for a full year with the "Amish-built, hand-cranked washing machine" that he thought "would make him fall in love with doing laundry." Any woman on this planet could have told him that no one, anywhere, ever, has fallen in love with doing laundry. Blessings upon her grandmother who finally bought them a washing machine, "industrialism's greatest gift to women." David seems just a wee tad impractical for a farmer (he doesn't want the trouble of supervising interns, whose free labor helped with the harvest; this choice means more farm labor falls upon Arwen's shoulders, of course.)
Nevertheless, reading this book will give you an understanding of so many things involved with food production that you never considered before, and a greater appreciation of those lovely vegetables and fruits that show up in your CSA box or on the tables at the weekly farm market. Hoop houses: what a great idea! Extend the growing season! Protect the crops! Only you have to build the darn thing while you are doing all the other work of the farm, and it takes a year to get it completed. I knew insects are a challenge for any farmer with fruit trees but I had not thought about racoons, or what might be involved in trying to keep them away from your pears. And I swear, I'm going to make an effort to eat more kohlrabi from now on.
Side note that has nothing to do with the book: I'm annoyed that the actual cover of my book, which is a paperback edition, is not shown as an option except as the kindle edition. Wrong page count as well. Yes, I'm anal about these details in recording my reads, I know :)
I give her credit for humoring her spouse David for a full year with the "Amish-built, hand-cranked washing machine" that he thought "would make him fall in love with doing laundry." Any woman on this planet could have told him that no one, anywhere, ever, has fallen in love with doing laundry. Blessings upon her grandmother who finally bought them a washing machine, "industrialism's greatest gift to women." David seems just a wee tad impractical for a farmer (he doesn't want the trouble of supervising interns, whose free labor helped with the harvest; this choice means more farm labor falls upon Arwen's shoulders, of course.)
Nevertheless, reading this book will give you an understanding of so many things involved with food production that you never considered before, and a greater appreciation of those lovely vegetables and fruits that show up in your CSA box or on the tables at the weekly farm market. Hoop houses: what a great idea! Extend the growing season! Protect the crops! Only you have to build the darn thing while you are doing all the other work of the farm, and it takes a year to get it completed. I knew insects are a challenge for any farmer with fruit trees but I had not thought about racoons, or what might be involved in trying to keep them away from your pears. And I swear, I'm going to make an effort to eat more kohlrabi from now on.
Side note that has nothing to do with the book: I'm annoyed that the actual cover of my book, which is a paperback edition, is not shown as an option except as the kindle edition. Wrong page count as well. Yes, I'm anal about these details in recording my reads, I know :)
December 17, 2022
What a gorgeous collection of drawings and reflections on a year in the life of a small family farm. The quality of her attention is so detailed and her expression of it just lovely:
“This evening, running in the woods, I see pale gold buds swelling on the spicebush: small spots where winter is torn.”
She grapples with questions about ethics, economics, their privilege (living below the poverty line but eating with abundance on land they own (land stolen by their ancestors from the original inhabitants;): “We quietly accept it like cash slipped into our palms on the sly.”
Farming is not easy in any way, and she looks directly at its complications, its contradictions, and its many gifts.
I also appreciated her insight into what she drew and why:
“The row covers look like giant loaves of unbaked challah. I chose to draw this because the barn’s interior is well-suited to ink lines, unlike the soft, blowsy greens outside. I can cling here to
a bygone time.”
and
“It’s almost impossible to draw a garden bed taken over by weeds. If you draw a hand around the weed, you’ve provided a focal point, but then how do you convey the sense of how small the hand is, compared to the power of weeds? A single weed has form and structure, but drawing it alone perpetuates an illusion of control, because it is a form that can be grasped. A single weed can be overcome, but ten thousand, one hundred thousand, against one pair of hands, two pairs. ..”
Also, I really want to eat lunch on her farm someday.
“This evening, running in the woods, I see pale gold buds swelling on the spicebush: small spots where winter is torn.”
She grapples with questions about ethics, economics, their privilege (living below the poverty line but eating with abundance on land they own (land stolen by their ancestors from the original inhabitants;): “We quietly accept it like cash slipped into our palms on the sly.”
Farming is not easy in any way, and she looks directly at its complications, its contradictions, and its many gifts.
I also appreciated her insight into what she drew and why:
“The row covers look like giant loaves of unbaked challah. I chose to draw this because the barn’s interior is well-suited to ink lines, unlike the soft, blowsy greens outside. I can cling here to
a bygone time.”
and
“It’s almost impossible to draw a garden bed taken over by weeds. If you draw a hand around the weed, you’ve provided a focal point, but then how do you convey the sense of how small the hand is, compared to the power of weeds? A single weed has form and structure, but drawing it alone perpetuates an illusion of control, because it is a form that can be grasped. A single weed can be overcome, but ten thousand, one hundred thousand, against one pair of hands, two pairs. ..”
Also, I really want to eat lunch on her farm someday.
November 23, 2022
Farming on her husband's family's farmland in north central KY. Not totally "rural", as they are not that far from Lexington.
But Arwin realizes they are different than their neighbors - they are ex-professionals, with concern for the land, and a degree of "white (professional) privilege" that she is well aware of about themselves.
So this is not all "hippy back to the earth", as she writes and illustrates their lives over one year in the 15th year of their farming. As she says, no savings, no health insurance, and no view of any of that changing.
So, it is very realistic, and at the same time she shares her love for their land, and what they are doing.
I love her water color illustrations - simple, and yet detailed, and wonderful lines and swirls.
Some of her last words - "....the beauty and the wreck of it...."
This is a book I want to share with someone else, but I have not decided who that will be yet.
I lived in KY three times from 1975 to 1995, mostly in the big city of Louisville, but also a little over a year in Hazard (Fed employee, mostly dealing with disability, SSI and Black Lung, as few people could work until retirement age there). Quite diffferent than their story, but even Louisville IS Kentucky......
Buy it as a book - an ebook edition will not really do it justice, especially the illustrations.
But Arwin realizes they are different than their neighbors - they are ex-professionals, with concern for the land, and a degree of "white (professional) privilege" that she is well aware of about themselves.
So this is not all "hippy back to the earth", as she writes and illustrates their lives over one year in the 15th year of their farming. As she says, no savings, no health insurance, and no view of any of that changing.
So, it is very realistic, and at the same time she shares her love for their land, and what they are doing.
I love her water color illustrations - simple, and yet detailed, and wonderful lines and swirls.
Some of her last words - "....the beauty and the wreck of it...."
This is a book I want to share with someone else, but I have not decided who that will be yet.
I lived in KY three times from 1975 to 1995, mostly in the big city of Louisville, but also a little over a year in Hazard (Fed employee, mostly dealing with disability, SSI and Black Lung, as few people could work until retirement age there). Quite diffferent than their story, but even Louisville IS Kentucky......
Buy it as a book - an ebook edition will not really do it justice, especially the illustrations.
August 23, 2024
“A grip that tightens and releases, a holding and a softening, a thrashing struggle and an easing glide: this is how spring is born. There’s nothing gentle about it.” p. 62
“Years ago, a neighbor stopped by while I was cooking a batch of strawberry jam. “You can get a big jar of jam at Walmart for three dollars,” she said. “Why would you make your own?” Our agricultural past sometimes seems like a phantom limb. We aim to exercise it, but the so-called efficiencies of global industrialism hav me rendered it useless… I weed, pick, clean, hull, and preserve strawberries, when I could buy jam at Walmart for three dollars. Yet in that Walmart jar are debts we have yet to pay. And I love to watch the tiny green buttons swell, turn white, then link, then red. I love to taste the sun in the fruit. I love to eat of the soil of this place, to know that my flesh and this patch of earth are stitched together. What good is an economy that disregards love?” p. 110
“A well-kept flower garden creates the illusion of leisurely living, if a life in which beauty is a priority. I took in order to live in that illusion for a day or two.” p. 142
“After hanging up, it’s the words “Anyone who has a better choice will leave” that won’t give me peace. Let us give this food land due respect, I want to tell her. Let us honor those who choose to stay.” p. 190
“Years ago, a neighbor stopped by while I was cooking a batch of strawberry jam. “You can get a big jar of jam at Walmart for three dollars,” she said. “Why would you make your own?” Our agricultural past sometimes seems like a phantom limb. We aim to exercise it, but the so-called efficiencies of global industrialism hav me rendered it useless… I weed, pick, clean, hull, and preserve strawberries, when I could buy jam at Walmart for three dollars. Yet in that Walmart jar are debts we have yet to pay. And I love to watch the tiny green buttons swell, turn white, then link, then red. I love to taste the sun in the fruit. I love to eat of the soil of this place, to know that my flesh and this patch of earth are stitched together. What good is an economy that disregards love?” p. 110
“A well-kept flower garden creates the illusion of leisurely living, if a life in which beauty is a priority. I took in order to live in that illusion for a day or two.” p. 142
“After hanging up, it’s the words “Anyone who has a better choice will leave” that won’t give me peace. Let us give this food land due respect, I want to tell her. Let us honor those who choose to stay.” p. 190
August 10, 2023
Amazing, different type of book: diary entries on one page, a watercolor by the author illustrating some point of the diary entry on the opposing page, about a world I had always wanted to know more about: small scale farming, and it's set in my home state of Kentucky, not even far from me. When I mentioned having read the book to a vendor at our local Farmer’s Market, she said she and her family were actually friends with the author and HER family! So glad to have a friend who shares with me her unusual choice of books!
July 24, 2024
An interviewer recently asked Barbara Kingsolver about her current favorite books, and this was top three. A couple with a daughter in Kentucky have given their determination, time, and labor to be the human connection between the soil and sustainable living. She illustrates, writes, and publishes to provide the off-farm cash needed, while both of them work hard to make the farm work. Tips for growing crops, flavoring sauerkraut,putting food by, and balancing animal usage with human needs are liberally sprinkled in.
September 1, 2023
I very much enjoyed Arwen Donahue's year, and especially the watercolors tied to each daily journal. She writes mostly unsentimentally about the realities of rural farm life: the poverty, uncertainty, weather, animals, crops, the subtle and not-so-subtle change of the seasons. She speaks thoughtfully about a changing environment, her privilege (when it suits her), and above all, her love for her family and the life and land they share. A great afternoon read.
January 7, 2023
I loved this book. As the daughter of a farmer, I appreciated her unsentimental and yet deep connection to the land. In these lyrical, thoughtful reflections, she doesn't shy away from the hard stuff. And the art work is luscious.
February 24, 2025
A beautiful book of meditations and illustrations of a family’s life on a small farm in Kentucky. The language is simple yet poetic, and the art is beautifully evocative of emotion and place. It’s a book you could read in a day, but you will want to slow down and savor.
Want to read
February 25, 2022Note: I accessed a digital review copy of this book through Edelweiss.
Read
December 14, 2022You can read my review on Chapter 16's website here: https://chapter16.org/on-modern-farming/
January 8, 2023
I loved this! Farm life at its finest
February 3, 2023
Beautiful watercolor and ink drawings with wise, witty and wry observations on a farming year on a small farm in Kentucky
April 18, 2023
This read really opens your eyes to the dilemma of the "small time" farmer. I liked the way that it showcased what has to be done month-to-month, and the artwork was wonderful.
August 23, 2023
A beautiful and inspiring book
Want to read
September 16, 2023Barbara Kingsolver rec from Ezra Klein
September 28, 2023
Art and beautiful insightful writing- what a gift! Thank you for sharing the story and your art with the world !
May 25, 2024
I treasure this book.
December 7, 2023
I liked this so much, I would love to have it as a coffee table book (I just borrowed it from the library). Beautiful drawings, beautiful words. Barbara Kingsolver recommended it in her Ezra Klein interview because she said the author wrote eloquently about farm life without romanticizing it, and I think that's exactly right.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 17, 2024
(NF-also listed as a Graphic Novel) 09.17.2023: one of the many books recommended in the Sunday NYT Book Review section "Read Your Way Through Appalachia"...; this one is non-fiction...; 07.17.2024: an honest appraisal of the ups & downs of running a long-term Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in rural KY; couple the honest dialog on each page with a pen & ink drawing—most of which are truly remarkable. I suspect this book will have a very small group of readers that could identify with this writers honesty; Myself, I was raised on a dairy farm and have been part of a CSA locally for >10 years, so it ‘fit’ that I would enjoy this unusual book; 2022 hardcover paperback via Madison County Public Library, Berea, 251 pgs.
February 15, 2025
I am an acquaintance of the author, and I feel that her writing reflects who she is as a person. The following are the words I would use to describe both: lovely, honest, kind, non-judgmental, thoughtful, reflective, and most of all beautiful!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews