Shepherd’s Sight
A Farming Life
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A restorative and resonant memoir of a year in the life of an aging shepherd
For 50 years, Barbara McLean has tended a flock of Border Leicester sheep on her small Ontario farm, Lambsquarters. In Shepherd’s Sight she shares the crises, pleasures, and challenges of farm life over the course of a year. Now in her 70s, McLean faces a new problem: how much longer she can continue with the physically taxing work that is her central source of meaning and satisfaction.
Through her unsentimental gaze, we witness the highs and heartbreaks of delivering and rearing lambs, the shearing and spinning of wool, the wildlife in the woods (and occasionally in the house), and the garden produce moving from seed to harvest to table. Even after half a century on this land, McLean is still making fresh observations, and she shares them in evocative, elegant prose. As she moves through the calendar year, she also reflects on years past, offering a long view on climate, stewardship, and agriculture.
With its vivid description and absorbing storytelling, Shepherd’s Sight offers an unforgettable glimpse of a life lived on the land.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Explore the joyful highs and heartbreaking lows of life on a farm in this comforting and clear-eyed memoir. After 50 years of tending to sheep in rural Ontario, Barbara McLean invites us onto her charming farm in Grey County and into the many intimate, detailed memories she’s accrued there. Separated into 12 chapters representing the months of the year, McLean’s book guides us through the seasons of her life. Her wisdom, philosophical insights, and elegant writing (she has a Ph.D. in English, after all) make even the most mundane moments feel monumental, from walking alongside an aging mallard duck to feeding pregnant ewes. Filled with pragmatic details about farming and poignant glimpses at her relationships with her children, her doctor husband, and her kind, hardworking neighbours, Shepherd’s Sight is a deeply human, life-affirming book.