When he decides to take up residence in an 18th-century farmhouse in Dutchess County, 90 miles north of New York City, Korda discovers what country life is really like:
-- Owning pigs, more than owning horses, more even than owning the actual house, firmly anchored them as residents in the eyes of the Pleasant Valley neighbors.
-- You may own your land, but without concertina barbed wire or the 82nd Airborne on patrol, it's impossible to keep people off it!
-- It's possible to line up major household repairs over a tuna melt sandwich.
-- And all the locals are fully aware that he "don't know shit about septics".

Sure to have readers in stitches, this is a book that has universal appeal for all of us who've dreamed of owning the perfect little place to escape to up in the country, or, more boldly, done it.