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Full Description
A summer job turns serious when a young woman takes the reins on a remote farm-and learns far more than how to herd sheep
In May 1972, Liese Greensfelder arrived in the small Norwegian town of Øystese to startling news: Johannes, the farmer who hired her for the summer, had just been hospitalized after a stroke. Could she please watch over his place for a month or so, until he got back on his feet? Twenty years old and with no farming experience, Liese was dropped off the next day at a centuries-old mountain farm at the end of a dirt road high above the magnificent Hardanger Fjord-with 115 sheep, two cows, one calf, a draft horse, and a Norwegian herding dog to care for.
Armed with a command of Danish that enabled rudimentary communication, Liese began learning from neighbors who spoke an ancient Norwegian dialect-how to feed the animals, milk by hand, and supervise her first lambing. The farm was run in the old way: horses and wagons instead of tractors, haymaking in the rain, and hikes into the mountains to check on the sheep that ranged free over those wild peaks all summer. And, she was quick to discover, the farm was on the brink of ruin, for Johannes was a heartless man who had abused his animals and neglected his buildings and equipment for decades.
Although her employer had alienated his neighbors, they immediately welcomed the American newcomer and offered her help. As "a month or so" stretched to a year and Liese struggled for the survival of the farm, she joined this tight-knit enclave of farmers, learning their stories and history, adopting their dialect, and growing intimately familiar with the grass-based farming practices that had sustained them for generations.
From moments of levity, such as sampling a neighbor's fruit wines, Christmas parties, and skiing; to soul-battering challenges, including the directive to kill a fox, sending sheep to slaughter, rotten silage, and vicious weather; to the yearnings of a young woman awash in a sea of masculinity, Accidental Shepherd is a candid account of Liese's year in a remote farmhouse. Confronted with dangers and obstacles for which she was utterly unprepared, she tells a story of remarkable resilience and records the fascinating but rapidly vanishing traditions of the community that took her in.
Contents
Contents
Map of Hovland Area
Norwegian Friends and Neighbors
1. The Best-Laid Plans
2. A Tangle of Vines
3. Awe and Longing
4. Johannes
5. Hovland
6. Wine and Stew
7. Firstborn Son
8. The Hunt
9. Museum in the Living Room, Sheep Thighs in the Pantry
10. Into the Wild
11. Drunken Driving
12. Exodus
13. Attack of the Mad Heifer
14. Worlds Apart
15. A Swim in SkÅrsvatnet
16. Of Cows and Manure
17. Alv's Revolution
18. Driving Begonia
19. A Temple for the Gods
20. "You Know I Did"
21. Pickled Grass
22. HÅseter and Hulders
23. Johannes Baits the Hook
24. Stuck on a Ledge
25. Pork Chops for Johannes
26. Little Bo-Peep
27. Blood and Wool
28. Freedom!
29. Metamorphosis
30. Misery
31. Magnar's Ram
32. A Social Whirl
33. Suddenly a Celebrity
34. The Shepherdess's Lamb
35. MØrketida
36. An Unbidden Guest
37. Homecoming
38. Skiing to Valhalla
39. Lamb Spring
40. Onward
Acknowledgments
Glossary
