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The Salt Stones : Seasons of a Shepherd's Life
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Overview
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
Finalist for the Vermont Book Awards
A New Yorker Best Book of the Year
Featured on NPR's Fresh Air and PBS NewsHour
A Globe and Mail "Best Book of the Year"
"Revelatory. . . magical. . . Whybrow beautifully explores interconnectedness and disruption in nature."--Maureen Corrigan, The Washington Post
Set in Vermont's Green Mountains, a profoundly moving meditation on the lessons and wisdom that come from raising a family, tending sheep, and living close to the land.
In the heart of Vermont's Green Mountains, Helen Whybrow and her partner set out to restore an old two-hundred-acre farm. Knowing that "belonging more than anything requires participation," they begin to intertwine their lives with the land. But soon after releasing a flock of Icelandic sheep onto the worn-out fields, Whybrow realizes that the art of shepherding extends far beyond the flock and fences of Knoll Farm.
In prose both vivid and lean, The Salt Stones offers an intimate and profoundly moving story of what it means to care for a flock and truly inhabit a piece of land. The shepherd's life unfolds for Whybrow in the seasons and cycles of farming and family--birthing lambs, fending off coyotes, rescuing lost sheep in a storm, and raising children while witnessing her mother's decline. Exploring the interdependence of animals, as well as of the earth and ourselves, Whybrow reflects on the ways sheep connect her to place and to the ancient practice of shepherding.
Evocative, affectionate, and illuminating, The Salt Stones sings of a way of life that is at once ancient and entirely contemporary, inspiring us all to seek greater intimacy and a sense of belonging wherever our home place may be.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9781571311627
- ISBN-10: 1571311629
- Publisher: Milkweed Editions
- Publish Date: June 2025
- Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
- Page Count: 256
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Helen Whybrow and her husband own a 200-acre farm in Vermont, where they raise grass-fed Icelandic sheep and organic blueberries while running an on-site retreat center devoted to exploring issues of conservation and social justice. It's just the sort of place where many of us might dream of escaping to, but in her eloquent debut memoir and “love song to this hillside,” The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life, Whybrow celebrates its transcendent beauty while always keeping it real. “Farming, I had learned, is a giant game of Jenga.” Moments spent enjoying panoramic vistas, plunging into swimming holes and being surrounded by birdsong contrast with heartbreaking moments of injury, illness and death among her flock; long, uncomfortable nights spent trying to shoot marauding coyotes; bone-tiring days of sheep shearing; and the sadness of sending animals to the slaughterhouse to keep the herd a manageable size. “I’ve been called Little Bo-Peep by visitors,” Whybrow writes. “I’ve been called a murderer when I try to sell our meat. I don’t feel like either of those things.” Just as the late National Poet Laureate Donald Hall wrote so beautifully about life on his New Hampshire homestead in Seasons at Eagle Pond, Whybrow writes in compelling, finely chiseled prose about the annual seasonal rhythms at her beloved Knoll Farm, beginning with a vivid scene of a tricky lamb birth on a cold spring night and continuing through the year until winter, whose melancholy, dark months she finds conducive to contemplation and writing. “This ancient primal thing of caring for a flock is ultimately about human attachment,” Whybrow writes. She organically weaves her own life story into the details of farm life, especially focusing on her beloved mother’s years with dementia and eventual death, along with the birth and growth of Whybrow’s daughter, Wren, whose woodcuts illustrate the book. As Wren graduates high school and prepares to bike solo cross-country, Whybrow reminds herself that “letting go of something is not the same as losing it.” Like James Rebanks’ The Shepherd’s View, The Salt Stones offers widespread appeal to a large audience. Readers will likely find it the perfect tonic for these turbulent times, and yet, with Whybrow’s keen awareness of so many aspects of our world, she never shuts her eyes to what hurts.
Helen Whybrow and her husband own a 200-acre farm in Vermont, where they raise grass-fed Icelandic sheep and organic blueberries while running an on-site retreat center devoted to exploring issues of conservation and social justice. It's just the sort of place where many of us might dream of escaping to, but in her eloquent debut memoir and “love song to this hillside,” The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life, Whybrow celebrates its transcendent beauty while always keeping it real. “Farming, I had learned, is a giant game of Jenga.” Moments spent enjoying panoramic vistas, plunging into swimming holes and being surrounded by birdsong contrast with heartbreaking moments of injury, illness and death among her flock; long, uncomfortable nights spent trying to shoot marauding coyotes; bone-tiring days of sheep shearing; and the sadness of sending animals to the slaughterhouse to keep the herd a manageable size. “I’ve been called Little Bo-Peep by visitors,” Whybrow writes. “I’ve been called a murderer when I try to sell our meat. I don’t feel like either of those things.” Just as the late National Poet Laureate Donald Hall wrote so beautifully about life on his New Hampshire homestead in Seasons at Eagle Pond, Whybrow writes in compelling, finely chiseled prose about the annual seasonal rhythms at her beloved Knoll Farm, beginning with a vivid scene of a tricky lamb birth on a cold spring night and continuing through the year until winter, whose melancholy, dark months she finds conducive to contemplation and writing. “This ancient primal thing of caring for a flock is ultimately about human attachment,” Whybrow writes. She organically weaves her own life story into the details of farm life, especially focusing on her beloved mother’s years with dementia and eventual death, along with the birth and growth of Whybrow’s daughter, Wren, whose woodcuts illustrate the book. As Wren graduates high school and prepares to bike solo cross-country, Whybrow reminds herself that “letting go of something is not the same as losing it.” Like James Rebanks’ The Shepherd’s View, The Salt Stones offers widespread appeal to a large audience. Readers will likely find it the perfect tonic for these turbulent times, and yet, with Whybrow’s keen awareness of so many aspects of our world, she never shuts her eyes to what hurts.