The Wisdom Of Sheep Other Animals

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE SECRET LIFE OF COWS 'Elegiac, funny, warm and wise, The Wisdom of Sheep will delight country folk and city dwellers alike.' KATHERINE MAY 'A wonderful antidote to the hectic pace of modern life.' JAMES OSWALD We talk about people behaving like sheep, which assumes that sheep all behave in the same way. That has not been my experience. Some are affectionate, others prone to head-butting. Some are determinedly self-sufficient, others seek our help when they need it. And some can be trusted to lead the flock home. They are as individual as we are. Farm animals are familiar to us from childhood stories, but little did we know that their inner lives are full of complexity, deep bonds and family dramas. Rosamund Young has been an organic farmer for over forty years and this is her record of a life at the beck and call of the animals while observing and preserving the abundant wildlife at Kite's Nest Farm. It is a story of joy, discovery, cooperation and sometimes heartbreak. We learn about sheep growing old disgracefully, the intelligence of supposedly 'bird-brained' hens, 'conversations' between cows and why you should never send a text whilst milking . . . 'Delightful.' ALAN BENNETT, ON THE SECRET LIFE OF COWS

A touching, wise, and surprising chronicle of the rich inner lives of animals, drawn from Rosamund Young's lifetime as an organic farmer We often talk about people behaving like sheep: Follow the herd, count sheep to fall asleep, and look out for wolves in sheep’s clothing. But animals, just like people, don’t always follow the pack. Some are affectionate, while others butt heads; some follow the leader, and some guide the whole flock home. Indeed, they’re just as individual and complicated as us. With startling beauty and tenderness, Rosamund Young reveals the remarkable emotional and intellectual complexity of these creatures, creating a record as intimate as a personal diary. Following her acclaimed book The Secret Life of Cows, Young transports readers to the wild meadows of Kite’s Nest Farm, where she has worked as an organic farmer for over 40 years, at the beck and call of the abundant wildlife, living in direct contact with the consciousnesses of her beloved animals. Through tender portraits of her sometimes eventful but always rewarding days at Kite's Nest, Young recounts a multitude of discoveries, such as how cows converse with one another, why sheep are so strongheaded—and why should you never, ever text whilst milking. That’s a lesson you only need to learn once. This is a story of joy, discovery, cooperation and sometimes heartbreak. But through it all, The Wisdom of Sheep is a fresh and delightful tribute to the miraculous inner worlds of the animals all around us and what we can learn about them, and about ourselves, by watching them more closely.

Reflections on feeding body and spirit in a world of change Animal scientists have long considered domestic livestock to be too dumb to know how to eat right, but the lifetime research of animal behaviorist Fred Provenza and his colleagues has debunked this myth. Their work shows that when given a choice of natural foods, livestock have an astoundingly refined palate, nibbling through the day on as many as fifty kinds of grasses, forbs, and shrubs to meet their nutritional needs with remarkable precision. In Nourishment Provenza presents his thesis of the wisdom body, a wisdom that links flavor-feedback relationships at a cellular level with biochemically rich foods to meet the body's nutritional and medicinal needs. Provenza explores the fascinating complexity of these relationships as he raises and answers thought-provoking questions about what we can learn from animals about nutritional wisdom. What kinds of memories form the basis for how herbivores, and humans, recognize foods? Can a body develop nutritional and medicinal memories in utero and early in life? Do humans still possess the wisdom to select nourishing diets? Or, has that ability been hijacked by nutritional "authorities"? Consumers eager for a "quick fix" have empowered the multibillion-dollar-a-year supplement industry, but is taking supplements and enriching and fortifying foods helping us, or is it hurting us? On a broader scale Provenza explores the relationships among facets of complex, poorly understood, ever-changing ecological, social, and economic systems in light of an unpredictable future. To what degree do we lose contact with life-sustaining energies when the foods we eat come from anywhere but where we live? To what degree do we lose the mythological relationship that links us physically and spiritually with Mother Earth who nurtures our lives? Provenza's paradigm-changing exploration of these questions has implications that could vastly improve our health through a simple change in the way we view our relationships with the plants and animals we eat. Our health could be improved by eating biochemically rich foods and by creating cultures that know how to combine foods into meals that nourish and satiate. Provenza contends the voices of "authority" disconnect most people from a personal search to discover the inner wisdom that can nourish body and spirit. That journey means embracing wonder and uncertainty and avoiding illusions of stability and control as we dine on a planet in a universe bent on consuming itself.

"Within a day of receiving this book, I had consumed it... Absorbing, moving, and compulsively readable."—Lydia Davis In this affectionate, heart-warming chronicle, Rosamund Young distills a lifetime of organic farming wisdom, describing the surprising personalities of her cows and other animals At her famous Kite's Nest Farm in Worcestershire, England, the cows (as well as sheep, hens, and pigs) all roam free. They make their own choices about rearing, grazing, and housing. Left to be themselves, the cows exhibit temperaments and interests as diverse as our own. "Fat Hat" prefers men to women; "Chippy Minton" refuses to sleep with muddy legs and always reports to the barn for grooming before bed; "Jake" has a thing for sniffing the carbon monoxide fumes of the Land Rover exhaust pipe; and "Gemima" greets all humans with an angry shake of the head and is fiercely independent. An organic farmer for decades, Young has an unaffected and homely voice. Her prose brims with genuine devotion to the wellbeing of animals. Most of us never apprehend the various inner lives animals possess, least of all those that we might eat. But Young has spent countless hours observing how these creatures love, play games, and form life-long friendships. She imparts hard-won wisdom about the both moral and real-world benefits of organic farming. (If preserving the dignity of animals isn't a good enough reason for you, consider how badly factory farming stunts the growth of animals, producing unhealthy and tasteless food.) This gorgeously-illustrated book, which includes an original introduction by the legendary British playwright Alan Bennett, is the summation of a life's work, and a delightful and moving tribute to the deep richness of animal sentience.

Created in honor of the work of Professor Tova Forti, this collection considers the natural world in key wisdom books - Proverbs, Job and Qoheleth/Ecclesiastes, Ben Sira and Song of Songs/Solomon - and also examines particular animal and plant imagery in other texts in the Hebrew Bible. It crucially involves ancient Near Eastern parallels and like texts from the classical world, but also draws on rabbinic tradition and broader interpretative works, as well as different textual traditions such as the LXX and Qumran scrolls. Whilst the natural world, notably plants and animals, is a key uniting element, the human aspect is also crucial. To explore this, contributors also treat the wider concerns within wisdom literature on human beings in relation to their social context, and in comparison with neighbouring nations. They emphasize that the human, animal and plant worlds act together in synthesis, all enhanced and imbued by the world-view of wisdom literature.

****A Sunday Times bestseller*** ***A Times Book of the Year 2017*** WITH A FOREWORD BY ALAN BENNETT 'A lovely, thoughtful little book about the intelligence of cows.' James Rebanks, author of The Shepherd's Life Cows are as varied as people. They can be highly intelligent or slow to understand, vain, considerate, proud, shy or inventive. Although much of a cow's day is spent eating, they always find time for extra-curricular activities such as babysitting, playing hide and seek, blackberry-picking or fighting a tree. This is an affectionate record of a hitherto secret world.