ON THE ONE HAND...
"Some farmer-writers, such as Gene Logsdon, whose analysis of the ills of modern farming is generally right on the mark, reject outright any discussion of farm life whose tone doesn't accentuate the positive." —Novelist Jane Smiley in The New Yorker magazine, in an article, "Losing the Farm," (June 3, 1996) page 91.

AND THEN ON THE OTHER HAND...
"Logsdon [concluded]: 'When you ask what the problem with agriculture is, you're really asking what the problem is with human nature. The root of the problem is that we're all frail, dumb, greedy sons-of-bitches." —From an interview with J. Tevere MacFadyen, in his book Gaining Ground: The Renewal of America's Small Farms (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1984), page 224.

INSPIRING A BEST-SELLING NOVELIST
"I've never loved any earthly thing so much [as our farm]. It seems to my husband and me that the farm is something we need to work hard to deserve...For several years now we've received from each other as gifts, on nearly all occasions, such books as are written by Gene Logsdon, Michael Phillips, Elliot Coleman, Carol Ekarius, Vandana Shiva and Wendell Berry. Some other wife might wish for diamond earrings, but my sweetheart knew I wanted Basic Butchering." —The novelist Barbara Kingsolver, writing in the introduction to The Essential Agrarian Reader: The Future of Culture, Community and the Land (University Press of Kentucky, 2003), page xv.

AND A BEST-SELLING ESSAYIST
"And then we drive back where the day began...It is looking more and more as if we will soon be tending this patch of land. We'll try to keep it realistic. In preparation for the move, we have placed a copy of Gene Logsdon's All Flesh Is Grass in the bathroom. We dip into it and dream." —Michael Perry, author of the best-selling book of essays, Population: 485, in his latest book, Truck: A Love Store (HarperCollins, 2006), page 278.

AS WELL AS AN AWARD-WINNING JOURNALIST
"Our friendship was forged in the second half of the turbulent 1960s when both of us worked at Farm Journal's home office in Philadelphia. There, I watched Logsdon stretch his already awesome abilities. Not content with being our magazine's most creative writer, despite his lack of a single day in anyone's journalism class, he started writing books. The prose in Logsdon's early books, those he wrote while still at Farm Journal, startled all of us, and not just because it sparkled with his unique expression of original ideas. In a Logsdon sentence, words cavort to a cadenced conclusion: subjects seduce, clauses compel, predicates provoke. Above all, a Logsdon effort evokes a wondrous wellspring of emotional response—as do, say, images of seed corn daubed on canvas by painter Andrew Wyeth. Indeed, Wyeth People was the title of Logsdon's first book." —Joe Dan Boyd, the only journalist to twice win the coveted award "Farm Writer of the Year" from the American Agricultural Editors Association, in his profile of Logsdon, "A Spiritual Harvest," in Farm Journal magazine in the mid-March issue, 1994, pages 34 and 35.

NOT TO MENTION A HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEUR
"My Creative Action Heroes live their ideals through creating alternatives that solve social problems and make a positive difference in the world...Creative Action Heroes may also be independent writers like Wendell Berry and Gene Logsdon who went back to their roots on farms to apply their lives to 'experiments in life' and published their carefully-gained insights for us to admire and possibly emulate. They spawned thousands of other Creative Action Heroes...This web of heroes, great and small...move mankind ever forward by the work they do and the lives they lead... —To Be Of Use: The Seven Seeds of Meaningful Work by Dave Smith, co-founder of Smith & Hawken. (New World Library, Novato, Calif., 2005, p. 162-163.

WHEN NOT INSPIRING, HE BUSTS IDOLS
"Speaking of which [brewing beer] 'that useful man, Gene Logsdon,' as the British have dubbed him, has unburdened himself of yet another book; this one related to this subject. Ever the idol buster and supreme non-conformist, Mr. Logsdon has taken on the whole politically-correct admonition against demon rum in his new book entitled Good Spirits, a veritable manual on how to produce exquisitely thundering beverages in an age of really awful commercial undrinkables...Mr. Logsdon has never written a bad book and this one is a corker—or uncorker, in this case. —"The Intentional Peasant" in an essay, "What Does It Eat?" in Countryside and Small Stock Journal, Vol. 84 No. 2, March/April 2000, page 114.

OR SINKS INTO CHERRY PIE HERESY
It is with his great storytelling ability that he persuades us to pay attention to our desires, even as he shares his own. Logsdon's stories are rich in details and personalities, tension and drama—like the one that opens this book with seminary boys desperate to steal cherry pies baked for their teacher-priests. Laced with boyish pleasure and fear, the story vibrates between the wish to heed God's call (which he already questioned) and the worldly temptation of cherry pies... As a writer, Logsdon skillfully weaves narrative and dramatic elements into the story-essays he shares with us, a storytelling ability equal to the writings he admired most in The New Yorker magazine." —Beth Slocum, in her review of You Can Go Home Again: Adventures of a Contrary Life in The Land Stewardship Letter, Sept./Oct., 1999, pages 16 and 17.

WHICH BRINGS HIM AN OFFER NEVER MADE BEFORE NOR SINCE
"[Logsdon] tired of all that a couple of years ago, vowed never to write how-to-do anything ever again, and turned his attention to larger questions. His last two books are about those bigger things, to which he has answers that will appeal to all clear-thinking humanists...I am so sure you need this book (The Contrary Farmer's Invitation To Gardening) that I offer this unilateral contract: buy a copy, read it. If you don't like it, the next time your subscription to this magazine comes up for renewal, tell me to extend you a year for free, to repay you the cost of Logsdon's book that I seduced you to buy. Not one of you will ask for a refund." —Robert Kaldenbach, editor and publisher of Rural New England Magazine writing in his Oct./Nov.issue, 1997, page 12.

WHY, HE MIGHT EVEN BECOME A NOVELIST
"...he joined Rodale Press, as a contributor to the old Organic Gardening and Farming magazine and as the author of numerous back-to-the-land how-to books—the only ones that are fun to read. Logsdon could be a novelist. Instead, he turns his writing skills... into some of the most intelligent farm writing in America." —Dan Looker, a staff editor at Successful Farming magazine, in an article, "New Voices In Agriculture" in Prairie Sentinel June/July, 1983), page 25.

OR AT LEAST PROVIDE AN ALTERNATIVE TO GARBAGE
Another brilliant antidote to much of the nihilistic garbage found on many bookstore shelves is Gene Logsdon's The Contrary Farmer...In addition to the tools and tenets the text provides, we are privy to hilarious stories and beautiful evocations of the countryside. Logsdon knows his place in the universe." —Don DeNevi, a book reviewer writing in the Palo Alto Daily News, July 18, 1998, page 10.

HE GETS ANGRY IN JUST THE RIGHT WAY
"O, environmental writers. The religious scribes of our day. I love them but I fear them too, because of the way self-righteousness can rear up like some suddenly animated pond scum in a Stephen King movie and over the picnic, the teenagers, everything that was ever fun and alive and moving around...So when I had the opportunity recently...to stop in rural Ohio to meet Gene Logsdon, I did. Gene Logsdon writes like a dream (a reader of one of his books calls him 'a hardworking, thinking person's genius and a national treasure'. And he covers all the right things—family farming, the corporatization of agriculture and how to brew really good beer. He's funny and humble, and when the unjustness of the world makes him angry—which is often—he gets mad in just the right way. His anger is direct and sharp and on target." —Environmental writer Lisa Jones in Grist magazine on line at Earth Day Network, April 22, 2000.

BUT HE HAS KNOWN FEAR IN SOME VERY WEIRD SITUATIONS
"While his prose may lack the convoluted elegance of [Wendell] Berry's and the rhythmic polish of Scott Russell Sanders'...Logsdon writes with efficiency, passion and (when the topic warrants it, such as the Blizzard of '78) considerable narrative force. Besides that, he' funnier than those guys are, and he has more fun. It's hard to picture Berry at a marathon softball tournament or Sanders at a rock concert, but both events...are part of Logsdon's tableau of old-fashioned country life, '90s style. While the crowd at a Ted Nugent show scares him as much as his ride in an Amish buggy on a busy highway, he gives both experiences favorable reviews. He calls rock concerts 'the sounds of animality relieving the tensions of modern life,' which from a man who's found happiness as a shepherd, must amount to about three stars." —Dan Carpenter, staff writer, reviewing Logsdon's book, You Can Go Home Again in The Indianapolis Star, October 24, 1998, page A13.

HE SEEMS IMPRESSED BY NATURE'S BEAUTY
" Logsdon says the natural world never ceases to amaze him...'Nature is the most fascinating part of existing,' he said.... [Art] flows out of man's innate desire to represent the beauty he sees in nature'." —Chuck Bowen, in an interview for the Findlay, Ohio, Courier, Sept. 18, 2004, pages A1 and A15.

BUT THEN AGAIN, MAYBE NOT
"Comparing what he calls 'Romantic Faddists' to Maria Antoinette—the-silk-and- satin- clad French queen who played at being a shepherdess while her ladies-in-waiting cleaned up all the sheep manure—Logsdon says they dream about living in productive and rewarding harmony with Mother Nature, yet they haven't a clue about the hard work, compromises and flat-out sacrifices it takes to turn their dream into reality. 'This is not a Jean Jacques Rousseau noble-nature kind of world. Mother Nature is a bitch,' says Logsdon." —Eileen Beal in an interview, "Mother Nature's A Bitch: In Logsdon Logic, Less Is More," in the Cleveland, Ohio Free Times, Feb. 24-March 2, 1999, page 43.

AND WOULD YOU BELIEVE, ALL THIS FROM A FARMER
"When the layman notes that Logsdon is an editor of Farm Journal he is unprepared for the graceful and vivid portraits, the rich images, the perceptiveness with which the book is written. It is an unfair judgment, an unfounded stereotype among the masses of city and suburban dwellers to think that the tilling of soil and the milking of cows precludes the possession of intellect...But beyond the misconception, Logsdon's writing is surprisingly polished, surprising because such craftsmanship is getting more and more scarce." —Linda Hammond, in the Courier Post, Camden, N.J., 1971