In forty short and charming chapters, a former "great books" teacher from New York City adapts to his new role on a small Southern farm by observing the natural world and drawing connections to his reading life. Inlate middle-age, Harry Kavros and his wife, Peri, pack up all the householdbelongings that will fit into their car and leave Manhattan, bound for their newhome on a twenty-two-acre patch of pine-filled land in Hillsborough, North Carolina. As Mr. Kavros spends long hours clearing the acreage, not for farming but for sightlines, he muses about the land, the exhausting work it requires, and the rewardsthe effort offers. Every task he undertakes prompts him to recalland meditate over scenes from his reading life. From the great Greek epics(Mr. Kavros is a Greek American, after all), to the writings of Frederick LawOlmstead on landscape, to Thoreau, to modern poets, to a veritable treasury ofreferences, for the author life in the country is also life in among hisreading. Witty and perceptive, Observations of an Accidental Farmer--and a Mindful Reader isabout cultivation, of one's land and one's life.