A Day No Pigs Would Die

Last night I finished A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck. It's one of those required reading books in school, and I think I have a vague memory of some of the action in this book. However, re-reading childhood's requirements always give me a better perspective on the lessons they were supposed to teach us. This is a very short journey, only 139 pages, but Mr. Peck sure does pack a lot into those few.

I was in the mall sometime around the middle of October looking for a present for Rachel. Recently a little used book store opened right in the middle, and I can't resist looking for a good book. I pulled this gem out and read the back. This edition has only reviews on the back, but they're what sold me.

"It will leave you better than it found you." - Book-of-the-Month Club News

"A lovely book....Honest, moving, homely in the warm and simple sense of the word. ...It isn't trying to move mountains and it has no quarrel with life.... It is perfect!" - The Boston Globe

"A small, rich, wise book full of pathos and an essential home-bred humanity that is becoming more and more scarce in the world. It lights up a way of life that is not so long past and shows...how very much we have lost." - Winston Graham

I'll say that it catches you off guard. Even though it's a young boy's coming of age story, it is in a large way, autobiographical. It shows a depth of character that few have and even fewer find. In today's society of fear and victim-culture, this book rings out with self-reliance. The father works his hands to the bone at a pig butchery and comes home to run a farm too. He teaches his boy the hard truths of farming and life in general. They are hard lessons, but this man's words are more real and sobering than today's idealized and romantic notions of running a farm.

The boy, Rob, has an innocence that most children at his age (12), don't have now-a-days. It's sad to see and even sadder to realize. One of my very favorite parts of the book comes from Rob, on his way to the fair, when he thinks of something to ask his neighbor, Mr. Tanner, who is taking him to the fair, but thinks better of saying it out loud:

"Never miss a chance," Papa had once said, "to keep your mouth shut." And the more I studied on it, the sounder it grew."

I know I never miss a chance to open my mouth, and it often gets me in trouble, or I come across as a know-it-all. I'll be taking this to heart.

The boy, Rob, gets a pig as a reward for helping a neighbor, and becomes friends with that pig, whom he affectionately names Pinky. He even takes her to the fair, where she of course wins a ribbon for best behaved pig. Most of the book is the innocence of childhood personified in Rob. Even so, we see the subtle grooming of the boy to become a man like his father. It is mentioned a few times in the book that the only reason Rob's father (Haven Peck) goes to the slaughterhouse everyday is so they can buy their farm and own it outright, and they only have five more years before it's theirs.

Another quote I found particularly intriguing is when Rob is talking to his neighbor, Mr. Tanner, after Mr. Tanner has asked him about school. Miss Malcolm is his teacher:

"She says I have potential. It means that someday I could do a lot. Miss Malcolm says that I could be more than a farmer."
"More than a farmer?!" Ben Tanner looked a bit red. "What better can a man be? There's no calling higher than animal husbandry, and making things live and grow. We farmers are stewards. Our lot is to tend all of God's good living things, and I say there's nothing finer."

Rob has to learn hard lessons. It's so difficult to read and not think of how young he seems; not put yourself in his place. I promise your heart will break for this family. It's an excellent book. Heart breaking and heart warming at the same time. It doesn't hold back. Farming reality is not hidden or sugar-coated, but neither is it illustrated to extreme. It is quite beautiful and I would highly encourage you to read it.

Until next time,

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

I finished The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski yesterday afternoon. In fact I fairly vibrated in my car in impatience to get home and read the last few pages. (I may or may not have been reading it during working hours.) Then it was over. Done and gone and nothing more.

I knew the moment I started reading it that I would like this book. It starts out excellently and only goes upward from there. The reader is thrown into the story as if you've already been reading for twenty pages, but you quickly catch on.

I found it via a recommendation on Amazon, and upon reading the glowing endorsement of the novel from Stephen King, I decided to give it a try. The reviews below from purchasers are a mixed bag though. Read too many negative and you will be tempted to not read the book at all. Now that I have finished the book, I understand the frustration voiced so clearly in those reviews and I share it with them. However, I do not feel the book was at all a waste of my time. I feel enriched by this novel, in fact, happy to have read it.

I won't tell you the story has a happy ending, but it does have an ending which I whole-heartedly believe fits it. I wanted so badly for things to be different at the end, but they weren't. The journey of the rest of the book though, that's where I will remember my time in Edgar Sawtelle's world.

Edgar is a boy born to two hard working dog breeders living on a farm in a small town in Wisconsin. The dogs are named after the boys grandfather who started the breed. They are called simply Sawtelles. The dogs play an integral role in the story, and being the dog person I am I found myself intrigued by these animals and Edgar's grandfather's passion for them. I also found myself longing to be there next to Edgar's mother, Trudy, as she trained the dogs so I could observe her methods.

Edgar cannot speak. He can hear and see, but he can't talk. The doctors don't know why, but we quickly realize it isn't really a problem for the family. When their highly intuitive house dog (a Sawtelle of course), Almondine, picks up on Edgar's silent cries his first night home, we can see the pattern of their relationship unfold.

I loved the silence of Edgar. I loved the way he thought and reasoned and how he treated the dogs and how they understood him, even without a voice. I often found myself unwilling to speak after spending mere minutes engrossed in the text of this book.

Of course nothing can stay idyllic forever. Tragedy strikes and the lives of Edgar and his father and mother and even the dogs are ultimately changed irrevocably.

This is not a light read, nor one that you will be done with after a day of hard reading, but it is so very much worth your effort. I believe every author has a reason behind every word they write and therefore I am willing to accept the ending he saw fit, even if I didn't like it. Ultimately it isn't my story, but his to tell.

I cannot ask you enough to go to the library if you don't want to commit to buying the book and just give it an honest try. There is no way you could possibly be sorry for spending time with Edgar and Almondine in the world so carefully, lovingly crafted by Mr. Wroblewski.

*As a side note, I was not compensated in any way for this review
by either the author or Amazon and I purchased the book with my own money.

Home to Woefield: A Novel

I did finish the cover for my Homesteading Binder yesterday and added the pages about making lye and also a small chart I found here that shows the average first frost and last frost for garden planning purposes.

I also finished reading a wonderful, if quirky, book yesterday that I thought I'd share.

I ordered it from Amazon about a week ago on a whim. Well, I guess it could be considered a want. I don't know. What I do know is that I needed to round out my order of $8.64 for a 1/16th inch hole punch. Why would I need a 1/16th inch hole punch? To punch small, perfect holes in cardstock tags for the products I am aiming to sell at the farmer's market and craft fair next year.

Anyway, Amazon recommended a book entitled: Home to Woefield by Susan Juby. I read about it and was intrigued. See I had just finished another excellent book: The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love by Kristin Kimball and was aching for another book on farming.

I added Woefield to my wishlist and moved on, trying to find something already in my cart or wishlist that had been there longer. In the end it nagged at the back of my mind until I bought it.

It's about a young woman named Prudence from New York City who is very much a part of the Back-to-the-Earth movement (she even has an earthworm composting farm in her apartment) when she learns that her Uncle died and left her a farm in Canada. She decides it's the perfect opportunity to practice what she preaches and moves in.

The farm comes with a small town packed full of interesting people, a crotchety old man who has lived on the farm forever, a neighbor across the road who blogs about heavy metal, and a very serious young girl. Prudence is at once admirable and pitiable. She seems fairly clueless but is so optimistic and hardworking that you can't help but hope she succeeds.

The book focuses mostly on the story and less on the farming aspect unlike Kimball's book, but then again this book is fiction. The characters and really the whole story are fantastic and fun. A word of caution though: it really is chockfull of swear words and taking the Lord's name in vain. It bothered me on more than one occasion and I would not let children read it, but as far as reading it just to myself - I skimmed over them or read a different word in place of the offensive ones.

For a nice, easy, entertaining read I would recommend this book, but don't go expecting a lot out of the ending. It feels rushed. I felt like we had spent all this time getting to know everyone and then we get cut off from them very suddenly where the story ends. Everything seems resolved toward the end, but still it is very abrupt.

Overall I really enjoyed this one.

*As a side note, I was not compensated in any way for this review
by either the author or Amazon and I purchased the book with my own money.