The fact that vampire worms were reproducing by the tens of thousands in the belly of my goat should not have come as a surprise. By now I’d learned that country life is not a pastoral painting. Sure, at various times during the year you might see fluffy white lambs prancing in the tall grass, but those moments are rare. Real country life, it turns out, involves blood, shit and worms.

Sitting in traffic on your morning commute, with a day of staring at a screen and answering emails ahead of you, you catch yourself wondering: what if I threw it all in for a peaceful life in the country?

Antonia Murphy knows the feeling—and she did something about it. Swapping deadlines for feeding times, traffic jams for homemade cheese, Antonia transplanted her husband and children to a small farm in rural New Zealand.

But it turns out that collecting your own organic eggs isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In her hilarious account of rural life, Antonia exposes the dirty truth behind the agrarian dream: a world of turkey slaughter, maggots and menopausal hens. Not to mention that there’s family life to contend with, too: when her young son collapses on the school bus one day, she realises her troubles are just beginning.

It’s mad, bad and dangerous to grow your own vegetables—Dirty Chick will make you grateful that you can get yours from the supermarket, instead.