Showing results by author "Catherine Friend" in All Categories

Farms have fences. People have boundaries. Mine began crumbling the day I knelt behind a male sheep, reached between his legs, and squeezed his testicles. This took place one blustery November day when I joined other shepherd-wannabes for a class on the basics of raising sheep. I was there with my partner Melissa, the woman I'd lived with for 12 years, because we were going to start a farm.

What do you do when you love your farm...but it doesn’t love you? After 15 years of farming, Catherine Friend is tired. After all, while shepherding is one of the oldest professions, it’s not getting any easier. The number of sheep in America has fallen by 90 percent in the last 90 years. But just as Catherine thinks it’s time to hang up her shepherd’s crook, she discovers that sheep might be too valuable to give up. What ensues is a funny, thoughtful romp through the history of our woolly friends, why small farms are important, and how each one of us - and the planet - would benefit from being very sheepish, indeed.

When rare book librarian Emma Boyd searches for a pirate's long-lost treasure map, she learns the hard way that pirates still exist in today's world - and some modern pirates steal maps, others steal hearts. The treasure map she seeks belonged to the Caribbean pirate Thomasina Farris, who disappeared in 1715 without a trace. Did Captain Tommy steal an entire treasure from a Spanish galleon and escape? Did she die by another pirate's sword?

Meet Taylor McNamara. She’s 12. She’s a city girl. But her parents have just moved her onto a sheep farm in the middle of nowhere. She’s trying to get into the spirit of farming, but things aren’t going very well. Meet the farm animals: 40 chickens, 20 sheep, 10 ducks, and 4 goats, one of which can pee on his own head. Taylor’s job is to collect eggs every morning, which she can only do using an umbrella to catch the chicken poop. With the help of her friend Megan, Taylor embarks on a nearly disastrous plan to move her family back to the city. But one lonely night, in the barn, Taylor discovers that farming isn’t all bad.