Over the course of the next rocky four years Catherine and Melissa would learn the hard way what their books and classes had omitted about farming – lambing complications, tractor accidents, coyotes, livestock stubbornness, veterinary medicine overdoses, the realities of breeding, and the difficulty of taking your first homegrown animals to slaughter – all while dealing with Catherine's anxiety and Melissa's undiagnosed chemical imbalance. The two women, then in their late thirties, bought a 53-acre parcel with erosion problems and no structures, built a house, planted a one-acre vineyard, and populated the remainder with two goats, a handful of laying hens, a chicken tractor full of broilers, fifty sheep, and a guard llama. … ( more)Ĭatherine Friend was a decently successful children's book author with two books and a handful of magazine articles published, when her longtime partner Melissa announced that she wanted to use the money she'd inherited from her namesake to buy a farm. Hit by a Farm is a hilarious recounting of Catherine and Melissa's trials of 'getting back to the land.' It is also a coming-of (middle)-age story of a woman trying to cross the divide between who she is and who she wants to be, and the story of a couple who say 'goodbye city life' - and learn more than they ever bargained for about love, land, and yes, sheep sex. What ensues is a crash course in both living off and with the land that ultimately allows Catherine to help fulfill Melissa's dreams while not losing sight of her own.

When self-confessed 'urban bookworm' Catherine Friend's partner of twelve years decides she wants to fulfill her lifelong dream of owning a farm, Catherine agrees.

I was there with my partner Melissa, the woman I'd lived with for twelve years, because we were going to start a farm. This took place one blustery November day when I joined other shepherd-wannabees for a class on the basics of raising sheep. Mine began crumbling the day I knelt behind a male sheep, reached between his legs, and squeezed his testicles.

Hit by a Farm by Catherine Friend