Customer Reviews

Clabbered Dirt, Sweet Grass

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I grew up on a small family farm in rural Michigan, the type of farm that was vanishing even as I grew up on it. Since I grew up in the 1950's, many of the episodes and scenarios depicted in Gary Paulsen's Clabbered Dirt, Sweet Grass pre-date my youth, but enough do not that I can assure you that Paulsen has captured the sights, the sounds, the tastes, the smells and even the textures of the events he pictures in words. New calves, for example do not know how to drink from a bucket and must be taught, because the purpose of having a dairy cow is the sale of her milk, and if the calf is allowed to suck, it will as Paulsen says "ruin the cow for milking," while the calf cannot possibly consume all of the milk the cow produces. "So when the cows were milked a small amount was poured into a bucket and the children had to teach them how to drink. They would suck on anything, the ends of our coats, mittens, ears, and we would stick our fingers in their mouths and start them sucking and lower our hands into the warm milk in the bucket so they would suck the milk up through our fingers. It took them only a short time to learn to suck the milk directly, slamming their heads into the buckets as they would slam them into the cow to make the milk flow so that milk splashed up and out and into our faces, down our clothes, hot new milk, spring milk." Or as he says of milking, "the hands work in a rhythm as old as all rhythms, the rhythm that is the giving of milk, so that the person becomes the calf and the cow the mother and the milk hisses and sputters into the white foam." For those who have never known farm life, Gary Paulsen's poetic prose will provide a vivid and accurate picture of life as it used to be on the family farm. For those who, like my 80-year-old father, knew the family farm of the 1920's-1950's, this book will evoke rich memories. For those of us who knew farm life afterward, the memories will be selective. But they're there. They're there.

Clabbered Earth, Sweet Grass is a lyrically written nonfiction work that describes four seasons of living on a farm. This is the farm that housed three and more generations under one roof; the self-sufficient farm of the turn of the century. Hard work and little money, but strong family ties, and a closeness to the earth that quite literally is life and death- that is the farm Gary Paulsen is writing about.

I enjoyed Gary Paulsen's style; both the lyrical style and the look back to what "farm" once meant. There is both the sweet grass and harsh fact in this work. I think I have a better feel for the farms that were fading away in the country when I grew up in rural Virginia. If I do, it comes from reading this book. It is a great read.

I love Gary Paulsen's prose/poetry. I recommend reading it outloud in order to hear (and almost smell) the sites and sounds of the farm. Give it to a "city kid" or one from the farm. It is a wonderful gift. cf

Anyone who has ever been raised on a farm, or spent summers on a farm--as I did as a child--will find evocative reading in Gary Paulsen's memoir/prose poem. And, it is so lyrically written that even if you've spent all your days in the city, the reading of this piece will refresh your soul. A treasure!

A lyrical tribute to a vanishing way of life, Clabbered Dirt, Sweet Grass describes farming life in the early 1900s. This book is magical. It reads like a lovely song that stays on your mind long after it is sung.

Gary Paulsen is famous for his stories about growing up in America. Here he describes a visit from an old man who lives on a farm nearby having learned the traditional ways of farming from his father, a farmer before him. The author is so moved by the farmer's story and the context of the visit that he writes a tribute to a way of life that is all but lost in a world of e-mail and the shinier-the-better. This is an up close and personal description of the labor, luck and hazards confronted by those who lived off the land when modern sophisticated equipment was nothing but noise over the horizon. Ruth Paulsen's color paintings are splendid illustrations for the text.

Mr. Paulson writes a beautiful, touching, book that reflects his undying love of nature and the land. Take the time to read the forward to the book that explains the motive behind it's writing. Picture the two men sitting next to the deceased workhorse as the farmer unravels his story of his life and his land. Contrast the respect for the land and nature's cycles of "old time" farmers, versus the "forced yields" of today's factory farms. I have read this book several times and each time I gain a greater knowledge and respect for the wonders Mother Earth reveals, if you treat her with respect and take the time to listen. I have recomended this book to dozens of people - city and country folk alike - and all have been glad that I did so. Every person who has felt a link or calling to the earth should read this book.

The opening chapter of this book was read to our congregation as a sermon. It was very captivating-immediately after, we took Communion and it was so appropriate! This book is very well written as you feel you are a part of the story. I would highly recommend it to anyone in need of some spiritual uplifting.

This is one of my most favorite books! It is so beautifully written. It is especially wonderful for reading aloud(for adults). The forward makes me cry each time I read it. I have owned it for years, and recently purchased for my in-laws.

As a young lad, I acquired an old stone farmhouse and acreage, with much reconstruction necessary. In managing the acreage, 1.5 acres was tilled for garden. Having learned the hard way the difficulties of vegetable production for sustenance, I was happy to stumble on Paulsen's near-poetic account of early midwest farmers; emphasis on hard work, and much play when time affords. Not for everybody, but one of my most cherished books.

I might recommend "West with the Night" by Beryl Markham as another sleeper which has not received its due.