THE WISDOM OF SHEEP

A British organic farmer and bestselling author offers evocative vignettes about daily life on her farm in the Cotswolds.

As Young, the author of The Secret Life of Cows, recounts, farming and a love of farm animals are in her blood. Both her maternal grandfather and her father had been farmers, and when her mother saw her father’s kindness toward cows, “she decided there and then that she would marry him.” As the author approached 50, at the suggestion of a journalist doing research into organic foods, she decided to keep a journal about the “daily farm events” at the heart of the stories in this volume. Though not ordered according to any thematic or temporal schemas, the pieces are united by the undivided, always affectionate attention Young gives to her world. In one essay, she contrasts the chaos of the 2008 financial meltdown with musings, based on passages from The Merchant of Venice, about the power of music on animals and memories of her father playing classical music for the cows he milked. Nature and its simple joys reign supreme throughout this charming text, regardless of whether Young is reflecting on the seasons or the distinctive personalities and moods of cows (“every single one has her own particular set of likes and dislikes”). Though the author takes no political stance on animal rights, she makes it clear that you can tell a lot about a person’s character by how they treat animals. “Under the guise of saving species,” she writes, “humans create (horrific) zoos and justify horrendous expeditions to chase, terrify, sedate, capture and control wild creatures,” and many domesticated animals live in stressed bodies that, when eaten, do not contribute positively to human health. Warmhearted and charming, Young’s essays offer a gentle country antidote to the tumult of contemporary life.

A delightful modern-day pastoral.