Year in the Mud and the Toast and the Tears

A laugh-out-loud acount of a young family's misplaced confidence in themselves to become hobby farmers in rural Adelaide Hills, where their fantasies about life in the country are progressively destroyed and their almost total ignorance about everything agricultural is revealed ... After buying an old cottage in the Adelaide Hills, Georgie and her young family are transfixed with dreams of becoming hobby farmers. They long to tend chooks, sit by log fires, grow their own veggies and generally immerse themselves in the joys of nature. However, a stubborn cow named Ginger, acres of mud, a feral crop of artichokes, the coldest winter of the decade and a husband whose job means he is away from home most of the week with time only to repeatedly bog the tractor on the weekends does not make their introduction to rural living ideal. Surely things can only get better? For anyone who has either made the escape from city living or dreams of doing so, A Year in the Mud and the Toast and the Tears is an entertaining and humorous story about a tree change with more than a rocky start. AUTHOR: Georgie Brooks grew up in Adelaide and studied law. She practised as a solicitor where the gossip was incredible but the time sheets were not. Since then Georgie has worked as a university researcher, policy wonk in the areas of electricity, water and climate change, a stay at home mother and a hobby farmer. Her hobbies include gardening, reading and writing (also eating, drinking, reading the internet and mindlessly following social media feeds). She currently excels in driving her children to various activities and then staying to watch and support while they pretend they don't know who she is. She is at present a secondary school teacher, while trying to become a truffle farmer and train her dogs to hunt for truffles. Georgie lives in the Adelaide Hills with her husband and two children.