Peace at Heart: An Oregon Country Life
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By Barbara Drake
1998. 6 x 9 inches. 192 pages.
ISBN 978-0-87071-455-9. Paperback, $18.95.
Table of Contents
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Many dream of leaving the city for a new life in the country. Few follow that dream. In 1987, Barbara Drake and her husband sold their home in Portland and moved to a farm in western Oregon's Yamhill Valley. Home was now a modest white house, an old red barn, and a small vineyard. In
Peace at Heart, Barbara Drake reflects on ten years of country living and on the happiness that this rural landscape has brought her.
Weather, seasons, plants, and especially animals figure prominently in these stories. The constant company of animals-domestic and wild-on the farm inspires what Drake calls "the sacramental character of country life." In essays on birthing lambs, keeping bees, raising geese, and making wine, Drake combines gentle humor, practical advice, and deep respect for the work and the land. This rich gathering of observations and meditations-on everything from border collies and Oregon mud to picking wild apples-captures the ordinary joys and everyday blessings of country life.
"The sheep. The light. The good deep smells of oily wool, crushed apples and drying grass. The dogs snuffling the hedge where they flushed a pheasant earlier today. The chickens settling on their roost in the henhouse. An owl drops out of the woods and soars across the pasture. The cats trill their greetings and twine around the pasture fence posts. The warm light beckons from the barn on the hill. Being in it, with it. This is happiness. There is beauty everywhere and for the moment I am part of it."
--from Peace at Heart
About the Author
Barbara Drake is the author of the popular textbook,
Writing Poetry (Harcourt Brace), as well as several volumes of her own poetry, including
What We Say to Strangers (Breitenbush Books). She is a professor of English at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon.
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