“I can’t believe we did it. We are here.”
Ben Holloway said this standing on the porch of his new twenty-acre farm in Chester County, Pennsylvania, at 6:02am, in the clothes he slept in, holding a coffee that was already going cold. His wife Kate said it too — a few minutes later, from the same porch, looking at the same farm. They meant completely different things by it.
Ben was a project manager from Manhattan. Kate was a high school English teacher from Brooklyn with a background in horticulture and a very long list of plans. They had two horses, six chickens in a dog crate in the kitchen, a half-finished barn, a paddock fence that Harold the neighbour had already shaken his head about, and no idea where to start.
This book is the year that followed.
From the Porch is the honest, funny, and genuinely practical guide to hobby farm life that nobody handed Ben and Kate when they stood on that porch wondering where to start. Written from the lived experience of people who have actually done this, it follows one full year on a real farm — the chaos, the community, the unexpected calf born in a run-in shelter at 6am on a winter morning, the Amish quilts found at a farm auction for forty-five dollars, the WWI medal in a five-dollar lot box, the gas-powered post hole digger that launched its operator three feet into the air, and the late August barbecue where Ben and Kate looked around at Harold and Margaret and Dave and Marcus and Carol and thought: these are our people now.
Inside you will find:
• Step-by-step guidance through every major first-year challenge — the barn, the fencing, the chickens, the garden, the tractor, the tools, and the seasons
• The real story of building a rural community from scratch — and why it matters more than any piece of equipment
• Practical checklists at the end of every step, covering everything from stall door specifications to what to look for in a used tractor at auction
• Harold — the retired dairy farmer next door who says four words per chapter and is always right
• The farm auction chapter you didn’t know you needed: how to bid, what the Amish know, and why you should write your number down before you sit down
• The four seasons of a hobby farm — including the winter morning that changed everything
• An honest account of loss, gratitude, resilience, and what it actually means to build a life from scratch on twenty acres
This is not a book about people with unlimited money and a lifestyle brand. Ben and Kate sold their Park Slope apartment and made careful decisions and learned everything the hard way — which is the only way that sticks. If you are dreaming of a rural life, or have already taken the leap and are standing in your own field wondering what to do next, this book was written for you.
The coffee is hot. The farm is waiting. Go.
