Growing Upcountry: Raising a Family & Flock in a Rural Place [Paperback]

Don Mitchell (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This series of essays uses farm life, specifically sheep herding in Vermont, as a basis for reflections on children growing up, the meaning of work and the nature of pleasure. Mitchell ( Moving UpCountry ) is at his most cogent when describing what has got to be one of the toughest ways to earn a living--from price supports and marketing cooperatives to keeping a flock infection free. His hard-won insights ring true, and he clearly does not regret his decision to abide in the country. But he becomes simplistic and silly when he coaxes philosophy out of the natural stages of his children's growth. For example, from an otherwise pk winning vignette on his daughter's experience with the Tooth Fairy (who, she concludes quickly, is none other than her own father), he attempts to extract a moral: "farm children come to value cunning and craftiness and human ingenuity over the bland comforts of credulousness." He is better when he is less pompous and lets the lessons his children teach him about the wonders and perils of life speak for themselves. Illustrated.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Camden House; 1st edition (August 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0944475183
• ISBN-13: 978-0944475188
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,764,726 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In a Country Corner of Vermont, February 8, 2005

By 

Erika Mitchell (E. Calais, VT USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Growing Upcountry: Raising a Family & Flock in a Rural Place (Paperback)

This book is a collection of short essays that detail Mitchell's adventures with sheep and children on his farm in Vermont. Like many new Vermonters, Mitchell was an urban transplant, and upon arrival in Vermont, he didn't have a lot of the accumulated "country-sense" necessary for survival on the farm. Undaunted, Mitchell talked to his neighbors, read all he could, and slowly learned how to make a living off the land. In this book, Mitchell struggles to figure out the best way to raise kids-how to tell when they are ready to drive a tractor, or deal with life's passages in the sheep barn. He also spends a lot of time in the sheep barn, working out the guidelines for efficient animal husbandry and marketing his sheep products.

Mitchell's first book, Moving UpCountry, kept me in stitches for days, as I recalled such scenes as procuring fresh chickens for out-of-town visitors. There's nothing spectacularly funny like that in this book, but there are several points to ponder. In a story about deciding whether to collect a pile of skipping stones from a park to take back home to his own pond, Mitchell writes "having my own private supply of stones might make them hard to share. Could I gracefully stand by while visiting guests fired stone after stone from my pail out across the water?...Would I have to remind myself, each time I skipped a stone, that now I possessed one less stone to skip?" When he realized the work and worry a stone supply would cause him, he gave up the enterprise at once so that he could enjoy the immediate pleasure of skipping stones with his kids on the beach. Small lessons like these make up the measure of a truly educated person.