Description

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Brian Brett's farm on Salt Spring Island is affectionately known as Trauma Farm. There, he raises chickens, pigs, cows, sheep, and goats, tends an extensive orchard and vegetable garden, concocts fabulous meals from the bounties of the farm, and has various misadventures. This funny and thought-provoking memoir traces one day on Trauma Farm. In it, Brett explores the natural history of the small mixed farm, meditates on the perfection of the egg, offers critiques of factory farms and the slaughtering industry, muses on the uses and misuses of gates, and ponders the constant presence of death as he goes about the activities of farming -- birthing lambs, contending with rats, helping an aged horse to his death. Underlain with deep knowledge of biology and botany, this erudite, witty, and passionate book is an unforgettable portrait of the issues all farms face in this age of industrialization and homogenization.

Praise For…

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A wonderful meditation on farm life and by extension life itself ...told intelligently and often humorously, by a writer with a welcome fresh sharp eye.”
Peter Matthiessen, author of Shadow Country and the Snow Leopard

"a superb, wise, witty, and vivid weave of barnyard tales with deep insights into the fraught symbiosis of animals, plants, and man”
Ronald Wright, author of A Short History of Progress

"a touching and tender memoir, at once humorous and profound, filled with wonderful insights about life as a poet and accidental farmer"
Wade Davis, National Geographic Explorer in Residence and author of One River and The Serpent and the Rainbow

"[Brett] comes with the gumboot poet’s fearless tongue to speak truth to those who would reduce the life-and-death work of farming into a pastoral idyll. ...If it’s hope you’re looking for, you’ll find it in the fortifying madness of Trauma Farm"
James MacKinnon, author of Plenty (aka The 100-Mile Diet)

"It is a striking, stunning book, easily one of the best of the year."National Post