Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their process for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, Ashley Farmer writes about The Farmacist from Jellyfish Highway.

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Research Index for The Farmacist

Adjunct, agrarian, ambition, ambivalence, American dream, animal, anxiety, apple trees, avatar

Banish, barn, beach, beta, bridge, buffering

California, car accident, cherry tree, chicken, coin, crop

Digital, disconnection, distance, doomsday

Escape, estrangement

Fable, Facebook, fake, farm, Farmer family, fascination, fear, fence, field, fishing, forget-me-not, fragment, freeway, frenetic

Game, gentrification, gridlock, gunshot, gut

Harvest, hay bale, hedge, home-sweet-home, hope

I, insomnia, instability, Instagram, Internet, iTunes

Joblessness, joy

Kinship, Kentucky

Laptop, lemon tree, livestock, loitering, Long Beach, longing, lottery

Machine, mansion, marigold, marriage, meritocracy

Naiveté, narrative, neighbor, newlywed, nostalgia

Ocean, opportunity, optimism

Pessimism, pixel, plow, pond, poppy, post, postage

Quiet

Root, Romantic

Sand, scythe, sea, seed, shack, shed, silo, Southern California, stranger, sunset

Tension, thorn, traffic, tulip

Uncertainty, uniform, upward mobility

Verdant, violet, violence, volition

Wheat, wheelbarrow, Whitman, windmill

Xo,

Youth

Zen, zinnia

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