HARVESTING HISTORY

Murch offers a memoir celebrating family and a unique community in rural Marin County, California.

Muriel (Aggie) and Walter Murch married in 1965, beginning an adventure encompassing family, filmmaking, and farming. After their wedding, they relocated from the East Coast to Los Angeles. Aggie became a nurse at the University of Southern California hospital; after their first child was born, she coached others in the nascent field of natural childbirth as a childbirth educator. Walter had a fellowship at USC’s film school, which he attended with George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. In 1969, “A small band of us, Francis and his wife Ellie, George and his wife Marcia, Walter and I, headed north, making homes where we could.” Outgrowing their houseboat in Sausalito with the imminent birth of a second child, they purchased the Peters Dairy farmhouse (rechristened Blackberry Farm) and four acres in Bolinas in 1972. The addition of two more girls “brought the seemly manageable family of two children to the definitely joyously chaotic farm full of four—plus friends.” As Walter’s career flourished, working as an editor and sound designer on films including The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, Aggie reveled in having space for her children to roam, discovering and reviving the fruit trees and gardens, and caring for horses, sheep and chickens. The children grew up and moved away, occasionally returning briefly, “landing like butterflies, resting, sipping nectar from the home farm, and leaving again.” Although she and Walter now spend more time in her native England, “The farm remains the harbor, and I am anchored within the farm.” Murch has written a multilayered story of life in Bolinas. Her descriptions of heirloom apple trees, roses of unknown provenance, and other plants reveal a very personal connection to the land and people who lived there before. Community changes are explored through the history of local schools, farming techniques, and population shifts. She is self-effacing about her own achievements and generous in sharing credit. This is a touching memoir of a life well lived…and it includes recipes.

Touching, honest, and lyrical, this is a truly immersive read.