Horse Drawn Yogurt: Stories from Total Loss Farm

by Peter Gould

Horse Drawn Yogurt is a book of stories about Peter Gould's decade on Total Loss Farm in Vermont. Peter moved to Vermont in the back to the land movement and turned all the living, eating, smoking, dancing, and loving, and gardening into his first novel Burnt Toast (Alfred A. Knopf, 1972) brought all that together. His second novel Write Naked (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009)  won the National Green Earth Book Award for Young-Adult eco-fiction. Now, in Horse Drawn Yogurt , Gould has created a patchwork of true stories of farm life. In these stories you'll learn how locals and newcomers helped each other out in a pivotal moment of history, and how young people new to the land learned how to tend gardens and farms, while belonging to a national movement—against the Vietnam war and for peace and justice around the world.
     "This book is not a memoir," Gould says. "It's a comforter. I didn't throw all those old clothes away. I cut and pieced them and sewed them together. Now they keep me warm."

Genres: Memoir

212 pages, Paperback

Published May 12, 2017

About the author

PETER GOULD is a youth theater director, a physical comedy performer, and a playwright whose works have been performed all over the world. He lives in Brattleboro, Vermont.

Reviews

[Sara]

I love this book. Funny, sad, thought-provoking, and so well-crafted. Eloquent and moving. I highly recommend it.

[Newton Rose]

The book opens with a disclaimer that some of the names and places have been changed and “one or two scenes imperceptibly altered from fact.” Peter Gould asks the readers if this constitutes a work of fiction. “Horse Drawn Yogurt” is neither a work of pure history nor complete fiction. In many ways, it’s a memoir of Gould’s young adult life living communally on a farm in southern Vermont, but Gould’s often whimsical voice reveals more accurately a memoir of a certain place and time. This book, which can be read from end to end or as a series of short stories, captures Gould’s relationship with the Vermont farmscape and landscape, his artistic and activist circle, the Vermonters already settled in the community, and the “zeitgeist” of the 1960s and 70s. “Horse Drawn Yogurt” is a veneration to the memories of a back-to-the-land movement and a compelling case to remember them today.

[William Savage]

Wow. A journey back to what now seems like another planet. The author, Peter Gould, was one of the early members of Total Loss Farm, one of the more successful communes in rural Vermont. This is some of his musings from a time gone by. a more naïve, more innocent time. Wish we could go back.

[Lux Cunningham]

Funny, real, big-hearted, inspiring - this book has it all. Peter Gould is a treasure.
Sink into this marvelous book with a cup of herbal tea...or something stronger - a great read for ALL!

[Peter White]

induces Vermont nostalgia