Real Dirt: How I Beat My Grid-Life Crisis

Acclaimed nature writer James Woodford tells the story of his real-life sea change in this warm, wry and refreshingly honest book. He writes about his family’s purchase of a 120 acre block on south-coastal New South Wales, with the goal of feeding themselves with what they would produce.

At the beginning of the book, alone and capsized in the lake bordering his property, Woodford clings to his dinghy, surveying his new property, and reflects: ‘Blockies are meant to take on five-acre lots … They are meant to go to mohair workshops and take painting classes and then farm with a ride-on mower around their grove of olives. They aren’t meant to take on big paddocks and barbed-wire fences and stockyards.’

Woodford tells the story of one family’s big project, and it’s a messy – though satisfying – one. He also traces his burgeoning passion for the environment movement, from its shaky share-house beginnings, as he literally learns to spell the word ‘environment’, through his youthful explorations, his job as environment writer on the Sydney Morning Herald, and his evolution as an author. At its heart, this is about the things that drive a person and a life – and the fact that those things take work to achieve.