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9781885210272

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This book is part novel, part poem, part memoir, part sketchpad--subtly paced, bursting with life taken personally. It is rich and pungent, awake and unashamed. It is a world capable of surprise, of nature as often almost another character, singing out of the profound depths of its past, out of its myriad shape-shifting lives. The book's main character is a young would-be Oregon farmer, Enno Duden, who seems to threaten urban and corporate entities by his very existence, his open desire to make a life for himself and his friends. It is the story told by a lifelong farmer, artist and commentator, of that awakening desire to farm, with inchoate glimmers and murmurs of what that calling might ultimately mean. Lynn Miller's expressions can be astonishing, riveting, deft and substantial. With serious matters afoot in a perilous world, his intentions need to be felt as much as thought, traced and shaded with the proper tools. He reaches into the old paint can full of writing, drawing and painting implements, pulls forth and examines the business end of a tool, tests it for heft and sharpness, scribbles at the margins of a blank page until the marks there are fluid, healing and refreshing as a morning cloudburst over prairie hills. ... This is a blend of the personal and the boldly imagined, a full-throated fantasy given a rich telling. Miller's methods require occasional diversions and sharp distinctions. Each character has a voice, yet crowds of characters also express themselves in a taut and vibrant medley. Here be ghosts as well as a gum-chewing old cattle dog named Resumé, adrift in his thoughts and intentions. Then too sprinkled about are the voices of those elders who invented the language, tunes and brushstrokes of the adventure tale, strangely familiar, ensconced as parts of the telling--we might greet Walter Brennan or Herman Melville, come upon Louis Prima with his horn or Rabelais and his pair of innocent giants, even Twain and his raft drifting the great loopy river with its pair of runaways. Again and again Lawrence Sterne appears, with a dance step reminiscent of the deft footwork of Lynn Miller. ... What happens to this young farmer dropped into a spy thriller without a parachute can't help but come as a shining surprise. In Miller's world Nature seems almost to relish its potential to thwart human misdeeds, solve manmade problems and meet human needs--as if human greed and autocratic control were minor failings easily forgiven, as if the whole planet still deserved a many-tongued voice and a diplopod dance to a vast harmonic measure. This is a dark comedy to brighten the night sky, a novel as purgative, a bracing and serious ride. - Paul Hunter, Seattle poet and author of 'Come The Harvest'

This book is part novel, part poem, part memoir, part sketchpad--subtly paced, bursting with life taken personally. It is rich and pungent, awake and unashamed. It is a world capable of surprise, of nature as often almost another character, singing out of the profound depths of its past, out of its myriad shape-shifting lives. The book's main character is a young would-be Oregon farmer, Enno Duden, who seems to threaten urban and corporate entities by his very existence, his open desire to make a life for himself and his friends. It is the story told by a lifelong farmer, artist and commentator, of that awakening desire to farm, with inchoate glimmers and murmurs of what that calling might ultimately mean. Lynn Miller's expressions can be astonishing, riveting, deft and substantial. With serious matters afoot in a perilous world, his intentions need to be felt as much as thought, traced and shaded with the proper tools. He reaches into the old paint can full of writing, drawing and painting implements, pulls forth and examines the business end of a tool, tests it for heft and sharpness, scribbles at the margins of a blank page until the marks there are fluid, healing and refreshing as a morning cloudburst over prairie hills. ... This is a blend of the personal and the boldly imagined, a full-throated fantasy given a rich telling. Miller's methods require occasional diversions and sharp distinctions. Each character has a voice, yet crowds of characters also express themselves in a taut and vibrant medley. Here be ghosts as well as a gum-chewing old cattle dog named Resume, adrift in his thoughts and intentions. Then too sprinkled about are the voices of those elders who invented the language, tunes and brushstrokes of the adventure tale, strangely familiar, ensconced as parts of the telling--we might greet Walter Brennan or Herman Melville, come upon Louis Prima with his horn or Rabelais and his pair of innocent giants, even Twain and his raft drifting the great loopy river with its pair of runaways. Again and again Lawrence Sterne appears, with a dance step reminiscent of the deft footwork of Lynn Miller. ... What happens to this young farmer dropped into a spy thriller without a parachute can't help but come as a shining surprise. In Miller's world Nature seems almost to relish its potential to thwart human misdeeds, solve manmade problems and meet human needs--as if human greed and autocratic control were minor failings easily forgiven, as if the whole planet still deserved a many-tongued voice and a diplopod dance to a vast harmonic measure. This is a dark comedy to brighten the night sky, a novel as purgative, a bracing and serious ride. - Paul Hunter, Seattle poet and author of 'Come The Harvest'

Author Information

"Lynn Miller is a painter, farmer, horseman, writer and family man. Born 2/13/47, BFA San Francisco Art Institute 1970, MFA University of Oregon 1972. For over 40 years Lynn Miller has worked on alternative farming issues and is regarded as a leading authority on animal-powered agriculture. Following a career managing goat, poultry, sheep and cattle operations, in 1974 he managed Esta Valley Farms, a purebred Angus ranch, for the Chairman of the International Trade Commission. Farming and ranching his own operations organically in Oregon since 1975, he was politically active in farm and land use arenas being named to several county and state wide advisory boards including the Lane County Small Farm Task Force and Oregon Governor's Appropriate Technology Task Force. His farming practices have embraced appropriate and antiquated technologies and methods from animal-powered systems to two-cylinder tractors, from blacksmithing to crop rotation systems. He has viewed all aspects of his farming adventure as existential seed-saving. In 1976 he founded the Small Farmer's Journal, an international agrarian quarterly. For its entire 40 year history he functioned as editor/publisher. As editor he authored and published over four hundred of his technical articles and essays in SFJ. In 1980 he authored the best-selling Work Horse Handbook. Subsequently he wrote and published 15 volumes. He has had many articles and essays, by and about him, published in collections, newspapers and magazines including Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Ranch & Reata and Western Horseman. He was included in Yale University Press's Rooted in the Land. In 1979 he was named by Rural America as one of the forty leaders of alternative farming in North America and attended a private meeting of the group at Winrock International, Little Rock, Arkansas, to redefine ""Small Farms"" for the US congress. He has lectured across North America as keynote for many farm conferences as well as lecturer on three occasions at Cornell University, at Amherst, at the California Farm Conference, the Canadian Farm Conference, Washington State Tilth Conference, New Mexico Organic Farming Conference, Maine Common Ground Fair (three occasions), and on three occasions keynote at the EcoFarm Conference in Asilomar, California, at which, in 1999, he was awarded the Stewart of Sustainable Agriculture Award. He has been awarded many additional accolades and distinctions, including the Utne Reader award for environmental excellence, The Garfield Center award for the Preservation of Agricultural Technologies, and an Award for distinguished service from the Missouri house of Representatives. For thirty years he has conducted workshops and demonstrations on animal-power and horse training all across the US and Canada."

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