Farm from Home: A Year of Stories, Pictures, and Recipes from a City Girl in the Country

by Amanda Brooks

From New York style icon and fashion insider Amanda Brooks, a charming and inspiring meditation on life in her newly adopted home, a farm in the English countryside.

In search of a quieter, simpler life away from the hustle of the city, style icon and longtime New Yorker Amanda Brooks moved with her family in 2012 from New York City to her husband's farm in England. Originally intended to be a yearlong creative sabbatical, Brooks's relocation became permanent as she discovered newfound personal and professional freedom, told here through a year's changing seasons. Creatively inspiring, warm and witty, and brimming with delicious recipes and entertaining how-tos, Farm from Home is a chronicle of the joys and challenges of a more focused way of living. For anyone who has longed for an escape from their hectic schedule, whether for a week, a year, or a lifetime, Brooks shares the unexpected satisfaction of slowing down, reconnecting with nature, and making the most of each day.

Genres: Nonfiction, Cookbooks, Memoir, British Literature

320 pages, Hardcover

Published June 5, 2018

About the author

Amanda Brooks is the author of I Love Your Style: How to Define and Refine Your Personal Style. She has written for the New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, and Men's Vogue, where she wrote the popular online column "In Her Eyes." The former fashion director of Barney’s New York and creative director of Tuleh, she has appeared as a fashion expert on Today, The Early Show, and National Public Radio. She lives with her husband and two children in Oxfordshire, England.


Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Cosette Ramsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly loved every moment of reading about life in the English countryside

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. I don’t think I’m the audience that was meant for that book. I thought it was going to be more about farming than fashion/furnishing-name dropping.

[Gina · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

9 May 2023 - And just like that, a switch flipped, and I found my flow with this book -- and finished it! I feel somewhat sorry for being such a wench and grousing about the book. In the end, I am glad I finished it. My enjoyment ebbed and flowed, and I stand by my earlier comments.

8 May 2023 - What hellish masochist urge is pushing me to finish this 300+ page book? Amanda Brooks'writing is lovely and accessible. This should be an interesting story, but... it's not. It's a bit flat and uninteresting.

Additionally, I am going to bitch about the font selection and line spacing -- both of which conspired to make this 2x more difficult to read than it should have been.

The photography is gorgeous! More photos, please!

7 May 2023 - I hadn't returned Farm From Home to the library, and because it is an overcast read in a coffee shop sort of day, I decided to give it another go.

A few pages in, and I am already questioning my decision to try again. Her life is completely unrelatable! Admittedly I am equally jealous of and inspired by Brooks' "writing retreats" where she books a room at an inn and hunkers down to write or start a project. But how many people have such a luxurious option?

1 May 2023 - DNF @ page 114
Amanda Brooks' writing is enjoyable, but this book did not capture my attention as I had hoped. Her life is interesting and wildly unrelatable -- horse shows, hunts, boarding school, fashion consulting.

[Andrea Thatcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amanda Brooks’ life has always held some fascination for me. Back when she was part of the fashion scene and writing for Vogue in the aughts she was one of those jet-set figures that seems impossibly glamorous, a life she recounts in Always Pack a Party Dress. But she left all that behind to move with her husband to his family farm in Oxfordshire to a life that has its own special glamour. The seasonal country life she describes month by month in this book is a much more homebody existence though no less privileged. She describes fox hunting and horse foaling and gardening and cooking in a way that makes her life seem slightly more relatable but no less luxurious. Black tie, boarding schools and an enviable travel schedule keep you from making the mistake that the Brookses are “just like us”. But the romanticism of a slower, simpler life is a nice lifestyle to get swept up in.

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very personal snapshot of the Cotswolds. Beautifully photographed and well-written, with enough self-awareness to leaven the romanticism. I loved this, but keep in mind it is very aspirational - Brooks, a former New York socialite, was the fashion director at Barneys, so hers is not a "normal" country life by any stretch of the imagination.

[Whitney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read back to back memoirs from Brooks, starting with her fashion book "Always Pack a Party Dress." This book is much more my speed and interest although I really love her writing style in both. Brooks life in the English countryside is charmed, enviable, and downright magical-seeming. Reading this book was like an escape and I enjoyed reading it with that in mind. I appreciate she didn't try to make this a guide or even attempt to offer ways you could make your life like hers (besides sharing her favorite recipes). Just read it as a fantasy when you're in the mood for an escape.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought I was really going to like this book based on the description - a family living in New York City feels like their life is too hectic and decide to take a one year sabbatical to the father's family farm in England, but never come back to NY and stay on the farm full time. The book is set up by months starting in June, which was the month they moved to England. Each month Brooks takes readers through what that month is typically like on the farm - activities, recipes, photos, etc. About half-way through she started to get on my nerves. They obviously have TONS of money - living on the farm with not much talk of jobs or income and keeping their NY apartment too. They also travel and frequently go "somewhere tropical" during the coldest part of winter. Maybe I just don't understand it, but the chapter on fox hunting and the social importance of hunting (not actual hunting for food, but horseback riding that's "hunting" now a fox scent since actual fox hunting is illegal) seemed so elitist and terrible. That kind of turned me off to the book as a whole. While I like the idea of taking a sabbatical from city life and living on a working farm, this was more of farming as an English hobby which was off-putting to me. I gave it 3 stars though because the photographs are beautiful and the chapter with all the baby animal pictures was worth looking through the book for. Overall, I would skip this one for actual farm memoirs or better memoirs about leaving hectic city life for a simpler life.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed every aspect of this book. The photographs, taken by the author, capture the extraordinary natural beauty of her English country life. Amanda, her husband Christopher, and their two children have created an idyllic existence where they spend their days gardening, raising and caring for animals, riding, farming, cooking and writing. Their farm is a piece of a larger piece of land where Christopher’s extended family lives so family is always nearby. Farm from Home includes recipes and most importantly, Amanda’s honest and thoughtful words as she shares all the highs and lows of her family's journey from New York City to the English countryside.

[Cindy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really enjoyed the photos and recipes. Had a hard time relating to the life of a privileged family and their concerns. If you're interested in reading about another family's experiment in sustainable local food production without the glitz, try Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.

[Shirral · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not what I thought it would be based on the description. As the other reviewers with feelings similar to mine said, the life Amanda describes is wildly unrelatable and unachievable to an average person. I hoped it'd be a book about living and working at a working farm, a journey about getting there, making that big decision, gathering funds, starting from scratch, learning everything step by step, and making it, just enough to sustain yourself at first, then, maybe more - not about just having the option to move to a farm that's already generating a lot of income, get a house (plus a couple other buildings) and the land for free as it already belongs to the family who is happy for you to live there, and having other people do the work for you while you can allow yourself to indulge in the romantic side of the countryside living, like jam making or riding horses, and maybe do another job if and when you please, remotely from a cafe or a restaurant in a fancy city every day. Who can afford that?

And the hunts? They were described as an essential part of the English countryside experience. I have lived in England for a few years now, half of that time in the countryside in different parts of the south and the south-west - not far at all from where the author lives - and I've never once heard of such a thing before this book.

While I'm happy for the author and her family they have such wonderful lives, I couldn't help feeling she is a bit disconnected from the reality, and I really wasn't sure how to react to lines like the one about the wonderful farm life not being devoid of stressors as the author can sometimes get stressed while choosing and arranging the flowers from her garden in the decorative vases.

I also feel like the paper version of the book might probably be a bit better than the audiobook I have listened to, as the writing - the reading? - felt very chaotic and disorderly at times, especially throughout the first half of the book. I suppose it might make a bit more sense with the photos many people are mentioning here.

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite fashion book is I Love Your Style: How to Define and Refine Your Personal Style by Brooks, so I was excited to check this out. It's very, very different. Brooks has largely given up her fashion-influencer lifestyle for life in the country in England, but her lifestyle is still extremely beautiful (and fashionable).

I have a friend who's really interested in moving from the city to the country to open an animal sanctuary, so I purchased this as an inspirational gift. I liked the combination of memoir, photos, recipes and personal stories. I think this worked well, and makes a nice coffee table gift.

[Wendy MacKnight · Rating 5 out of 5]

A treat!

[Nancy Royer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm sure I would have liked this much more had I read it instead of listening to the audio version.

[Maureen Flatley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful read!

[Mary Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

For anglophiles only. nicely done.

[tea.tastes.tubs.and.tales · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the ease of the writing, as well as the gorgeous photographs and inspiring recipes.

[Trish · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a cool look of life on a farm in England.

[Lynnae · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part memoir, part lookbook, this coffee-table-ready book is the story of one NYC fashionista who uprooted and moved to her husband's ancestral farm in the English countryside. Her life is, in a word, idyllic, and the luscious pictures (most of them taken by her!) make you want to follow in her footsteps.

[Rhona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful escapism!

[Susan Freeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Both charming and enlightening. A thoroughly enjoyable read!

[Marieke · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writer definitely benefited from having a receiving support network in place when moving to the English country and I had to keep myself from romanticising the experience too much.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a lovely read!