Hit by a Farm: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Barn (Paperback)

~ Catherine Friend (Author) "Farms have fences..." (more)
Key Phrases: post pounder, sheep sex, bottle lambs, Captain Kirk, Twin Cities, Little Joe (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Farming had never been children's book writer Friend's dream; her fantasies ran more along the lines of nurturing her writing career. But when her partner, Melissa, talks her into buying a farm--and reality hits in the form of 53 worn-out acres in Minnesota--she learns how to test a ram's testicles and select a flock of 50 ewe lambs by the scientific criteria of who had the cutest face and could be caught, and she is now in the sheep business. The couple soon adds a border collie, 2 pet goats, 150 chickens, 200 grapevines, an old pickup, and an even older tractor and begin to acquire the skills needed to make a go of it. This honest look at collaboration and compromise, the pain and the joy of partnership, and the hands-on of farming will find a ready audience. Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Description

Farms have fences. People have boundaries. Mine began crumbling the day I knelt behind a male sheep, reached between his legs, and squeezed his testicles. This took place one blustery November day when I joined other shepherd-wannabees for a class on the basics of raising sheep. I was there with my partner Melissa, the woman I’d lived with for twelve years, because we were going to start a farm .

When self-confessed "urban bookworm" Catherine Friend’s partner of twelve years decides she wants to fulfill her lifelong dream of owning a farm, Catherine agrees. What ensues is a crash course in both living off and with the land that ultimately allows Catherine to help fulfill Melissa’s dreams while not losing sight of her own.

Hit by a Farm is a hilarious recounting of Catherine and Melissa’s trials of "getting back to the land." It is also a coming-of (middle)-age story of a woman trying to cross the divide between who she is and who she wants to be, and the story of a couple who say "goodbye city life" — and learn more than they ever bargained for about love, land, and yes, sheep sex.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; First Edition edition (March 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569242984
• ISBN-13: 978-1569242988
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #75,624 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Farming, career and relationships, January 4, 2007

By	V. Wicker - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As an aspiring hobby farmer, I wanted to read this book to get an idea of the transition one makes when starting a life in agriculture. While I was expecting this memoir to cover the fish-out-of-water aspect of an author not raised in farming delving into cultivation and animal husbandry, I was surprised to find that it became in the second half a saga of loss and repair.

Starting a country homestead was Catherine's partner's dream and not her own. She was supportive of Melissa through the years, but when the reality of farming duties hit her she found her ambitions as a writer sinking to the bottom of the heap. Friend is more candid than most memoirists about the anxieties and temptations to give up that she felt through the early years in the country. Many people would throw in the towel, but Catherine hung on until finding a balance between her partner's career choice and her own.

I recommend this book not only to those wishing to farm, but to anyone in a relationship where one person's ambitions take up more space than what's comfortable (for example, a career in medicine or international diplomacy). Additionally, for farmers, this is unlike any other book about agriculture out there. Friend has been able to fill a void both in literature on relationships and books on farming. I hope she publishes more of her humorous and enlightening insight.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well written, fun read but keep the tissues handy, just in case!, May 30, 2006

By	Armchair Interviews (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

Two women, partners in life, start a farm--one somewhat ignorant--going along with the other's dream.

Together, these 30-something city women raise sheep, chickens, goats, grapes, etc. etc.,--whatever Melissa bought next. But before they buy the first animal, they read everything they can and even attend workshops on shepherding.

Catherine Friend, published children's author, writes this memoir about her life with Melissa-and their successful juggling of the farm, their relationship and Catherine's writing.

Funny, poignant, sad--and educational. Much of the story took me back to my days as a child on a farm that raised dairy cattle, pigs, chickens and sheep. I remember the joy of spring lambs, especially the bottle lambs where human kids got to take over when the sheep mom refused to acknowledge that lamb. My sister and I named them April, May and even March (for the earliest births). When these lambs were hungry, they sought us out--such fun and responsibility for a young farm girls.

Of course, as children we didn't have to do the very hard, demanding and never-ending work Friends details as a farmer's life. But I remember the births deaths by both natural causes and by nature.

If you live on a farm, or are interested in farming, or if you love good, descriptive writing that takes you to that place, Hit by a Farm is the book. I laughed out loud numerous times, and shook my head in disbelief at some of what they experienced.

Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion fame wrote that it's, "A sweet and funny book in the classic 'Hardy Girls Go Farming' genre....

You'll learn more than you ever wanted to know about sheep/goat chicken sex; birthing of lambs and goat kids; darling baby chicks that grow up become someone's meat. If I had been Catherine, I would have given up weeks, months, years before she was ready to walk-but didn't,

Armchair Interviews says: Hit by a Farm is about caring, commitment, finding the right help, sticking to it and the life and death of a farm's every-day life. Well written, fun read--but keep the tissues handy, just in case.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Midwest Book Review, March 2007, March 1, 2007

By	Lori L. Lake "Author of Snow Moon Rising, The... (Portland, Oregon, USA) - See all my reviews

No one was more surprised than Catherine Friend when her long-time partner informed her that she'd always dreamed of being a farmer. Early on in this hilarious memoir, the author writes, "Farming had never been my dream. My dream was to grow my writing career into something I could call 'successful,' whatever that was. I'd already sold two children's books and a handful of magazine stories. I was hungry for more" (p. 6).

But Melissa's dream had merit, and Catherine believed she could help the dream come true. And so, "The classic face of farming in Grant Wood's American Gothic was about to get a facelift: two thirty-something women in bib overalls holding pitchforks" (p. 6).

Devoting a great deal of time, energy, and work to their project, the two women researched farming, bought land in southern Minnesota, built a house, and settled in to raise sheep, chickens, and grapes for wine. Apparently that was the easy part. From auspicious beginnings, the road they embark upon is filled with a learning curve so steep that shoveling manure and mucking horse stalls might have been easier. While Melissa's dream ascended, the livestock, crops, and natural disasters seem to conspire to make Catherine's life miserable. Living off the land wasn't at all the romantic idyll so often put forth.

By turns hilarious and sobering, touching and surprising, Catherine Friend's memoir tells the tale of two thirty-somethings who not only have to learn to love the barn, but also to find their way back to one another after such a huge life-change nearly sideswipes them for good. It's a terrific story, very well-told, and is cram-packed full of humor, insight, and a zest for life that can't be vanquished. If you only read one memoir this year, make this be the one. I give it my highest recommendation.