Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting

I am madly and irrevocably in love with Michael Perry's writing.
I haven't laughed so much or underlined so many fabulous sections in a long time.
This book is a treasure, one to savor, to quote, to read and reread for it's beauty, humor and forthrightness.

Coop was the only non-Canadian book I read this month, but it arrived at the library for me so it went on the reading pile. I had ordered it because I’m always on the lookout for books about country living by people who have an empathy for city sensibilities, and I have a couple of other books by Michael Perry that have intrigued me in the past on my own bookshelves (unread yet).

One of my favourite excerpts (describing the house he grew up in New Auburn Wisconsin):

“Moving from the kitchen to the living room, you step up a four-inch riser; keep moving on the same plane around a central wall, and you will circle right back to the riser, having never stepped down.”

This tickles me because we have the same sort of situation in the show more oldest part of our (“renovated”) farmhouse – around that “central wall”.

Perry infuses much humour while imparting great country living (and parenting) experiences in an easy-to-read narrative. Recommended.

4 stars show less

This is the third of Michael Perry’s memoirs that I’ve read. In this volume he relates the early years of his marriage and efforts to establish his small family on a farmstead in Northern Wisconsin – growing much of their own food by raising chickens and pigs, and planting a good-size vegetable garden.

Perry is a humorist and a philosopher. His memoirs aren’t particularly linear, though they are revealed in a fair approximation of chronological order. He goes off on tangents, ruminating about the joys and difficulties of the rural life he’s chosen. He can be hilariously funny, especially when poking fun at himself and his efforts to provide for his family as a farmer. He doesn’t sugarcoat the life of a farmer, but he show more elevates it, as when he relates his daughter’s sheer joy at holding that first, still-warm, brown egg from their own chickens, or recalling a father and son stopping to enjoy the stars on their way back to the house from the barn.

His descriptions on the growth and development of his children are priceless. Who can possibly out-think a six-year-old determined to get a horse? Or reason with a teething infant? Or answer those BIG questions that would stump any genius?

Just as with his other works, I find myself laughing out loud, and also crying in empathy. I hope he keeps writing for a long time. (His daughters may think otherwise, but I am really looking forward to hearing about his years as the father of teenage girls…) show less

This review is going to be more about my failure as a reader than it is about Perry's success as a writer. He's warm and honest and loving and straight-laced and, well, annoying in his rectitude. He comes from a family that took in numberless foster children, many of whom died agonizing deaths. He hearkens back to his childhood with love and reverence, and he strives to raise his own children properly. He apologizes in advance for profanity (which at its worst, comprises "ass" for buttocks). He loves his wife with a tenderness not often found in modern literature. And still, he gives me a pain.

That being said, this is a rare and beautiful memoir- both honest and rigorous and frequently hilarious. I don't know why I'm all knee-jerky show more about his pious tone, but I am. Still, I have got to recommend this book, and recommend it wholeheartedly. show less

https://msarki.tumblr.com/post/163209251043/coop-a-year-of-poultry-pigs-and-pare...

Reluctantly, even shamefully, I will admit that often the book felt tiresome. Perry’s old self-deprecating humor however was skillfully interlaced between fits and starts of the author creating a working farm in midst of his learning to become a husband, father, and respected writer of the first rank. But you won’t find Perry bragging about any of his accomplishments, only the sometimes hilarious reporting of his daily grind at being the best he can muster on every front. Given that his previous memoir titled [b:Truck: A Love Story|73967|Truck A Love Story|Michael Perry|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386921704s/73967.jpg|71564] continued his show more elaboration on a life [a:Michael Perry|2772479|Michael Perry|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1231631186p2/2772479.jpg] has been documenting now for several years, the complete rebuilding of his favored International in that previous book interested me little as things mechanical are not my cup of tea. But his progressive story throughout that book remained for me quite interesting. And in [b:Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting|5633583|Coop A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting|Michael Perry|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347340530s/5633583.jpg|5805003] he manages again to record a life that novels are made of. He could not have made this story up. The tragedies that occur are monumental in his retelling of them. The gratitude he expresses for what he has is relentless. And that is what also feels a bit tiresome at times. How can a person be this good?

But when Perry writes for example of the surprise death of his brother Jed’s young son it all comes crashing in on me. The wrongfulness of my criticism becomes ridiculous. There has never been a novel or memoir that affected me as the specific Chapter Eight did. Immediately I was made an emotional wreck, even in the realization that my heart was still in good hands with Michael Perry guiding me. My attempts to convey to my wife just what I had read brought me almost to my knees with grief as I babbled on as a broken invalid in my caving-in and near destruction. And as much as I actually cried over his wonderful poetic prose the words were never sentimental in the disgusting degree we as readers are generally subjected to in regards to pain and loss. The words resound in their beauty and grace. I cannot get his prose from off my plate. And to swallow it whole would be courageous, but for me at least, that will have to wait. I am a chicken at best, running out of time, and still not the man I want to be.

Michael Perry’s personal story continues to unfold as the sometimes haphazard events occur among his friends and family. All the while, in the midst of it all, Perry writes and works toward a literary mastery rarely observed in what generally gets published today. Cheers again for Michael Perry. show less

I agree with the reviewers who have said this is not a 'man, the country life is perfect and pristine' memoir. Mistakes are made, regrets are accumulated, and hard questions are posed without always being answered - and that is real life, which I truly appreciate in a memoir. While I did not grow up on a farm, for most of my school-aged years I lived in a farming community, and my parents had a substantial vegetable garden. The sections about the dairy farming took me back to when we got our milk (and government cheese) from the Moll's dairy farm [whose barn my parents painted during a 2-3 week stretch one summer] - the smells, the sounds, it all resonated and took me back to my late single-digit years. I enjoyed the back and forth of show more humor with poignancy, and I really liked Perry's care in his descriptions. I will be putting his other books into my queue. show less

Michael Perry has his hands full. With a new farm to manage, a baby on the way and various writing projects on his plate, Michael shares with the reader his trepidation and joy over the changing circumstances of his life. Drawing backwards towards the stories of his childhood, Michael reflects on his younger years on the farm. Raised by a pair of honest and generous parents, Michael often found himself sharing the house with dozens of special needs foster children and shares his memories of growing up in an obscure Christian fundamentalist sect. We learn about his early life on the farm, where his family spent quality time together baling hay, herding sheep and milking his father's beloved cows every evening. These days, Michael is show more trying to become self-sufficient and live from the land, which often makes for hilarious reading. From his amateur attempts at building a chicken coop to having his hind quarters bitten by a hound dog while wrestling a pig, Michael douses his stories with liberal doses of humor while also managing to be reverent and humble about the life he now leads. Coop is Micheal's memoir of his family's first year on the new farm, with all of the blunders, missteps and triumphs recorded for all the world to see.

It's so refreshing to read a memoir that is not filled with whining feelings of self-importance. By far, most of the memoirs I have read in the last three years have left me feeling dissatisfied and disheartened because they all just seem like a platform from which to complain and self-aggrandize. Coop was just the opposite. In Perry's gentle and friendly tone, he shares his year of farming and animal husbandry with the reader. One of the things that really impressed me was the way Perry speaks about his life. He is so clearly in love with the existence that he has created for himself; and that love extends to his wife, step-daughter and unborn child, as well as the animals he owns. There is no doubt that he relishes his time on the farm, and often, he describes his travails with a sense of wide-eyed wonder at the world and all that he has dominion over.

I must say that the majority of this book was highly amusing. Often, I would catch myself running from room to room after my husband, reading passages aloud in order to share the humor. Whether he is talking about his disabled chicken or spouting fortifying lectures to his six-year old daughter, Perry is always entertaining. I liked the sections where he chronicled his attempts to buy a couple of feeder pigs and the ensuing story of their care. I had no idea that pigs could be so beastly and grisly. It was a surprise to Perry too, I think. He speaks with aplomb about his intentions on raising sheep and tells of heavenly days spent mowing the fields on a tractor. The best thing about Perry's humor was its gentleness and absurdity. He is sometimes self-mocking but never makes the reader fell sorry for him; instead, he laughs along with us.

At times, the book takes on a more somber tone, such as when a friend from England passes away or when his young nephew drowns at the pond near his home. In these sections, Perry grapples quietly with his grief, spinning remembrances from the past into his present heartache. I read with tenderness during these sections and felt that Perry really wrote from his heart and soul. He put the words to the page in an effort to cleanse his heart of grief, and make his way stolidly forward any way that he could. It was clear to me that although these were painful times, Perry was grateful for his memories and the times that he was able to spend with these loved ones before they were gone. He also speaks openly about his parents' decision to take in foster children with severe disabilities and tells how the whole family came to be involved with their care, from feedings to making sure sutures were healing properly. Due to the fact that his childhood was not of the ordinary variety, Perry mentions that he is often comfortable in unusual situations and circumstances and that this has enabled him to see the world without judging it in the way others do.

Perry also speaks about how hard it is to care for a farm while having to make public appearances for his book tours. Though he knows that he needs to spend more time with his family on the farm, he has to leave in order to support them. Often, he shies away from his writing responsibilities to build more sweat equity and puts off the writing in favor of more back-breaking chores. He knows that he shouldn't do this, but at times he can't help himself and often feels that when he finishes a chore on the farm, the fact that he can tangibly see his effort makes him proud in a way that writing can't. He mentions the fact that his wife takes on the brunt of the responsibility when he is away and that he doesn't feel that it is an equal distribution of labor, but that is the way it has to be. I find it amazing that he can be so honest about this, and it makes me admire this man that is caught between two worlds.

There is a lot of life packed into this book. Perry encompasses the joy and sadness that life brings him out on the farm and in the city, far from home. He is grateful and serious and at times overwhelmed and silly, but all of this comes across with a feeling of wonderful forthrightness in everything he does. Whether he is lost in the fog of nostalgia or dealing with the everyday chores around the farm, Perry does it with an amiable disposition and a supreme amount of pluck. There are times he doesn't have the slightest idea of what he is doing (which he readily admits to his reader) and there are times when he is stepping back into a role he has played since childhood, sharing and expounding on things I have never heard mentioned before. It is the gentleness of his sharing that wins me over every time. Michael Perry is a man unlike others.

If you are the type of reader who loves memoirs but is tired of the woe-is-me quality of most of what's out there now, I would definitely recommend this book as a remedy. Those who would like to get a good look at farm and family life would also be enriched by this book. I would even recommend this book for readers who want a good belly laugh, because Perry can sure deliver on that front. It was a very charming read and I will now be heading towards his back catalog to find out more about this very funny man and his very interesting life. A great read, highly recommended! show less