Shepherd: A Memoir

by Richard Gilbert

Overview

Upon moving to Appalachian Ohio with their two small children, Richard Gilbert and his wife are thrilled to learn there still are places in America that haven’t been homogenized. But their excitement over the region’s beauty and quirky character turns to culture shock as they try to put down roots far from their busy professional jobs in town. They struggle to rebuild a farmhouse, and Gilbert gets conned buying equipment and sheep—a ewe with an “outie” belly button turns out to be a neutered male, and mysterious illnesses plague the flock. Haunted by his father’s loss of his boyhood farm, Gilbert likewise struggles to earn money in agriculture. Finally an unlikely teacher shows him how to raise hardy sheep—a remarkable ewe named Freckles whose mothering ability epitomizes her species’ hidden beauty. Discovering as much about himself as he does these gentle animals, Gilbert becomes a seasoned agrarian and a respected livestock breeder. He makes peace with his romantic dream, his father, and himself. Shepherd, a story both personal and emblematic, captures the mythic pull and the practical difficulty of family scale sustainable farming.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611861174
Publisher:	Michigan State University Press
Publication date:	05/01/2014
Edition description:	1
Pages:	318
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Richard Gilbert teaches writing at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio.

Editorial Reviews

Shepherd is the most graphic, honest, heartrending, and heartwarming account of undertaking an adventure in farming that I have ever read. Embracing both untamed nature and human nature, this book makes compelling reading for both those who farm and those who don’t.
—Gene Logsdon, author of All Flesh is Grass: The Pleasures and Promises of Pasture Farming


Shepherd explores one man’s realization of a boyhood dream. But as they say in southern Ohio, “It weren’t easy.” Richard Gilbert writes with honesty, in gorgeous prose, about the joys and setbacks, bringing to vivid life an enchanted Appalachian valley filled with unforgettable characters.
—Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic and Desire


What a delightful book. So authentic in its descriptions of those peculiar critters, sheep. It brings back so many memories of my life at Malabar Farm and the spring lambing season, which seldom failed to deliver to me an orphan to be brought up on a bottle. People say sheep don’t have much sense. But from the sheep I’ve known, this strikes me as being a very precipitous judgment. Anyone who reads this book will be encouraged to see what I mean.
—Ellen Bromfield Geld, author of The Heritage: A Daughter’s Memories of Louis Bromfield


There’s no book like it.
—Bill Roorbach, author of Temple Stream: A Rural Odyssey


Shepherd is the story of one man’s dream of returning to the land, but Richard Gilbert’s glorious memoir is more than that. It’s a universal story of families, the ones we try to redeem and the ones we strive to create and maintain. Gilbert writes with a keen eye and a quiet grace. His portrait of the natural world takes us into the interior landscape of its very human, very likeable guide—an honorable, courageous man. I’m so very happy to have had the chance to meet him in these pages.
—Lee Martin, author of Such a Life and From Our House


Gilbert’s descriptions of landscape and characters and, most impressively, of the work he does—and why—are terrific: often poetic, sometimes funny, and always infused with love.
—Ana Maria Spagna, author of Potluck: Community on the Edge of Wilderness


With topics ranging from the specific compartments of a ruminant’s stomach to spirituality, to neighbors, and to history, Richard Gilbert’s book unfolds the true slow-motion adventure of a clear-eyed, realistic, modern back-to-the-lander. It is the best fence conversation you’ve ever had, from an instinctive storyteller. He searches carefully in this book for something we’ve all begun to wonder about: where is, he asks, “the wisdom of those who stayed put?”
—Liz Stephens, author of The Days Are Gods

From the Publisher

2014-04-02
Trading his town shoes for work boots, pasture farmer Gilbert (Writing/Otterbein Univ.) contemplates nature's works and his own efforts in his chronicle of raising sheep. The author, his wife and their two children spent a decade breeding and selling sheep on the family homestead in Appalachian Ohio. Gilbert had a day job at a university press, and his wife was the university provost, but the farm was his obsession. Not at all a bromidic gentleman farmer, he was earnestly hands-on and farmed for profit. Though yearly profits, if any, were scant, he loved his farm and its resident animals. Gilbert ruminates warmly on his artisanal flock, seeing the hidden beauty of his sheep. He also recalls his collection of farm implements: an old post pounder, a used cultivator, a small tractor—accompaniments to the never-ending work that was especially backbreaking for someone with a day job in town. Gilbert is especially astute in his portrayals of his Appalachian neighbors, who were mostly good folk. His farm logs are studies in animal husbandry, proper fencing, house building, birth and decay. His prose is pungent: In a sheep barn, he notes, the air was humid with an amalgam of "mellow musk, tangy manure, bitter urine, sweet hay." He writes of digging out aged offal, of tenant rats, and of the hundreds of natural shocks that man and beast may encounter. His bank balances diminished as he, in an effort to become a successful farmer, consulted his Sheep Production Handbook or the latest issue of The Stockman Grass Farmer. In a sometimes-earthy, sometimes-prolix and ultimately sagacious elegy, Gilbert speaks of descent into pain and fear as well as of the beauty of bucolic nature and the diverse traits of agrarian man. A thoughtful memoir of rams and ewes, farmers and family, life and death.

Kirkus Reviews