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New Intern, New Book Layout, New Workshops

New Intern, New Book Layout, New Workshops

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Jenks Farmer
Feb 16, 2025
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Plant People
Plant People
New Intern, New Book Layout, New Workshops
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Two weeks ago, in this very substack email, I described our cobb barn and all the folks who've lived in it. It's a special place, rustic but warm, a place folks seem to find themselves.

Do you remember that at the end, I said that if you want to be our intern, you could live here next?

Within 24 hours, we'd hired an intern via a substack message, text, and phone calls. There's always a bit of anxiety about bringing a new person into the farm fold.

A Cozy Office Day

Three of us worked inside while outside a gray, cold drizzle spotted the windows. Our office is set up like a flea-market-finds furnished living room. New intern in a mission-style recliner, focused on summer workshop descriptions, dates, and resources.  Young part-timer stretched out on the coffee-colored shag carpet with a dog between his legs, edited book chapters. And I’m kicked back in a recliner, laptop in lap.

Each of us had our faces glued to a screen, sort of in our own worlds. A space heater hummed, and yaupon tea steamed. I got back on the home-dried yaupon kick to strengthen my system before recent surgery. Today, I’m sipping while I work on-line.

Collaborating on a New Horticulture Book

When I focus on the screen, leaving the cozy room behind, I zoom into the online world, working with my friend Marc. We’re together in the cloud. He's doing graphic design for the new book. He and I have been discussing book covers—you will get to vote on cover art in two weeks. But today, we are talking about the inside page layout.

Marc has a refined sense of art and graphics, but I don't. He can visualize pages, but I can't. I don't always explain things to him well, but he's almost always patient.

Right now, we're working on chapter layout. I told him the book looked too serious, and I suggested that some short, colloquial, chicken-scratched notes in the margins might be fun as part of the graphics. I thought that would make this feel more like a handbook, a companion, a field guide. Here’s what he did:

What do y'all think?  Should we go with the very casual, slightly crude notes or not? 

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