The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd's Life

by Helen Whybrow Narrated by Cassidy Brown

Overview

In the heart of Vermont's Green Mountains, Helen Whybrow and her partner are presented with the opportunity to steward a two-hundred-acre conserved farm. Whybrow knows that "belonging more than anything requires participation" and radically intertwines her life with the land. Six months after purchasing Knoll Farm, they unload a flock of Icelandic sheep onto the field and Whybrow becomes a shepherd entering into "nature's constant cycle of life into death into life" and all its unexpected lessons.



The challenging and profoundly rewarding work unfolds for Whybrow in the everyday rituals of farmsteading and caring for her family-birthing lambs in the late winter, harvesting blueberries in summer, fending off coyotes and foxes, seasonal shearing-while instilling the lessons of the land in her daughter and caring for her mother. As life at Knoll Farm endures years both abundant and lean, she learns that true stewardship is about accepting change and adapting. She embraces a transcendent rhythm of blood and bone, milk and muck.



At once inspiring and brave, deeply felt and gorgeously written, The Salt Stones is a loving look at the world through a shepherd's interconnected ethos.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Spare prose, great storytelling.”—Esquire, "Best Books of the Summer 2025" 

"Whybrow writes in compelling, finely chiseled prose about the annual seasonal rhythms at her beloved Knoll Farm. . . . The perfect tonic for these turbulent times."—BookPage, starred review

“In achingly poetic prose, this forthcoming chronicle of life on a Vermont hill farm captures the familial responsibilities of the shepherd — for animals, parents, children, wild things, and the land upon which we walk for such a brief time.”—Rowan Jacobsen, The Week

“Helen Whybrow is a to-the-bone writer, and this is a to-the-bone book—beautiful, real, full of life. You’ll reread it.”—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

“Riveting, breathtaking, intensely powerful, The Salt Stones pulses with life. I deeply love this wise and beautiful book about land and belonging, love and loss, motherhood and daughterhood, and so much more.”—Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

“In her poetic and provocative offerings on her life as a shepherd to a flock of sheep, Helen Whybrow evokes the spirit that Aretha Franklin brought to her transcendent recording of ‘Somewhere.’ Read Whybrow. Listen to Franklin. Rejoice!”—Evelyn C. White, author of Alice Walker

“This is a wise and beautiful book. Helen Whybrow calls it ‘my love song to this hillside,’ speaking of the Vermont farm where, for a quarter century, she has distilled wisdom from the land and its creatures—her family, the birds and trees, the flowers and frogs, a stream of visitors, and flocks of sheep—all of them teaching or seeking ways to live intimately in place. A truly moving book, in prose and spirit, filled with deep insights, rich stories, and memorable scenes, a book to be savored and widely shared.”—Scott Russell Sanders, author of A Private History of Awe

“This profound book returns our gaze to forgotten connections with our animal kin, the Earth, and ourselves. Each paragraph shimmers with heart. With Wendell Berry’s sensibilities and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s poetic insights, Whybrow leads her readers through fertile fields of discovery and knowing. Her sentences, like carefully placed stones, mark the path toward a calm awareness of what true relationships feel like.”—Hank Lentfer, author of Raven’s Witness

Product Details

BN ID:	2940194064359
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	06/03/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged

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