A Talk With Barbara McLean

This is a FREE event, however we ask that you still reserve a ticket since we do have a limited capacity. 

When: Wednesday, July 3rd @ 8:00pm

Where: Cedar Canoe Books (72 Main St E, Huntsville)

Tickets: FREE – we still ask that you please get tickets as there is a capacity limit.

About The Author

Barbara McLean has been a lecturer in English Literature and Gender Studies. She has published literary book reviews, critical essays and poetry. She is the author of Lambsquarters: Scenes from a Handmade Life, Random House Canada 2002. A handspinner and weaver of wool, she lives on a farm in Canada where she tends her flock of Border Leicester sheep.

About The Book

A restorative and resonant memoir of a year in the life of an aging shepherd

For 50 years, Barbara McLean has tended a flock of Border Leicester sheep on her small Ontario farm, Lambsquarters. In Shepherd’s Sight she shares the crises, pleasures, and challenges of farm life over the course of a year. Now in her 70s, McLean faces a new problem: how much longer she can continue with the physically taxing work that is her central source of meaning and satisfaction.

Through her unsentimental gaze, we witness the highs and heartbreaks of delivering and rearing lambs, the shearing and spinning of wool, the wildlife in the woods (and occasionally in the house), and the garden produce moving from seed to harvest to table. Even after half a century on this land, McLean is still making fresh observations, and she shares them in evocative, elegant prose. As she moves through the calendar year, she also reflects on years past, offering a long view on climate, stewardship, and agriculture.

With its vivid description and absorbing storytelling, Shepherd’s Sight offers an unforgettable glimpse of a life lived on the land.