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Who we are.

I am a local pastor and garden enthusiast whose hobby, when I'm not in the garden, is writing about farming and gardening. I come by my love of farm life honestly. My great-grandfather was both a farmer (West Tennessee sharecropper) and avid gardener. My earliest garden memories are of watching him file his hoe, gather a jug of water and walk to the garden by the creek to plant and weed. He kept a handkerchief at the ready to wipe the sweat, kept the hoe sharp, and kept time to a gospel song with the swing of the handle.

From Tumbledown Farm

[A photo of Papa on his way to the garden.]

 I write under the pen name Peter Tumbledown to avoid embarrassing friends and neighbors with my odd opinions. The P. Tumbledown character whose name I have assumed originated (so far as I can determine) as a "straw man" on the pages of The Farm Journal (see the book "How to Do Things" in the right sidebar) more than a century ago. Peter Tumbledown was the epitome of a bad farmer. He was a lazy good-for-nothing over against whom it was easy to point out the virtues, character, good sense and good practices of good farmers. I am Peter Tumbledown and will make no pretense of being an expert farmer or gardener. I like to think that my collecting and studying of century-old farming manuals and handbooks will eventually improve my rather inconsequential agricultural and horticultural skills--and I like to share what I learn with others on the pages of this web site. I do that in part by re-publishing in electronic format old farming manuals and handbooks that have entered the public domain. (See the right sidebar.) I also experiment with the techniques I see described in these old farming manuals and share the results of that experimentation on the "how to" section of the site. (See the links at the top of this page.)

From
Tumbledown
Farmer

The website name is derived from the Foreword to the book How to Do Things (a compendium of advice from The Farm Journal), which states that “[n]o one can read ‘The Farm Journal’ and be a Peter Tumbledown too. Many have tried, but they have to give up one or the other.”

I think we have we have given up reading the likes of the old “Farm Journal” to our detriment.

Of course, there isn't any longer a Farm Journal of the sort that was published from March 1877 to 1919 (the copyright date for the compendium of “new and practical farm and household devices, helps, hints, recipes, formulas and useful information”) by the Wilmer Atkinson Company of Washington Square in Philadelphia. (To prove the point, just visit the modern incarnation, today's industrial minded Farm Journal at AgWeb.com...and its sister publications, TOP PRODUCER, BEEF TODAY, DAIRY TODAY, DAIRY TODAY's ELITE PRODUCER and BEEF BUSINESS JOURNAL.)

From Tumbledown Fa...

[Papa with his mules.]

There are no longer 4 million diversified farms in the U.S.A. that boast 4 million “big barns with tight roofs, money in bank, fertile land, the best stock, the biggest apples, the richest milk.” Farming, like many other lines of work, has become a domain for the specialist rather than the generalist. And publications for farmers have become publications for professional specialists.

And so, we have inherited a Tumbledown Farm.

Drop us a line to tell us a story or tell us how to improve the site: E-mail Tumbledown Farm.

Sincerely,

Peter Tumbledown