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

by Catherine Friend

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781569242988
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	03/28/2006
Pages:	254
Sales rank:	756,350
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Catherine Friend is the author of Hit by a Farm and The Compassionate Carnivore, as well as several children's books and novels. She farms in Minnesota with her partner of twenty-eight years.

Table of Contents

Part 1	Romancing the farm	1
	Touching Testicles	3
	Hooked on Romance	7
	Goodbye, City Life	12
	Baby on Our Doorstep	18
	Wild Hairs	23
	Even My Bra Was More Supportive	30
	A Paper Farm	34
	Shepherds at Last	42
	Wild Woolies	46
	Can't Fit into My Grandma's Genes	51
	Chicken Run	54
	Menage a Trois	58
	A Grape Disaster	60
	Read the Directions, Dummy	64
	A Shocking Story	68
	To Market, to Market	72
	Oops	76
	Finding Our Way in the Dark	82
	Chicken Sex	86
	At Long Last, Sheep Sex	88
Part 2	Hit by a farm	95
	What Could Possibly Go Wrong?	97
	Dancing with Goats in the Moonlight	101
	Time to Take It Off (The Wool, That Is)	103
	In the Bedroom	108
	Ready or Not, Here They Come	111
	The First Bad Day	115
	Ear Tags and Little Rubber Bands	117
	Another Bad Day, but Who's Counting?	120
	Searching for Placenta by Moonlight	125
	High Anxiety	128
	Having Fun Yet?	132
	Lying through My Teeth	137
	Serge and Sonny	141
	Let's Just Forget This Ever Happened	145
	Meeting My Meat	148
	Sexing Brenda	154
	Lambing: The Dreaded Sequel	157
	The Goat Queen	161
	Drowning in Dreams	164
	Coyotes and Paper Plates	168
	The Sixteen-inch Llama	173
	The Only Good Goose Is a Dead Goose	177
	If It's in a Book, It Must Be True	181
	Mermaid Dreams	185
	Ducks and Tattoos	189
	Small Losses	192
	Lesbians and Straight Lines	195
	Nature's Sentimental Journey	198
Part 3	The tattoo of transformation, sort of...	203
	More Loss	205
	Shadowboxing	213
	I Build a Fence	217
	Ruby Jumps Over the Fence	223
	Back in the Saddle Again	228
	Epilogue: Still Crazy After All These Years	234
	Acknowledgments	239

Editorial Reviews

02/01/2014
Children's author Friend and her partner Melissa purchase a farm in Minnesota, filling it with chickens, goats, sheep, and a host of successes and failures. (LJ 4/1/06)

Library Journal

In Catherine Friend’s memoir, she and life partner Melissa Peteler decide to live out the latter’s longtime dream and become farmers in Minnesota. While Peteler has some experience with animals, Friend has almost none. Nevertheless, the pair buys a farm, a pickup truck, and more than 50 lambs for breeding. And as they attempt to “get back to the land,” their often hilarious trails and tribulations begin. Friend’s narration is entertaining and workmanlike, but at times she sounds as if she’s reading to a group of school children. And this solemn but upbeat delivery isn’t always appropriate. Nonetheless, Friend’s enunciation is crystal clear and her pacing is perfect. A De Capo paperback. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Audio