For a few months reading wasn't on my agenda. Now that's changed, why I don't know, but I'm reading again. The Shepherd's Life: Modern Dispatches from an Ancient Landscape, James Rebanks. is a memoir of his experience as a shepherd. Growing up on a sheep farm in the northern Lake Country of England, Rebanks always wanted to raise sheep. Though he graduates from Oxford he returns to his ancestral home as a sheep farmer.
His description of shepherding, and his biography, is divided by the seasons; summer, autumn, winter and spring. He is unsparing of the realities of raising sheep, none of which were really surprising to me with my farm background. The book is a New York Times bestseller so I do wonder what persons not familiar with the realities of animal husbandry thought of some of his graphic descriptions.
This story is a paean to the long tradition of raising sheep in conflict with the increasing tourist identification of the Lake Country as a vacation destination. He works through his internal conflicts about tradition versus modernizing in print giving the reader and interesting and thoughtful commentary on values by which to live.
Yes, I recommend it.
Takk for alt,
Al
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