The Salt Stones: seasons of a shepherd's life by Helen Whybrow
Helen Whybrow grew up on a farm and was used to growing her own food, heating with wood, and all that comes with a homestead lifestyle. As an adult, she feels drawn back to the land and wants to live on a farm again. Whybrow and her husband have the opportunity to be stewards on a farm in Vermont as long as they promise to keep it in agriculture and run educational programs. They start raising sheep, in addition to chickens and growing vegetables and fruit. The Salt Stones is the story of Whybrow's life as a shepherd. The book starts with her helping a ewe struggling to give birth and only one of the twin lambs surviving. That pretty much sums up farming with animals - there is a LOT of death involved. But, a lot of joy too. Whybrow's writing is beautiful and she explores everything from the day-to-day life on the farm, to the history of sheep in America, and her own personal background and life struggles. She doesn't sugarcoat it, this life is hard. But there is also a lot of satisfaction and joy in it as well. Whybrow does a great job of capturing both.
Some quotes I liked:
"Industrial farming, in which animals are fed grain in barren feedlots, interrupts millions of years of coevolution - for the grasslands and grazing animals that formed a unique relationship, for the humans who understood how these relationships ensured mutual flourishing and could turn grass into milk and meat for their own consumption, and for an entire universe of soil and gut microorganisms that are designed to help soil grow grass and ruminants to digest it. As I learn how everything is connected, I see more clearly how thin the line is between damage and healing in farming. The way we farm places us on a spectrum from poisoning and depleting the land to being a partner in its restoration and resilience." (p. 52)
"We have no trouble cataloging the loss of single species, but it is the diminishment of all species that will cause nature's intricately woven system to collapse, and diminishment is harder to perceive. As our experience of nature also dies, our senses no longer know how to measure the world around us. Can one sense diminishment of all species if one has never been a quiet member inside the full symphony of spring?" (p. 84)
"When you farm in America, there's always the pressure to scale up. Our culture doesn't respect the small. But even small hill farms, given enough of them, can make a substantial contribution to the self-reliance and local economy of a region, both through what they produce and also what they need in the way of supporting local services - vets, tractor supply stores, feed stores, seed, labor. Small farms everywhere are endangered. They are a species people don't think about until they are gone, and suddenly the place they live has less of a story, feels tangibly less vibrant, healthy, and enlivening to the spirit. Small farms are worthy and need help to hang on." (p. 165)
"The things I strive for in my flock - like strong mothering and hardiness for a winter climate - are bred out of modern herds. Modern breeds are totally different in looks and behavior from the more primitive breeds like ours that were adapted to raise themselves and their young with little help. Modern sheep breeds are the equivalent of a supermarket tomato, bred to be generic. They can't thrive on what nature provides, on grass alone." (p. 208)
Some quotes I liked:
"Industrial farming, in which animals are fed grain in barren feedlots, interrupts millions of years of coevolution - for the grasslands and grazing animals that formed a unique relationship, for the humans who understood how these relationships ensured mutual flourishing and could turn grass into milk and meat for their own consumption, and for an entire universe of soil and gut microorganisms that are designed to help soil grow grass and ruminants to digest it. As I learn how everything is connected, I see more clearly how thin the line is between damage and healing in farming. The way we farm places us on a spectrum from poisoning and depleting the land to being a partner in its restoration and resilience." (p. 52)
"We have no trouble cataloging the loss of single species, but it is the diminishment of all species that will cause nature's intricately woven system to collapse, and diminishment is harder to perceive. As our experience of nature also dies, our senses no longer know how to measure the world around us. Can one sense diminishment of all species if one has never been a quiet member inside the full symphony of spring?" (p. 84)
"When you farm in America, there's always the pressure to scale up. Our culture doesn't respect the small. But even small hill farms, given enough of them, can make a substantial contribution to the self-reliance and local economy of a region, both through what they produce and also what they need in the way of supporting local services - vets, tractor supply stores, feed stores, seed, labor. Small farms everywhere are endangered. They are a species people don't think about until they are gone, and suddenly the place they live has less of a story, feels tangibly less vibrant, healthy, and enlivening to the spirit. Small farms are worthy and need help to hang on." (p. 165)
"The things I strive for in my flock - like strong mothering and hardiness for a winter climate - are bred out of modern herds. Modern breeds are totally different in looks and behavior from the more primitive breeds like ours that were adapted to raise themselves and their young with little help. Modern sheep breeds are the equivalent of a supermarket tomato, bred to be generic. They can't thrive on what nature provides, on grass alone." (p. 208)
We the Women: the hidden heroes who shaped America by Norah O'Donnell
In celebration of America's 250th birthday, Norah O'Donnell wrote We the Women to highlight the often unknown and hidden heroes of the past 250 years. The book is divided into 4 time periods and each section highlights many important women that could have been lost to history. I definitely learned about many new women from our country's history. This book highlights how far we have come as American women, but also how quickly what these women worked for could be taken away. And just how long it took for women's rights to be fully recognized. This should be required reading for everyone to get a more full understanding of our country's history. My only complaint is that the 5th section "My Lifetime...1976-Today" was more highlights from that 50 year period and not it's own full section. I understand that 2026 is not over, but I think she could have made that a full section like the other time period sections. Overall, I loved it. It's also a fairly quick read because each woman's story is only a few pages.
Some quotes I liked:
"In what would become a famous phrase a century later, Sarah [Grimke] declared: 'I ask no favors for my sex. I surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask our brethren, is that they take their feet from off our necks.' In fact, Ruth Bader Ginsburg quoted this passage from Sarah in her oral argument before the Supreme Court in the 1973 case of Frontiero v. Richardson, a landmark case against sex discrimination." (p. 71-72)
"The defining achievement of the women's Progressive Era activism culminated in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment - the largest enfranchisement in America's history, giving twenty-six million women the right to vote, although women of color were often excluded. Before that, many women in the West at the turn of the century could vote - in Wyoming in 1890, Colorado in 1893, Utah and Idaho in 1896. But this wasn't because men realized the error of their ways. Instead, men wanted to entice women to move West and understood how coveted the right to vote was to most women. Men were willing to give women the vote when it was useful to them." (p. 140)
Some quotes I liked:
"In what would become a famous phrase a century later, Sarah [Grimke] declared: 'I ask no favors for my sex. I surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask our brethren, is that they take their feet from off our necks.' In fact, Ruth Bader Ginsburg quoted this passage from Sarah in her oral argument before the Supreme Court in the 1973 case of Frontiero v. Richardson, a landmark case against sex discrimination." (p. 71-72)
"The defining achievement of the women's Progressive Era activism culminated in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment - the largest enfranchisement in America's history, giving twenty-six million women the right to vote, although women of color were often excluded. Before that, many women in the West at the turn of the century could vote - in Wyoming in 1890, Colorado in 1893, Utah and Idaho in 1896. But this wasn't because men realized the error of their ways. Instead, men wanted to entice women to move West and understood how coveted the right to vote was to most women. Men were willing to give women the vote when it was useful to them." (p. 140)
Outsider Animals by Marlene Zuk
Marlene Zuk is a professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at the University of Minnesota. She's studied all kinds of animals and while she can find something to love about most animals, insects, etc. not everyone feels the same way. In this book, Zuk is highlighting some Outsider Animals that tend to get a bad rap or humans find a nuisance. But Zuk feels that all animals have something to teach us and hopes this book will help you appreciate these less-loved animals. "One of the definitions of appreciation is 'a full understanding of a situation,' without any values attached." (p. 4) Zuk covers 9 different animals and makes the case that they all have something to offer. I will admit, I could barely read the chapter on cockroaches. But she makes a good case for the rest of the "outsiders." I think my main takeaway was that humans like to categorize animals as good or bad and that's not how nature operates. A songbird is technically a "predator" of insects, but most people don't think of songbirds as predators. An interesting book about some less-loved but common place animals.
Some quotes I liked:
[Margaret Renkle writes]"'When you are paying attention to nature, you will always see something you don't want to see, some workings of the great world that don't comport with your own taxonomies, your own notions of justice.' She's right. It all comes down to who you want to root for. In those nature documentaries about lions in the Serengeti, we tend to cheer when the gazelle gets away, but what about the poor little cubs left without their supper? Predators need to eat, too, and sometimes their prey is cute. We don't have to love the blood and guts of hunting other animals for food, but we need to recognize how subjective we are in our judgement of what goes on in the natural world." (p. 78)
"Andrea Griffin noted that people have changed their minds about many animal species, and gives crows as a perfect example. Crows, she points out, have always been recognized as clever, but hundreds of years ago, that cleverness was tied to villainy. Crows were evil plotters, sinister. Then, perhaps starting a couple of decades ago, the whole jay and crow family, the corvids, received something of a rehab. Scientists discovered that crows could use, and even make, tools, and ravens could solve complex problems. Their intelligence suddenly became admirable, not evil." (p. 108)
Some quotes I liked:
[Margaret Renkle writes]"'When you are paying attention to nature, you will always see something you don't want to see, some workings of the great world that don't comport with your own taxonomies, your own notions of justice.' She's right. It all comes down to who you want to root for. In those nature documentaries about lions in the Serengeti, we tend to cheer when the gazelle gets away, but what about the poor little cubs left without their supper? Predators need to eat, too, and sometimes their prey is cute. We don't have to love the blood and guts of hunting other animals for food, but we need to recognize how subjective we are in our judgement of what goes on in the natural world." (p. 78)
"Andrea Griffin noted that people have changed their minds about many animal species, and gives crows as a perfect example. Crows, she points out, have always been recognized as clever, but hundreds of years ago, that cleverness was tied to villainy. Crows were evil plotters, sinister. Then, perhaps starting a couple of decades ago, the whole jay and crow family, the corvids, received something of a rehab. Scientists discovered that crows could use, and even make, tools, and ravens could solve complex problems. Their intelligence suddenly became admirable, not evil." (p. 108)
The Self-Fed Farm and Garden by Eliot Coleman
Eliot Coleman is one of the most well known farmers promoting the organic movement. He and his wife, Barbara Damrosch, started the Four Season Farm in Maine. Growing food year round in Maine shows he knows what he's talking about. He also only just recently retired from Four Seasons at 86 years old. In The Self-Fed Farm and Garden, he is teaching his method for having a completely self-sufficient, self-fed farm. His farm is a vegetable farm without any animals to create/add manure. But Coleman promotes growing your own "green manure," plants that you grow only for the benefits to the soil - whether nitrogen fixing or to till under as more immediate compost. Coleman's garden is a business, so they are growing a LOT of food. But he does talk about how this can translate to a smaller household garden. I do a lot of gardening and just this year started experimenting with "undersowing," growing a second plant (either to harvest or for green manure) under a taller plant. A lot of what Coleman talks about is more for a larger market garden and some of it was over my head as a gardener. But, it's a quick read and the main premise is important - the more garden inputs you can control, the better. There are also a ton of awesome pictures of Four Season Farm throughout the book. If you're trying to up your garden game, this is one to check out.
Destroy This House by Amanda Uhle
Amanda Uhle had a chaotic, but loving family life. Her mother was a fashion school dropout and her father was a wheeler-dealer who always had a new money-making idea that never seemed to actually make money. When the bottom fell out, they would just pack as much of their stuff as they could and pick up stakes to somewhere else. Never paying any past debts, never taking care of the homes they lived in, and her mother's hoarding added to the chaos inside their home. Amanda had a reoccurring dream throughout her teenage years that she was ordered to Destroy This House and while she desperately wanted to, she was terrified in her dream of her parent's reaction to the destruction. Once she moved out for college, she had a little more breathing room. But as she moved further away from them as she became an adult, they started to guilt her into doing more and more for them. While both her parents health was declining, often hospital trips coincided with other important or special dates in Amanda's life. In the last decade of her parent's lives, the time Amanda describes as "gory," she struggled with trying to help them and trying to set reasonable boundaries. She was also uncovering more and more scraps of the truth - something neither of her parents were good at telling. This memoir is her account of her life with her parents and trying to unravel who they actually were and what was or wasn't true about her childhood memories.
It's been awhile since I read a really good dysfunctional family memoir. Amanda's parents were both likely mentally ill and her mother in particular probably had multiple un-diagnosed mental illnesses. Not quite as good as The Glass Castle, but definitely in the same vein. If you enjoy a good dysfunctional family memoir, I would recommend this one.
Some quotes I liked:
"Separately and together, my parents had a knack for self-made obstacles, a proclivity for building situations of extreme hardship for themselves. It made them happy. I came to understand it as something sacred about their true selves. Buying a house whose location promised four hours of commuting each day brought them a distinctive sense of satisfaction, their travails validated and the chaotic world momentarily clicking into precise alignment as they signed the real estate paperwork." (p. 34)
"I was growing more and more afraid of something else. The longer we lived in our huge house with our huge number of things, the more generally uncomfortable I felt. It was a nonspecific malaise that I couldn't name. I understood that the same thing that made me anxious was the exact thing that gave Mom joy. To me, it felt like the things we owned outnumbered us, were taking over." (p. 106)
"And why, in our malaise and our love and our stories and savagery and tenderness of all those years together did we never remember that long is a verb? 'To feel a strong desire or craving especially for something not likely to be attained. To pine. To yearn.'" (p. 336)
It's been awhile since I read a really good dysfunctional family memoir. Amanda's parents were both likely mentally ill and her mother in particular probably had multiple un-diagnosed mental illnesses. Not quite as good as The Glass Castle, but definitely in the same vein. If you enjoy a good dysfunctional family memoir, I would recommend this one.
Some quotes I liked:
"Separately and together, my parents had a knack for self-made obstacles, a proclivity for building situations of extreme hardship for themselves. It made them happy. I came to understand it as something sacred about their true selves. Buying a house whose location promised four hours of commuting each day brought them a distinctive sense of satisfaction, their travails validated and the chaotic world momentarily clicking into precise alignment as they signed the real estate paperwork." (p. 34)
"I was growing more and more afraid of something else. The longer we lived in our huge house with our huge number of things, the more generally uncomfortable I felt. It was a nonspecific malaise that I couldn't name. I understood that the same thing that made me anxious was the exact thing that gave Mom joy. To me, it felt like the things we owned outnumbered us, were taking over." (p. 106)
"And why, in our malaise and our love and our stories and savagery and tenderness of all those years together did we never remember that long is a verb? 'To feel a strong desire or craving especially for something not likely to be attained. To pine. To yearn.'" (p. 336)
