During construction, while the walls had yet to be enclosed, my sister Suzy was playing farmer, and my brother Jed was her cow. In need of a stanchion, Suzy had Jed stick his head in the gap between two studs. Later we were all seated at the dinner table when Mom noticed Jed was missing. “Oh,” said Suzy nonchalantly, “he’s in the milk house.” And so we found him, on hands and knees with his head jammed between a pair of two-by-fours. Having pushed his way in, he couldn’t back out. Dad levered the studs apart and freed him. I was always confused when city kids asked us how we had fun without a television. (40)

Farming is one of those things I can file under Weird Reading Interests That Have Nothing to Do with My Own Life. Perry's story is multilayered: a contemporary story of small-scale hobby farming, childhood stories of growing up on a much larger farm, ruminations on parenting from both the perspective of a parent and the perspective of a now-grown child, and a framework of the building of, yes, a chicken coop.

It's by any standard a good book (thoughtful, detailed, well paced, etc. etc. etc.), but for some reason I stalled out just past the halfway point, and I had to take the rest in bite-sized reads. That might be a matter of the relaxed pace of the book, or it might just be where my reading-head is at the moment. There's some lovely reflection throughout the work, though, and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a sort of slice-of-life story, or for light tales of farm work with more complex family stories underpinning them.

Oh, and note to self: never raise pigs.