Welcome to the fabulous goat farm empire of Josh Kilmer-Purcell, a former drag queen turned ad executive, and his partner of 10 years, former Martha Stewart wellness doctor Brent Ridge.
On one of their annual fall trips from Manhattan to upstate New York, Josh and Brent discover and fall in love with a shining white wedding cake of a farmhouse, with matching red barn. They soon decide to work on a life dream: move to the country and become gentleman farmers. At least on the weekends. Soon they have 90 goats and a caretaker to go with it.
Josh grew up in rural Wisconsin, and was on farms all his life. He's familiar with splitting wood and gardening, and the country life still calls to him. Brent? Like his idol Martha Stewart, Brent has thoroughly perfectionist tendencies, and will do things like draw up a business plan for the farm. Since they quickly establish that in this day of huge farms, the smaller family farm isn't sustainable, he has another idea. Brent will create a Martha Stewart-type lifestyle empire.
Martha Stewart is very present in this book – she flickers in and out of the margins. Certainly she seems to hover over Brent. What would Martha do? Martha has teams of people to take care of her farm and empire. Josh and Brent only have each other and the caretaker, John. This leads to tense weekends, as Brent soon loses his job at Martha Stewart and stays on the farm to work, while Josh goes into the city during the week for his advertising exec duties.
Josh picked up the much younger Brent in a bar, and gave him his first cocktail. Josh likes to refer back to his wild drag queen past as Aqua, but since from all accounts his most recent performing days were in 2000, he says that the vivacious and sexy drag queen has hung up her boots and wig for good in the farm attic.
Josh has a lot of great material and contrasts here. The sunrise he'd see wandering home from cocktails in drag, vs. getting up before sunrise to driving a truck full of adorable baby goats to the Martha Stewart show. Brent's perfectionist, control-freak Martha Stewart attitude (Good Things) vs. Brent's more laid-back Oprah "Live Your Best Life" approach.
Right now, you can't miss them: ads for their reality TV show on Planet Green, "The Fabulous Beekman Boys," are plastered on billboard and bus. "The Bucolic Plague," Josh's fourth book, was published in June. The Beekman Boys maintain something like six blogs, all about different aspects of their farm, including one "written" by one of the resident ghosts. But it's a bit of a time travel conundrum: the book is about their first year on the farm, the reality series appears to be about their second year, and the blogs are obviously real-time. Along with several Twitter feeds (including one for their llama, Polka Spot) and a streaming goatcam. Got that? It's like three time streams at once.
Warning though: the TV show is exceptionally addictive. They're both good-looking and hilarious. Josh has the slightly hairy, handsome cub appeal with hipster glasses and sparkling wit that would get him picked up in a hot second in the hipster Mission cafes in San Francisco. Brent is shorter, younger, with dark hair and waspy, boyish good looks. Brent is more Twin Peaks material.
The zingers fly back and forth no matter what the media. But what's clear is that Brent and Josh have been together for years and love each other deeply, and the bickering/zingers are only a way to let off steam and show off their wit in the drag queen tradition of trading digs.
I am impressed by what both book and TV show accomplish for gay visibility. We see a long-term gay couple kiss, argue about wanting to spend more quality time together, playfully push each other in the mud, trade digs about being a "sugar daddy" and "trophy wife." In other words, they look like a lot of fun to hang out with.
The Bucolic Plague is one part Green Acres, as told by Zsa Zsa Gabor; one part Martha Stewart crossed with Mommy Dearest; and one part Alice Waters crossed with Henry David Thoreau. This book mixes all of the above. It's engaging, witty, and heartwarming: the perfect gay book for summer reading.