"We are blessed with a story that not only honors the past, but builds toward a healthier, richer future. Join in the magic!"-GARY PAUL NABHAN, author of Coming Home to Eat and editor of
Renewing America's Food Traditions
"A great book for thinkers and doers alike."-GENE LOGSDON, author of Small-Scale Grain Raising and Living at Nature's Pace
"Anyone seeking a life characterized by noble intent will find this elegantly portrayed journey up Tunket Road both challenging and heartwarming...I couldn't put it down."-JOEL SALATIN, author
of Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal
"Ackerman-Leist joins the literary tradition of Thoreau, the Nearings, and Harlan Hubbard. What a delight to read this hopeful and iconic account of a sensible, accountable, and richly lived
life."-JANISSE RAY, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood
Ever since Thoreau's Walden, the image of the American homesteader has been of someone getting away from civilization. Yet if this were ever true, what is the nature and reality of homesteading
in our media-saturated, hyper-connected twenty-first century?
For seven years Philip Ackerman-Leist and his wife, Erin, lived without electricity or running water in an old cabin in the beautiful but remote hills of western New England. Slowly forging
their own farm and homestead, they were guided by their Vermont neighbors, who taught them about what it truly means to live sustainably in the postmodern homestead羅not only to survive, but to
thrive in a fragmented landscape and a fractured economy.
Up Tunket Road is the inspiring true story of a young couple who embraced the joys of simple living as well as the inevitable foibles of life off the grid羅from hauling frozen laundry uphill to
getting locked in the henhouse by their ox. Ackerman-Leist's account is not a how-to guide, but something much richer and more important羅a tale of discovery that will resonate with readers who
yearn for a better, more meaningful life, whether they live in the city, country, or somewhere in between.