The Farmer's Son: Calving Season on a Family Farm

I don't normally write book reviews, though I am a voracious reader. I leave it to Vine Reviewers who write compellingly detailed analyses of literature, non-fiction and best sellers. This book, however, was such a stunning experience to read, I had to post my feelings about it. In beautiful prose, John Connell describes his life after he returns to Ireland to take over running his family's farm. The farm raises cattle and sheep for meat, so this is no fairy tale experience. But his care and love for each being on the farm is telling. His life is smelly and messy - filled with blood, mud, wet straw; he is cold and tired - or more accurately often exhausted. And yet, we know he is uplifted and learning constantly through these farm experiences. He diverges from his accounts by giving us a history of the roles cows and horses have played in human history - often accounting for our 'progress.' His relations with his parents who live with him on the farm are complex, but the love and admiration they feel for one another is apparent. Connell illustrates the importance of human relationship to our natural surroundings and the other life forms with whom we share this planet. He goes further, I believe, in illustrating that we must have an ongoing and invested relationship with these surroundings and beings in order to feel whole. That those relationships are indeed healing and necessary for our personal well-being and the earth's. But the book is not prostelgzing - it is brutally honest about the price private farmers pay in order to keep on farming. On the other hand, the book is an elegy. To state it was a pleasure to read is an understatement. I cannot recommend it more highly.

I was raised in DAIRY COUNTRY, OHIO (my father was a Veterinarian, & I proudly was his 24/7 assistant when I washome! We were raised on ALL unpasteurized FARM MILK (We are still on EARTH: ALIVE!)This book is fabulous! I just started reading it about 6 PM last night, and only on page 50++ in 2.5 hours! (It must be GREAT, eh?) ANYONE who knows the REAL importance of farm animals will admire, no (Excuse me!) love this book.If you have read James Herriot, it is in another time era, but ALL his books are beneficial as well!I will attempt to add more AFTER I have completed this reading! GOD BLESS ALL CREATURES GREAT & SMALL, James Herriott! read it, too!JIM

A very interesting read. For a city guy like me to read a book about a rural family in Ireland was fascinating. The author has lived numerous places before returning home to help his parents. There are many differences, culturally, between us and yet there are somethings that are exactly the same. I really enjoyed this book as it gave me insight into a whole different world from mine. I felt he is a very good writer.

This was an interesting look into Irish culture, a culture which struggles with the 'growing pains' of a transitioning world. Also a lot of really good information relating to the history of the 'lowly' cow. I grew up next do a Polled Hereford farm and thought I'd learned a lot about the cattle that I knew and loved, but found how little I really knew and how today's breeds came to be. And don't forget the sheep . . . An entirely charming book.

I don't know much about cow farming in Ireland, but this book is a good introduction. U.S. cattle growers need to downsize and return to family farms like this one. I hope he follows up with a sequel once he converts to organic. I looked up "nuts," something he feeds calves, and I wish he had said if the nuts he gets are genetically engineered since they have corn and soy as well as barley and other ingredients (but not nuts). His difficulty with his father seems to affect his way of caring for his cows, but he does his best.

I chose this book because of my love of animals. It's obvious that John Connell feels this connection also. I wouldn't blame him though if he chooses the life of a writer.

A touching memoir of a writer connecting to his roots. I much enjoyed the moments when he focused on Irish culture and history. I gound the detailed discussions of husbandry and life on the farm a bit tedious. Not necessarily the author's fault.

Gorgeous, reflective writing about a young man's return from big-city journalism to his family's rural farm. It's not a "Polly-Anna ish" book, but a calming memorandum about the realities of family farming in Ireland today.