LambsQUARTERS

BORDER LEICESTER WOOL

Lambsquarters Border Leicesters produce long lustrous fleece.  We do our best to protect their wool from excess debris, and  thoroughly skirt each fleece at shearing.  We have been grazing sheep on rolling pastures for fifty years, continually breeding to improve wool quality.  The fleeces are sold whole, directly from the sheep, ready to be spun in the grease, or  washed and combed or carded.

BARBARA McLEAN BOOKS

My new book SHEPHERD'S SIGHT, was released from ECW Press on March 19, 2024! It is available at bookstores, Indigo and Amazon.

A new documentary on TVO The Agenda:

https://youtu.be/35UYD4Uowsc?si=_JMzeXxZPeGufB-W

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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.

ECW Press 2024

https://ecwpress.com/products/shepherds-sight

Lambsquarters is for everyone who has dreamed of reconnecting with the land, as well as for those already well acquainted with rubber boots, chicken manure and the long trajectories of the rural school bus.

Random House Canada 2003

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/112152/lambsquarters-by-barbara-mclean/9780679311928

Contact me at:

lambsquarters@hotmail.com