As the classic song suggests, Christmas is only the beginning of an increasingly impractical gift-giving extravaganza. If you (or your true love) want to honor the spirit of the song, we’ve found a seasonally appropriate story for every one of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Take a deep breath, and check back every day to see what we’re unwrapping. The maids-a-milking are making an appearance today.

January 1: The Eighth Day of Christmas
Eight Maids-a-Milking

What’s life on a dairy farm really like? Kristin Kimball, in Dirty Life, follows through on many an urbanite’s secret fantasy when she drops out of her single city life to start afresh on five hundred acres of farmland. Kimball’s adventure begins when she falls for a man she is interviewing as part of a story about young, first-generation farmers working to revive older, localized methods of growing crops and raising livestock—little suspecting then that she would become one herself. The farm was both a modern idea and a deeply romantic one, driven by a commitment to community, history, good food, and honest labor. “We milk our cows by hand and their milk is very rich and the butter we make from the cream is taxicab yellow,” she writes, as part of a mouthwatering introduction to a memoir that will make the most committed taxi-hailer crave a life of compost and cattle.

See all twelve days of Christmas here.