Clabbered Dirt, Sweet Grass

by Gary Paulsen

Paulsen captures a vanishing way of life and offers a lyrical tribute to the american farm. “Paulsen’s prose is realistic and down-to-earth....Ruth Wright Paulsen’s paintings are an invitation to pause and imagine...a delight” (Christian Science Monitor). Illustrations by Ruth Wright Paulsen.

Genres: Fiction, Book Club, Nature, Adult

Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Gary James Paulsen was an American writer of children's and young adult fiction, best known for coming-of-age stories about the wilderness. He was the author of more than 200 books and wrote more than 200 magazine articles and short stories, and several plays, all primarily for teenagers. He won the Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 1997 for his lifetime contribution in writing for teens.

Reviews

[Diane Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read Gary Paulsen at the beginning of this year. Winterdance was the book, the story of his sled dogs and his experience running the Iditerod. I was impressed enough to look around for more of his writing for adults and came across this one. It was a wonderful way to bookend the year, but I'm still looking for more, as I am a die-hard fan now. Especially as he passed away just a couple of months ago.

This is the story of a year on a Minnesota farm. The people are unnamed, as their only importance is to work, alongside the animals, to keep the farm running and produce enough food to feed humans and animals in the coming year. Back-breaking, mind-numbing labor, men and women alike. The children are not spared, they do what they can at all ages. Work is the order of the day, but so are the huge meals, the endless stories, the fun to be had when there's a spare minute or two, and the camaraderie of neighbors helping when they're needed.

This is a beautifully written ode to those men and women and horses, their ingenuity and willingness to do what's needed to survive. Paulsen's wife is an artist and her paintings also grace these pages. A keeper for me, it's too lovely to send back out into the world.

[Jonny Parshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been reading Paulsen since I was a young boy--and will continue yet--and I must say this is his best book I've read thus far. Every person who reads these passages--urban and rural, North American and overseas--will feel a sharp pang of nostalgia for a lifestyle gone mostly, threatened at least. Farm life is captured here eloquently, poetically, from first spring to winter's teeth. Hard living it might be, this book made me want to buy land and work it, perhaps even the old-fashioned way. If that's not effective literature, I reckon I know not what is.

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know if many people know about this book. It's a wonderful memoir by talented children's author Gary Paulsen. He proves he is a lyrical writer for adults as well. And I love the color art plates that his wife painted to accompany this glowing tribute in 4 seasons to farm life. I highly recommend it if you like rural/nature writing, history, and nonfiction.

[GoldGato · Rating 5 out of 5]

"This horse had the name of Harold, because I had many years ago a son named Harold until they took him, the army took him and didn't give him back and his hair was this color of the horse. Is that something, to name a horse the same as a son?"

So begins this wonderful tale of farm life. Author Gary Paulsen begins the book with this brief recollection of a horse named Harold in the quiet sigh of an old man's life. Using each season as a separate chapter, Paulsen describes the heck out of farming, out of family, out of the elements...he does so in a way that is always engaging. This isn't corporate farming, which has taken over most of the old family steads, but down-to-earth-horse-pulls-the-plow hard work.

You farm to live, work to live, but pride comes with an axe.

Prior to this book, I wasn't aware of Gary Paulsen, who has made his mark as a writer of adventure stories for children and teens. He writes the way one remembers, with knowledge gleaned from the stories told by the village elders. His words and phrases tie the reader back to the land, even if the reader has never stepped on such ground.

Plowing. The first great music of summer. Plowing and watching the black dirt turn...while the seagulls float over the blade of the plow in the hundreds...

The community uses horses for the heavy lifting. The dirt becomes black pudding when properly tilled. Grandmothers sit on porches and sew quilts. Families ride to church in old 1937 Fords. Months of back-breaking work gets wiped out by too many inches of rain or not enough rain. Young ones take temporary leaves from school so they can dig up potatoes to help support the family. Exhausted livestock doze off into barnsleep. Nothing comes easy, so a celebration like Christmas is something earned.

...carved toys of soft wood that looks like polished honey shaped in a team of horses with a bobsled.

The text is accompanied by paintings from Ruth Wright Paulsen, pictures of cows and crops and steeples bathed in Dutch lighting. Beautiful.

The old man and his horse named Harold. His dead son. These were the hard men who fought the wars and tilled the land and never asked for handouts. Where have they gone?

"My son will not farm nor his sons and the brush will take it back, the farm, all of it..."

Book Season = Year Round (work never stops)

[Sonja · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was different than I expected but in a good way. It sure brought back memories of the times I spent on my mother's family's farm in WI. Not that I was there often or long but I still remember my own days on the farm - all the cooking during threshing, the big meals and the time I ate 7 ears of fresh corn on the cob for dinner because it was so delicious - and I was only 7 or 8 years old! From being in the barn, the fly paper in the kitchen, my grandmother and great aunt churning butter, making cookies/bread/lefse, all the dishes that had to be done, gathering the eggs, a bunch of us cousins sleeping in the same bed. But I never realized how much WORK went into farming. Paulsen writes so everything is real - one feels it. And I liked his repetition in writing about things done, work done, snow, dirt, - like really bringing the feeling home. A pleasure to read.

[Brian Seadorf · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one gets the Dorf BookHug of approval

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books of all time. A lyrical impression of the farming life of the late 1800s/early 1900s. Just beautiful. Have read this about three times.

[Ron Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

So beautifully written and somewhat nostalgic for me as someone who grew up on a farm in Nebraska.

[Molly Grimmius · Rating 4 out of 5]

On my shelf and had not read it so picked it for an extra book for our road trip… oh what a winner. A reflection on a year of the life of farming … farming before it became what it is now. It followed the season and my goodness it felt so accurate with the best lyrical writing. The canning, gardening and panting felt so on point. And yes my life is not that at all but still there is this truth of the seasons we are in that resonated still with it. Also loved the story at the beginning of how this idea came to be.

—-if you like Wendell Berry, then this would be a perfect fit.

[Veronica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Actually like a 2.75. Occasionally beautiful and reminiscent of my own farming childhood, but by the end the repetitive run on sentence style of the writing really grated on me.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written description of farming back in the day. Poetic language tells the reader how hard each season was, and yet we know the author loved it.

[Charlotte Tressler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book at exactly the right time, just a week after I finished reading The Grapes of Wrath. The rhythm of the prose and the detached voice of the narrator telling the story of a year in the life of a 1920s Minnesota farm echoes Steinbeck's narrative chapters describing of the flight and plight of the Dust Bowl-era migrant workers.
This is a work of fiction, but I wouldn't call it a novel. It's a narrative essay, divided into one chapter for each season. There is very little dialog, and most of it consists of unattributed tales of tragic farm accidents, which share a seasonality much like the annual cycles of planting, harvesting, slaughtering, and logging. Each activity engenders its own specialized injuries.
If you're looking for an action-packed page-turner, this book is not for you.
If you're interested in beautiful descriptive language and an honest look at part of America's agrarian history, I highly recommend it.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Book reminds me of my grandma and grandpa and what their lives were like growing up. Much of what he describes in this book brings to mind my own days on my grandpa's dairy farm. I just love reading Paulsen's writing. This book, like so many of his others that I love, is like poetry.

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was that a poem? Did I just read a poem? Because with funky punctuation and incomplete sentences it sure felt like poetry. This lyrical description of long-ago farm life will, I am quite certain, stir memories of anyone who grew up in the rural Midwest during the early or middle part of the last century.

[Steph Winter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paulsen's writing and his wife, Ruth's, paintings brought me back home to the farm where my father was raised and where my sister, brothers, and I were raised. The writing is slow and leisurely while describing the endless work and unending hours of a day spent living close to the land and her creatures. The paintings were like snapshots of farm equipment and cows that I remember from my childhood. The book is divided into sections beginning with spring and ending with winter and it details the ways in which a farm family's life changes along with the seasons. My favorite story came in the foreward to the book when Paulsen described his experience with another man who lost his beloved horse and donated it to Paulsen to use for dog meat. (In that way, his horse lived on through the lives of the dogs.) All I can say is, "It's a taste of home...."

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lyrical, poetical rendering of Middle Western farming practices, set during the years that machines (tractors, threshing machines, trucks) had been introduced but horses still widely used. The book is set in four parts, each corresponding to a season, starting with Spring. There are some descriptions of "inside work" (aka women's work") but most of it depicts "outside work."

The writing style is very reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy, minus the gratuitous violence and made-up words.

There is an air of longing for simple pleasures and the community of days past, which no doubt is based in truth. But overall it seems like it was unremitting, backbreaking work. I am firmly in the camp of "all hail modern conveniences." Electricity and modern plumbing can not be over appreciated.

[Eileen Breseman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very different style of writing, Gary Paulsen rhythmically, lyrically tells the story of farm life through 4 seasons, almost like a poem to the earth, the life, the heartbeat of the people who grow our food. It's a way of life that still exists, but not many appreciate. Particularly the short Preface by Mr. Paulsen of the inspiration for writing the book was deeply soulful. If you only get that far, the book is worth it!

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite simply one of the most beautiful pieces of literature ever written. This will be a book to cherish and one I will buy for my own library.

The wonderful prose is so different from other Paulson works, but is incredibly eloquent. I’ve never read a piece that so captures the farm/rural life and makes you feel as if you’re sitting next to the old man telling the story.

One that I will reread every year for sure...

[Marian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty typical Richard Paul Evans. There are a lot of well described, embellished old fashioned farming situations. They were fairly interesting, but I need a good story to keep my interest. I literally kept falling asleep. My book group seemed to like it more than I did. Also, not available on Kindle, probably because there are several nice paintings reproduced within the pages.

[Leslie Leffers · Rating 5 out of 5]

This beautifully written book reminded me fondly of childhood experiences on my grandparents' farm: gardening, canning, and butchering. It reminded me of the values of my lineage and taught me new things about why my family does things the way they do.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read. I generally like this sort of thing, a book that illustrates the pattern of the seasons and how life was dictated by them.
Now I need to read something that Paulsen is known for and see if I like his fiction books for youth.

[Arusticat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have fond memories of reading this book. The first chapter talks of an experience that moved me (and stayed with me since) After that, it was pages of nostalgia that feels right to someone who grew up rural.

[Tami Gandt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lyrical telling of the seasons of farming in the early 20th century through birth, weather related catastrophic events, disasterous accidents through mechanical and human error and just sheer human will to get through each season.

[Alex Ibes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very poetic and lyrical book about poor farm life in the early 1900s with beautiful paintings by Paulsens wife. No real continuous narrative but rather a long, yet beautiful description. Would recommend if you are involved or interested in any form of agriculture or history.

[Markus Beachy · Rating 5 out of 5]

canNOT get enough of this author. Note this writing style herein is different and not for everyone. I found it to be lyrical. Beautifully descriptive. Heart warming. Imaginative (don’t start with this as your first book by this author)

[Travis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written and makes me miss days on a farm that I never experienced

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nostalgic, loving look back for the author to the process of a family farming in days past.

[Julie Carroll · Rating 5 out of 5]

Always five stars with Gary Paulsen..

[Sarah Hazlett]

Love Garys' rareified combination of sensitive soul and old-school approach. Illustrations by his wife are sublime. A gem of a find

[Andrew Penning · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like a glimpse into the world of my Great Grandparents. Beautiful nature writing and romantically nostalgic.