The Cow Book: A Story of Life on a Family Farm

by John Connell

Farming has been in John Connell's family for generations, but he never intended to follow in his father's footsteps. Until, one winter, he finds himself back on the farm and begins to learn the ways of the farmer and the way of the cows.

Connell records the hypnotic rhythm of the farming day - cleaning the outhouses, milking the herd, tending to sickly lambs, helping the cows give birth. But alongside the routine events, there are the unforeseen moments when things go wrong: when a calf fails to thrive, when a sheep goes missing, when illness breaks out, when depression takes hold, when an argument erupts and things are said that cannot be unsaid.

The Cow Book is the story of a calving season. It is also the story of the cow itself, from its domestication and worship as a God by the Ancient Egyptians to the modern practice of mechanized herds, via the figure of the cowboy, the destruction of the American buffalo, the demise of the aboriginal jackaroos and the consequences of BSE. And, above all, it is the story of Connell's life as a farmer, of his relationship with his birthplace of County Longford, with the community around the family farm, with the animals he tends, and with his father.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Ireland, Biography, Irish Literature, Animals, Nature

242 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 1, 2018

About the author

John Connell's work has been published in Granta's New Irish Writing issue. His memoir, The Farmer's Son, was a #1 bestseller in Ireland. He lives on his family farm, Birchview, in County Longford, Ireland

Reviews

[Diane Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure why I requested this book from the library. I've never given much thought to cows and sheep, to cattle farming. Maybe it was the Irish setting, or the title; whatever, it came in and I sat down to read. My thinking is that library books are all maybes. With no cash investment, a boring book can be returned, no harm, no foul.

But from the very first sentence, "I'm twenty-nine and I've never delivered a calf myself", I was captured by the Zen-like writing and honesty of Connell's memoir. In simple poetic language, he tells us about the day to day life at Birchview, his family farm. We get scraps of literature, music, the history of cows (The Irish title is "The Cow Book"), allusions to his battle with depression, his difficult relationship with his father, and some hard-won philosophy in the battle with nature. It's a quiet little gem that I enjoyed very much.

Thank you, Charleston County Library system. Score one for you.

[Olive Fellows (abookolive) · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Farmer's Son is a poignant and thoughtful memoir about the author's time returning to his family's Irish farm after a challenging period in his life. It's not a flashy book and, as other reviewers have mentioned, the author leans toward the moody/morose side, but the depth of emotion that farmers have for their work and their stock has never felt clearer to me than when I was reading Connell's words.

Click here to hear more of my thoughts on this book over on my Booktube channel, abookolive!

[Trish at Between My Lines · Rating 4 out of 5]

Look if you told me I’d read a non fiction book about cows, and love it, I’d laugh in your face. But this book is not just a book about cows, or about life on a farm. It’s a book about life.

Life full stop. I identified with the family dynamics so much, and even felt a sigh of relief that it’s not just our family that is so shy about expressing emotions.

Poignantly told, it croons a love song to the pleasure of working with nature, but also pipes out a funeral dirge to the hardships of that same life.

Being honest, I skipped some of the cow history chapters, but I gobbled up the story of everyday activity on the farm. And the realistic highs and lows of being a member of a rural Irish family.

Sometime a book comes along, that’s unconventional, and feels refreshingly different. The Cow Book was that for me.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not into farming and so the history of cows went over my head. But I loved this book because it was such an honest telling of John's life on the farm and made me feel proud to be from rural Longford.

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had never heard of this author or book but got it from my library following recommendation by Easons.com
My father and all of his family were dairy farmers in West Limerick. I did not grow up on the farm but visited regularly and this so takes me back to my childhood. I felt quite emotional reading it in parts due to the memories it returned to me. Also as a practising midwife many of the birthing descriptions made so much sense to me.
This is such a lovely book describing the highs and lows of living on a farm. The animals are central to the story as they should be I loved to hear of their characters and Vinny the dog. The relationship between John and his parents and wider community is also lovely to watch. Disagreement avoidance and reengagement are part of that cycle.
The writing has a simplistic and serene style making me feel relaxed, enabling me to remain with it throughout the book.The writer describes it ‘warts and all’ which is so refreshing. Its lovely to witness the joy and the heartache as in real life.
Reading this has been a joy. Thank you John Connell for the gift of memories restored. This will stay with me and I so highly recommend it.

[Orlaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am familiar with the Longford countryside and even some of the people in it. The book is evocative and brave. He writes about his struggles with mental health, the rows with his father, his friendship with a priest and the control factories have over farming. He also writes about why he does not eat pigmeat which I doubt makes him popular with piggery owners.

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5/5 Rounded Up

This is the story of a 29 year old Longford man who returned home to help out on his family farm after living and working abroad.

It covers January to June, which is calving season. The author documents these couple of months and the ups and downs that come with them for farmers. He balances the monotony of daily farm life with personal stories about his relationship with his father, how important neighbours are in rural Ireland, the connections farmers make with animals, how climate change and the Department affect farming. There are also stories about the history of cows and how important they are in legends and lore.


The one thing that I found broke the flow of the stories (because they are all short stories and anecdotes, interconnected, rather than one cohesive novel) was the repeated use of an old Irish word here and there followed by the explanation of the word. I think the English translation interrupted the flow of the stories and may have been better suited to a glossary at the back. I would have liked to know how some of the tales ended - what ever happened to the one-eyed dog?

I'm glad a book like this exists, because I think it's important to have modern farming life documented, but I didn't really take anything from it myself, which is why I've rated it 2.5, bang in the middle.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I read the words "for the" used as a link one more time I would have cracked!

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable, insightful, moving memoir of a season on an Irish family farm. Connell is an aspiring young writer who left Ireland and worked in Australia and Canada before coming home to focus on writing but also to work the small family farm. It's a portrait of a man falling in love with and learning to take pride in his people's traditional way of life, yet also struggling to get along with his father. The two butt heads over the daily operations, and the fights, combined with some crises on the farm, strain Connell to the breaking point.

The writing is simple and clear, and when the author writes about the care of the animals (the cows and sheep) it really sings. The book gives a great sense of the grueling, if poetic, daily toil of farming, the way farmers (especially in this birthing season) have to constantly be on the lookout for the life around them, alert to the slightest signs of disease, watchful for pregnancy, and you follow him as he makes the right call sometimes, and the wrong call others. (People interested in veterinary care would also enjoy this.)

The author also mixes in some autobiography, rumination on culture and history, as well as short sections of facts about cows and agriculture. His family's farm stands in notable contrast to the industrial farming dominant in America and elsewhere, a fact he takes understandable pride in. And while Connell mixes in these brief sections of background, the balance is good: it's never too much, and it breaks up the daily farm narrative nicely.

This may not be a major book of the year, but it's an excellent book. I'm glad I read it. I bought the Irish edition of this book while on vacation there (I'd wanted to see Ireland for many decades, so the trip was a dream come true), and this book was a great way to deepen my experiences driving through the beautiful Irish countryside and to satisfy my curiosity about the farming life I saw from a distance (including the gorgeous livestock).

Fans of The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks and modern nature writing in general will certainly enjoy this.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sitting here in a world that seems to have gone mad (pandemic, self-isolation, economic collapse, racial unrest and riots, etc.), what a pleasure it was to be able to lose myself for a day while reading about the life and times of an Irish writer-farmer who was trying to regain his zen while immersed in animal husbandry at his family’s rural farm in County Longford, Ireland, over the span of half a year. The challenges he faced, the struggles, the exhaustion, the disappointments when things went badly - I could feel the pain he felt. But his almost spiritual and emotional connection to his cows and sheep was palpable, and I was transported there during the uplifting times as well, and celebrated with him. It’s really a great book, and I recommend it to all lovers of Irish literature in particular, and to others looking for a change of pace and a trip to the countryside, away from the fray of everyday life that envelops most of us now. But be advised: things got messy and rather graphic in his descriptions of calf and lamb birthing! This is a memoir, and he tells it like it really is, no holds barred.

[Steve Peifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are so many huge issues to write about that we forget that sometimes in writing about something small it gives one the freedom to contemplate deep musings on the things that matter most. If all you get from this book is a love and appreciation for farming and a suddenly intense desire to add a trip to Ireland to your bucket list, it would still be a most worthy read. But this is the rarest book that combines history, the exhausting and exhilarating life of a farmer, love, loneliness, the search for purpose and the challenging relationship between fathers and adult sons.

It is a gentle book full of intriguing thoughts. My favorite: Father Sean once told me that fiction is a truth that never happened and truth is a fiction that did.

It’s a harsh book about brutal winters and what happens when the people who love you the most can hurt you the most.

It’s truly the best book of the year.

[Bronwyn Mcloughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

It helped that we were travelling through Ireland as I read this - it was both an awakening for me, to the lives lived in the land around me, and an affirmation of the discoveries and experiences of our trip. A very lyrical and considered exploration of one man’s place within and without his family and community, and the strong bonds he has discovered lie very deep between them. Beautiful and sad and real all at once.

[charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

veryyyy hemingway in writing style which leaves much to be desired for me. like, show not tell babe. i still was engaged with the text though, mostly for the musings on an urban person living an agrarian life and the conflicts that come with that, the healing aspect of farming, and the relationships between human and cattle since i’m on a farm with two steer right now. but.... would have liked it more if it were about goats. birthing stuff was cool because i know a bit about that now. kind of just inspired me to write something better....

[Lorilin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not good, not bad. This is a quiet account of living on a calving farm in Ireland for a short period of time. (Though the author grew up on the farm, he's only just now in charge and only for a season.) It's interesting to hear about all that goes right--and all that goes wrong--when helping these animals give birth. But the book is repetitive and doesn't have much spirit. It focuses mostly on the day-to-day tasks and doesn't go any deeper. Frequent use of region-specific vernacular didn't help ebb my feelings of disconnection either. Overall, this was just meh.

Thanks to Amazon Vine for the ARC.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book because it gave me a new perspective on farming and agriculture. I liked hearing about Ireland and the ancient cultures. There’s also quite a bit of history about cows, which was also was fascinating. Who moo-I mean knew? There is a fair bit of language in this book, which I couldn’t skip over on audio so it always caught me by surprise. But overall I recommend this interesting book.

[Eleanor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I suppose this is an odd takeaway from a memoir about the incredibly difficult life of cattle farmers in Ireland, particularly given that the author of The Cow Book, John Connell, is perpetually at loggerheads with his father—but it felt like a much-needed emotional break. The concerns of farming are concrete and visible, unlike many of our current anxieties: will the calf die? Will the weather break? Will the cow conceive? There’s a slightly sadboi energy to Connell’s writing that occasionally irritates (he uses “for” instead of “because” a lot, which I’m only really willing to accommodate in writing from at least fifty years ago or in poetry), but it’s a thoughtful, melancholy read, which I appreciated.

[Betty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best seller in Ireland, titled The Cow Book. Easy to see why the US published it under a more appropriate title. On the other hand, it is written in mini-essay form with numerous asides into the history and mythology of the cow. I quite like the plain spoken style of the narrative, but it didn’t appeal to my Irish husband.

[Marie Belcredi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. It was honest and charming. The book traced the relationship between cows and humans in parallel with the return of John to his family's farm in Ireland.

The weather is atrocious! All that rain and mud and trying to keep sheep and cows, hand feeding them, keeping them clean and disease free and hardest of all, helping them with calving and lambing. Round the clock, and John keeps on but after some time the stress and work makes him and his father tetchy and arguments ensue. John does not try and guild the lily on this and is honest. John also philosophises about nature, climate change, his life in Canada and Australia, his perceived failures and how he came to live back with his parents.

There are some moments of triumph when they show a pure bred bull and we see some sunlight in the very difficult lives. John feels for the animals but a farm is a farm and there is little sentimentality. When an animal does not perform or gets old then it is of no further use and has to go.

The book is an easy read and the development of the relationship between cow and man from the large muscular aurochs to the poor animals in feedlots is an interesting but sad parallel thread.

[Lagobond · Rating 4 out of 5]

(In case anyone else is confused: This book was published in Ireland under the title "The Cow Book: A Story of Life on a Family Farm" and of course the US edition was saddled with a different title, as is customary.)

It is not often that a writer truly and completely bares his soul on the pages. Which is what John Connell has done here, and I get the impression that he hasn't embellished a single thing.

This is a moving, introspective book of loss and rebirth; of globetrotting and family farming; of feeling lost and feeling a sense of belonging; of humanity and animals; of history and art; of death and new life; of centuries-old bonds and traditions, of love and caring, and also of the horrors man has caused in the world. I didn't expect to find all these things, but that's the beauty of books: you start reading a book about an Irish farmer, and before you know it, you're getting an unforgettable art lesson.

Connell has managed to write a book that is deeply, deeply personal... and simultaneously universally relatable. I felt that I could hear his voice while reading his words, because his Irishness shines through in every soothing turn of phrase. Quite an enjoyable experience, especially this year. Thank you, Mr. Connell.

[Eileen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a well written book and is easy to read. I have lived near farms all my life but I am not from a farming background, so this book gave me a lot of interesting knowledge I didn't know about. I love cows, so was drawn to this book for that reason and also because John Connell is a local author. There are interesting historical snippets of the history of cows, dotted throughout the book.
What I enjoyed most was the family background story, the author's relationship with his parents and neighbours, and the connection of the soul to nature, the land and the ancestors. This connects us all to the simple things in life, and it is grounding.

[David Gagen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written memoir about life on an Irish farm. On one level we learn about the difficulties of calving and feeding the cattle, and the problems with the birthing of lambs involving so many hours of hard work. But on a deeper level, it is a story of connection to family, place and community. About belonging to somewhere and rebuilding one's life away from the city in the natural world, where birth and death occur like the seasons. Quite a profound book, simply told.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fantastic book. Beautifully written, quiet, profound.

I really appreciate the deep love shown for Irish rural life, land and culture in a clear and deceptively simple voice.

One of the best books I have read in recent years.

[Linden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Memoir of a young writer who returns to his family's farm in Ireland.

[Liam O'Brien · Rating 1 out of 5]

The tale of a man who contradicts himself constantly in trying to overcome his cognitive dissonance with the fact cows are sentient, and the opinion that we have to eat them.

Desperate to justify the disturbing practises of rural farming, that when measured against factory farming can be interpreted as a haven for a cow, but when measured against the natural world and what a cow once had before man came and claimed domain over their autonomy, is clearly wrong and any unbiased mind can see this is obvious.

The futile attempts to make (to name a few):
- Artificial insemination,
- The beheading of a lamb mid its own birth,
- The cornering and threatening of a one eyed stray dog,
- Dehorning calves with a hot iron (which he describes that he “enjoyed” doing with his Dad),
- Taking the old animals for the “mart” AKA slaughter (which he depicts as a kindness when really they are a financial burden to the farm and so are sold for a final bit of profit) …

as cultural and beautiful things that should be treasured, is pathetic and disturbing. Someone as seemingly well read and presumably intelligent as the author ‘John Connell’, should be able to see the hypocrisy in his own words.

Even in the second to last micro-chapter ‘future’, he makes a case for “grass fed” cows over lab-grown meat. Claiming we would live in a ‘cow-less’ world if this was the case.

To claim a lab-grown meat world is a cow less world when lab-grown meat could (potentially) be a form of liberation for the creature, shows that the very “soul” of this COW book, is nothing but a con, a facade, a load of bullshit that steals the cows autonomy further than we already do when shoving them into slaughter houses to be stunned, hoisted, and exsanguinated.

This disingenuous near closing statement shows how desperate he truly is to suppress his dissonance. As chapter after chapter he describes the cows sentience and individualism, yet cannot bring himself to face the reality of what he and his family do to them.

You don’t love cows, you just love the sound of your own voice.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sehr schönes Buch, teilweise etwas anstrengend zu lesen, weil die Themen sehr springen und es am Anfang nicht wirklich eine fortlaufende Geschichte gibt. Trotzdem fand ich die Beschreibungen und die Stimmung schön, wenn auch melancholisch. Würde es nicht unbedingt weiter empfehlen, aber man kann es auf jedenfall lesen, wenn man viel über Farmen in Irland und Kühe und Schafe lernen will, oder wenn man ein entspanntes beruhigendes Buch will. Ich fand die Einblicke in diese Arbeit wirklich sehr spannend.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would never have seen this were it not for the Rick O’Shea Book Club on Facebook! I don’t tend to read books set in Ireland, but I liked the idea of this one. It’s the story of John’s life as he returns home to take care of his family farm. It details the usual daily grind, but John also discusses his mental health and I found that to be the most poignant take away from The Cow Book. It is a quiet exploration of his life, but it speaks volumes. Recommended for sure.

[Kathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I won a digital copy in a Goodreads giveaway; this did not influence my review.

I was expecting this book to be a memoir with some insights into farm life; instead, it read like a diary of daily life on a farm with scattered insights into Connell and his family. I do think those with a deep interest in farms/farm animals will enjoy Connell's honest portrayal of farm life, but it was not for me and I did not complete it.

[Ginebra Lavao Lizcano · Rating 4 out of 5]

As soon as I finished the book, I proceeded to stare out the window to dream about being match made to an Irish farmer and retreat to the island forever. Farming is both an important and oftentimes ignored practice. It is by reading the words of a farmer’s son that I appreciate their day to day work and sacrifice in order to supply the world’s demand. Scientists and farmers warn us of the ethical and climatic consequences of our current lifestyle, and only the stubborn will be able to ignore the reality we live in. This book is not only about the job and its history, but about a journey of self discovery and coming back home.

[Allyson Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fairly interesting memoir about the life of a young farmer’s son on a family cattle and sheep farm in Ireland. The author tracked his own story alongside the history of the cow, which was very creative. I feel like I got a raw look inside an Irish family farm. Much of his spiritual beliefs are misguided, blending Irish folk-lore, Catholicism, and other world religions.

[Grace Leuenberger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boy, I loved this book! It was a lovely meditation on what it means to be shaped by a place and belong to it, even as we move away from it and, in some ways, grow apart from it. I learned a good bit about cows which was fun, and I think the pacing of the book was just right for a January read. I’ll be thinking about this one for a while!