On his Vashon Island daily farm, Kurt Timmermeister produces high-quality cheeses available for sale all over Seattle at places like Picnic and DeLaurenti. But before he was ready to make cheese, Timmermeister first had to build his farm. And before he was able to do that, he had to reclaim the land, clearing it himself like the pioneers, except with fewer kids. Eventually, Timmermeister was able to take a frightful plot of real estate, so undesirable that even Oscar the Grouch would refuse to inhabit it, and turn it into a dreamy agrarian fantasy land where fairies drink dew out of acorn caps and rainbows smile from the sky’s face. All of which he relates in Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live Off the Land (W.W. Norton, $24.95). The book isn’t really a how-to manual; if anything, it shows how not to go about a career in agriculture. (Before he sold Café Septieme and moved to Vashon, Timmermeister didn’t even own a car.) Timmermeister remembers that nature is cruel, and if we don’t kill and eat animals, they’ll kill and eat us. Anyone who’s ever eaten at the secret dinners hosted at Kurtwood Farms can see the livestock he slaughters through the dining-room window. Connection to the animals we eat is central to his outlook. “Pork is not abstract,” he says. “There’s an animal that has to be slaughtered.” (Also: Third Place, 7 p.m. Wed. Feb. 23.) THE SURLY GOURMOND

Sun., Feb. 20, 3 p.m.; Wed., Feb. 23, 7 p.m., 2011