About The Deliberate Agrarian
By: Herrick Kimball

I love to work in my garden and this picture, taken in the summer of 2004 shows me in front of my crop of German stiffneck garlic. See that smile on my face? I’m a happy garlic farmer! See that fork in my hand? That’s the fork I used to dig all those thousands of garlic bulbs. See that jar in my other hand? That’s full of Herrick’s Homegrown stiffneck garlic powder. If you’ve never had homemade garlic powder from stiffneck varieties of garlic, you have been missing out on one of life’s greatest pleasures!

My business of growing and making garlic powder is only a part-time enterprise. My full-time job is as a supervisor in a factory that makes office furniture. How’s that for a perfectly non-agrarian job? For now, I have one foot in the industrial world and one foot in the agrarian world. I long to plant both my feet in the agrarian world, and I am working toward that end. I think that is the case with a great many agrarians these days.

I live with my wife, Marlene, and our three sons on a 1.5 acre homestead in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. Some people are amazed that there are agrarians in New York. Well, I’m here to tell you that New York City is not representative of the rest of the state. I’ve only been to N.Y. City once, when I was 18 years old, and that was more than enough. Here, where I live, there are rolling hills and lakes and farmland and hardwood forests. It is a beautiful place!

In my book, Writings of a Deliberate Agrarian, I tell you about my debt-free home, my dear wife, my homeschooled and active sons, our garden, our chickens, homemade bread, the farm market, our dog, the dog we used to have, and a whole lot more. All of those things are part of the good life we live on this little piece of land that the Lord has blessed us with.

I don’t believe my family and I are necessarily the best examples of Christian agrarians. We’re more like excellent examples of aspiring and struggling, hardworking and hopeful Christian agrarians. We aspire to one day have more land and more home-centered agrarian enterprises. We are convicted that we must continue to simplify our needs and our dependencies. We aspire to learn more agrarian skills and put them to good use. We aspire to live closer to the Lord and trust Him more. We aspire to be good neighbors and a blessing to our community as well as our families, even to the generations that will follow. All those things are part of our Christian agrarian vision.

Part of my own personal vision centers around one of the God-given talents I’ve learned that I have. Back in 1992, after working 14 years in the building trades, I wrote the start of an article about making kitchen countertops, and I sent it into Fine Homebuilding magazine. They accepted and published it. That led to many more magazine articles, and then I wrote three how-to books for The Taunton Press. None of the books has sold all that well, but they were a learning experience.

In 2000, I used my woodworking and problem-solving skills to design and build a homemade mechanical chicken plucker. It worked as remarkably well as the expensive commercial plucking machines. I named it the Whizbang Plucker and, in 2002, I put together a planbook telling other discouraged hand-pluckers how to easily make their own nifty plucking machine.

I had 100 copies of Anyone Can Build A Tub-Style Mechanical Chicken Plucker printed and comb-bound at a local quick-print shop. Then I sent review copies out to several homesteading magazines. It was not an attractive book but it delivered some much-needed information and found a ready market. My humble, homemade book has now sold several thousand copies. Whizbang pluckers are now hard at work all over the world! That plucker book has helped a lot of folks achieve their agrarian dreams. They’ve been blessed and I’ve been blessed, and I thank God for it all.

The plucker book led me to start an “official” publishing company, which I run out of my home. I named the company Whizbang Books. My mission statement is to produce books with “Down-to-Earth Inspiration and How-To Information.” With that in mind, in 2003 I published my little book with the big title: The Complete Guide To Making Great Garlic Powder: Homegrown & Homemade Secrets From a Garlic Powder Guru. Then, in 2005 I published the book, Anyone Can Build A Whizbang Chicken Scalder.

I never imagined when I started Whizbang Books that I would one day publish a book like Writings of a Deliberate Agrarian. But that book does fit the mission statement— it has lots of down-to-earth inspiration, and some how-to information too.

All the books I’ve written are available from different book sellers and you can find them by doing a Google search of the titles. The one internet source that sells all my Whizbang books is Cumberland Books.

So that’s my story—part of it. For more of the story, I encourage you to get a copy of my book, Writings of a Deliberate Agrarian. And be sure to check out the selection of my blog writings that I’ve made available on this site.

If you’d like to contact me, I’d like to hear from you. My e-mail address is: hckimball@bci.net