Lambsquarters: Scenes from a Handmade Life

Barbara McLean

ISBN 10: 0679311130 / ISBN 13: 9780679311133

Published by Random House Canada, 2002

May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0679311130I4N00

Synopsis:

At the age of twenty-four, Barbara McLean and her husband, Thomas, decided to make their home in the country, near a village called Alderney in Grey County, Ontario. Together they became homeowners, farmers and, eventually, parents. They called their farm Lambsquarters, and they remain there today, twenty-six years later.

Life on a farm is a cycle of neverending work and discovery. Barbara and her family develop close relationships with every living thing: the hearty lambs and the fragile ones, the pumpkins and the potatoes and the hollyhocks in the barnyard, a family of bluebirds with problems of its own. What at first seems an intensely independent act — having one’s own land and space — becomes more meaningful once it becomes possible to connect with the larger community. Strong bonds are formed with neighbours who share both in grief and in celebration.

In striking portraits that are intensely intimate and yet reverberate with the universal hum of life, Barbara McLean describes the beauty, pain and wonder of the very essence of her surroundings and all who share them. We accompany her on a life’s journey, from a somewhat daunted dweller of a ramshackle farmhouse to a true inhabitant of a place.

Lambsquarters is for everyone who has dreamed of reconnecting with the land, as well as for those already well acquainted with rubber boots, chicken manure and the long trajectories of the rural school bus.

About the Author: Barbara McLean holds a Ph.D. in English literature, which she acquired while she and her husband, a country doctor, were running Lambsquarters and raising their two children. She is currently at work on a novel.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Lambsquarters: Scenes from a Handmade Life
Publisher: Random House Canada
Publication Date: 2002
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket