A little too much sheep detail, not enough life detail but still very good.

A mostly enjoyable portrait of sheep-farming life, interspersed with vignettes of autobiography. On the whole, a good read about a way of life most people don't see, however there's just a wisp of a 'holier than thou' attitude throughout. It gets a bit repetitive in places, and frustrating -- on one page Rebanks recalls how his grandfather turns his back and walks away from tourists who stop to see him mending a stone wall, then pages later, wistfully ponders whether any of the tourists who walk & drive down the lanes today know or care who built these walls. Well, you can't have it both ways -- he seems to want to simultaneously draw people in to admire this way of life, yet hold them at arms' length. It's a club we can look at in admiration, but never join, as you must have been brought up there and been doing the same thing for generation after generation....God forbid you'd want to go hike up a mountain for enjoyment, that makes you someone to be looked down upon.

He hits the reader over the head with 'we've done things the same way & always will' message a bit too hard as well -- surely 'because we've always done it that way' is not a great reason to keep doing something the same way. Yes, he'll always have to walk his sheep to the fell, and the Herwick breed will always be best-suited to the hills of his region, a dog will always manage some tasks better than a 4x4, but he over-emphasises this point of resisting change a bit too much. Farming has to change with the times, to at least some degree, and often the best farmers are the ones who do -- try new strategies, technology, machinery... and he'd never have any of the fame he does without twitter, which I wish he'd put a bit more of in the book, how he started using it, how his followers on twitter increased, what he got out of communicating with people that way.

He's at his best when describing the intricacies of sheep farming. It's a field that seems mundane and all sheep the same from the outside, but once he begins to unravel the details of what it means to choose a tup, or why certain ewes are better than others, and the commitment to certain characteristics in a flock-- it all becomes much more intriguing. A bit like the Tour de France - glance at it on TV and it seems boring - a huge group of men cycling hundreds of miles, much the same every day, but once you slow down to learn about the teams, the strategies, the different players - mountain specialists, sprinters, domestiques, time triaillists and how they work together and compete throughout a long race..... it all becomes more interesting.

My favorite book of 2021 ❤️

This is a delightful, well-written, and decidedly unromantic story about farming life. The book is divided into seasons, as is natural, from a farming point of view. The author tells of his life and the book follows a somewhat chronological timeline. What is most fascinating about this, is that it describes a way of life which is - despite modern inventions such as antibiotics - much like it has been for centuries. It's a story not told. It's muck, blood and cold rain. A story of sheep that are "hefted", meaning they will stick to a certain number of hills and stray no further. Some of the people growing up are also "hefted" in a sense, not wanting to be anywhere else.

You have to be deeply rooted in tradition and have a strong sense of meaning to lead a life like this. A life where your life much depends on weather, disease and luck - but above else, hard work.

I once thought that I would like to be a vet, or at the very least, work with horses. So one summer I worked as a groom. That meant 12-13 hours a day, six days a week. It was summer, so the work was comparatively easy, the horses in the fields did not need to be fed. While I was there, there where others who tried their hand at being a groom, and quickly gave up. I had also enough after a summer. In fact, I never went back to horses after this. I also gave up on my dream of being a vet, which in addition to having required some extra classes to have any chance of making a cut, would also mean back-breaking, unromantic work with large animals. So no, a life where a large number of lives would depend on me always getting up on time and going the extra mile - that's not for me.

However, if your family has lived the life of shepherds and farmers for hundreds of years on the same land - well, that does mean something. The hills that you look upon being the same as your forefathers never admired. I can see how keeping this up has value, and I deeply respect the few that still bother with this life. Since most of us don't and have no idea what such a life means, read this book!

This was an interesting read that was a mix of the history of sheep farming in the Lake District (which after reading this I'm ashamed to admit I knew it only through Wordsworth and friends) and a farmer's own coming of age (and beyond) into a farming family. Definitely worth a read.

I received this book as part of a Goodreads first reads giveaway.

Informative, emotive, compelling. Marred only by the author’s apparent total disdain of anyone from any other walk of life.

I have always had a deep appreciation for the production of food, agriculture, and the people that make the food system go around, and this book just highlighted why farming, farmers, and food are such a beautiful ecosystem and way of life. Rebanks does a wonderful job of describing his everyday farming life and articulating the beautiful parallels and contrasts between the evolving modern world and a way of life that has remained for centuries.

The book pushes the reader to question our everyday patterns, habits, and way of thinking and criticizes the modern systems and structures we believe are "better" or more "advanced." I borrowed this book from someone and have decided I wanted to buy my own to write in it. It is a book that I will probably reread just because there is so much to unpack, appreciate, and question.

The book highlights the struggle and fight for maintaining tradition, family, environment, history, and the value of simplicity. Rebanks produced a novel that will be appreciated for a lifetime, and I only hope that schools incorporate this book into the curriculum. It makes me want to be a sheep farmer and no longer a sheep.