Brian Miller's Kayaking with Lambs is about the idyllic farm life of your imagination--fresh fruits and vegetables, livestock large and small, endless gatherings of kith and kin around a table of homegrown food and handmade drink. It is also about pain, blood, deaths, mud, storms, droughts, and failures.
The author, who owns a small East Tennessee farm, lives an "antiquated life," that is, a life often out of sync with modernity and closely in sync with the natural world. His book is structured as a breviary broken into the eight monastic offices of the day. Written as a series of meditative notes, it follows his efforts to live with purpose and stewardship.
Kayaking with Lambs is about learning to dwell alongside neighbors, nature, and even the planet as if it mattered. In language that is poetic and writing that is honest, insightful, poignant, wry, and self-deprecating, Miller ponders everything from the cycles of life to his family heritage to what Wes Jackson refers to as "becoming native to this place." And, of course, he shares the many times along his journey that he's found himself in situations totally unforeseen when he began . . . like kayaking with lambs.
Industry Reviews
“This is a beautifully sensual account of the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and emotions entailed in daily life on a Tennessee farm, very lovingly rendered with gratitude for being in a place worth caring about.”
—James Howard Kunstler, author of the World Made by Hand novels
“I’ve long been an admirer of Brian Miller’s writing, and I hope this delightful book will find him many new readers. With perfect authorial control, it combines lyricism, self-deprecating humor, a grounding in place, political wisdom that’s all the more powerful for its understatement, and deep practical knowledge from a life on the land. A book to be read and enjoyed, but also—more unusually—to be acted upon.”
—Chris Smaje, author of Saying No to a Farm-Free Future
“What a beautiful and inspiring book! Brian Miller has given us a wonderful meditation on the glories and difficulties of life on his well-ordered East Tennessee farm. Chronicled according to the liturgy of the hours, Miller reminds us of the importance of learning ‘to walk and not run though the seasons.’ It is rich in both literary allusion and sober practical advice. Kayaking with Lambs is a celebration of the archaic arts, the joy of duty, and the rich rewards of the habit of attention.”
—Scott H. Moore, author of How to Burn a Goat
“From the taste of a fat blackberry on a warm afternoon to ‘the sound of the moon rising’ to the sweet smell of lamb poop, Brian Miller conveys the small joys, alongside the modern perplexities, of shepherding a small farm. His attention to the cycles of life, of the seasons, and of each day transforms his ‘farm notes’ into a form of poetry.”
—Allan Carlson, author of The New Agrarian Mind
“Good books about farm life and rural community are rare to say the least. Great books are rarer still. In Kayaking with Lambs, Brian Miller has accomplished the latter. Arranged as daily meditations, Miller takes readers on a delightful journey of his working farm, baring his heart and soul in the process. Along the way, we meet a menagerie of farm animals, as well as his best and sometimes not-so-good neighbors. A fantastic read.”
—Donald E. Davis, author of Where There Are Mountains
