The newest offering from New York Times best selling author Josh Kilmer-Purcell takes us to upstate New York where we vicariously share in Josh’s joy at starting a vegetable garden on Beekman Farm. Kilmer-Purcell and his partner Brent Ridge fall in love-at-first-sight with the 200-year-old Beekman Mansion on their drive back from a weekend retreat in The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers: An Unconventional Memoir. The two executives, one an advertising executive and the other a doctor and a vice president with Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, set about on a whirlwind adventure in all things rural when they buy the (thankfully renovated) Beekman Mansion and set about to turn it into a working farm again. Though Josh has some experience from a childhood spent in rural Wisconsin, the boys find a friend in a gentle man known only as Farmer John and his beloved herd of goats. The story reveals the complications of living between their hectic professional lives in New York and what they hoped would be a weekend hobby farm. Kilmer-Purcell lets us in on the tensions between him and Brent as the bounty of their farm transforms from an idea, to a small industry and then a national lifestyle brand.

You’ll get to know the characters of Beekman Farm and the village of Sharon Springs, NY. Kilmer-Purcell writes with a casual style that contemporary readers will find welcoming. He occasionally references his past work as a popular drag queen as though the extremes between going from being an advertising executive to a gentleman farmer wasn’t contrast enough!

This is the charming story of a man following his dream with the love and support of his partner and the community that welcomed them. Many green enthusiasts share that dream and it is heartening to see someone fulfilled personally while still sharing with others the value of growing our own food and in crafting traditional artesan goods from the resources you and your community have nurtured.

Planet Green has introduced a tv series that complements the book called The Fabulous Beekman Boys. It features Kilmer-Purcell, Ridge, and all their upstate friends.