Seeking more sheep reading ? love five of my uncommon favorites .
1. The Flock,by Mary Austin (1906)
Austin wrote beautifully about the American West in the late 1800s and former 1900s . The Flockis an report of Austin ’s fourth dimension — as a lone woman , no less — spent following Basque and Mexican herdsman and their flocks through the California Sierra . Even at the dawn of the twentieth one C , the sheepman are engaged in a suffer battle against a growing holidaymaker diligence .
Austin ’s tincture the abbreviated record of her unbelievable , enviable journeying with romanticism , and certainly know how to turn a set phrase : “ The reward the lead of the wool black Maria bears equally and whitened . Over it , preceded by the smell of cigarettes , go the shearing crews of dark-skinned workforce with full fashion and the air of opera house pirates . ”
The Flockis available in full and for destitute in many data format , courtesy of the Open Library .
2. Adobe Days,by Sarah Hathaway Bixby Smith (1925)
Fortunately for us , someone remember to appropriate the oral history of Sarah Bixby Smith , have a bun in the oven in California in 1871 . In her words , she was “ carry on a sheep ranch in California , the San Justo , near San Juan Bautista , an old commission township of the Spanish padres … and about a hundred miles in the south of San Francisco . ” Bixby Smith ’s founding father was one of a few man who drove around 2,400 sheep overland , from the easterly U.S. “ to California and brought across plains , mountains , and comeuppance to this Pacific Coast some of the first American sheep , and thus were instrumental in developing an industry that for many years was of great importance . ”
Her report features such anecdotes as a char chasing off Indians with a hatchet so as to save some Mormon life , which afterwards results in a welcome from Brigham Young that includes giving the move sheep grazing access to gardens .
Bixby Smith ’s double-dyed chronicle is useable for free via the Library of Congress .
3. Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country,by Marsha Weisiger (2011)
The glorious innovator treks and open graze described by Austin and Bixby Smith had a drab , disturbing side . In the 1860s — as sheep were being driven W — the U.S. authorities attempt to eradicate theNavajo - Churro sheepthat had populate the West for centuries . kine , Capricorn the Goat and sheep were destroyed as part of an effort to subjugate the Navajo multitude , because livestock enable independency . Later , during the Dust Bowl years , New Deal conservation programs that sought to control rangeland eating away lead to the further carnage of Native American Churro flocks .
The Churro strain develop from the Churra ( Spanish for “ rough-cut ” ) sheep brought to the American Southwest by the Spanish during the 1500s . By the mid-1930s , very few “ purebred ” Navajo - Churros remained . Today , the Navajo - Churro is a rarefied breed with imperil status by the Livestock Conservancy , and federal policies of the past times are to find fault .
Given this chronicle , it is refreshful to readDreaming of Sheep , a Christian Bible about all of this and much more from a aboriginal American perspective . Weisiger go beyond preceding calamity to more deeply research the human relationship between the Navajo people , the Churro breed , the brittle desert landscape and fiber culture . She is outstandingly bonny in her appraisal of how piddling everyone , native people and conservationists alike , infer ( and interpret ) about sheep , managed grazing and soil wellness .
4. Wool Away: The Art and Technique of Shearing,by Godfrey Bowen (1974)
Unsurprisingly , this small record describes how to shear sheep , but it also unveils the mystery of why we shear in the style and way that we do — the panache Godfrey Bowen himself ( or more accurately , his far more introspective blood brother ) invented . It is so much more , though . Bowen is an irreverent , eminently professional , phonograph record - breaking New Zealand sheep Moira Shearer . He once shear 559 sheep in a unmarried work mean solar day . His voice is brusque , direct and funny .
One chapter is title , simply , “ unmanageable Sheep , ” and its contents institute smiling of realization : ‘
“ There is the odd ruffianly sheep in the syndicate , the one that makes the ‘ sheepo ’ unpopular when a Moira Shearer happen it in his playpen . It is amusing to hear the comment of a Moira Shearer when he get a too liberal part of these cobblers . ”
As for the shearer ’s diet , Bowen recommend “ plenteousness of good greens to keep the parentage right ” and is clear that “ plum plum duff is not safe to shear on . ”
5. The Keeper of Sheep,by Fernando Pessoa (1997)
Pessoa , a prolific Lusitanian poet , was an strange fellow . Over the course of his literary sprightliness , he make at least 72 literary alter egos , a pop proficiency during the early twentieth century . One of these alter egos belonged to Alberto Caeiro , an ostensibly ignorant , uneducated and often unemployed rural resident , and a heteronym of Pessoa . As Pessoa no doubt intended , the part of those described as ignorant turn out to be anything but . The Keeper of Sheepis not just for sheep lovers and sheepman , but anyone who appreciates nature poetry :
I take myself indoors and shut the window . They bring the lamp and give me goodnight , And my contented vocalisation gives them goodnight . O that my life history may always be this : The sidereal day full of Lord’s Day , or diffuse with rain , Or stormy as if the Holy Writ were number to an end , watch with interest from the window , The last friendly look given the calm of the trees , And then , the windowpane shut , the lamp lit , Not reading anything , nor cerebration of anything , not sleeping , To feel aliveness flowing over me like a stream over its bottom , And out there a great silence like a idol asleep .
late long time have bring popular and successful sheep - centrical Good Book likeThe Yorkshire Shepherdess , SheepishandThe Shepherd ’s Life , a New York Times Bestseller . Be certain to add these to your list if you have n’t pluck through them already .
