Between Ewe and She

The contours of memory change with age. The salience of details shifts. More than twenty years ago, in Lambsquarters: Scenes from a Handmade Life, Barbara McLean wrote about her start as a sheep farmer in Grey County, Ontario. “I was rooting around, busy at some task one morning late that first summer, when I sensed a sleek navy Volvo glide in the lane,” she recalled back then. Behind the wheel was a stranger named R. F. Harrow —“a gentle man, cultured”— who wore ironed khakis, a denim shirt, and Wallabees. “He shook my hand firmly, his own uncalloused.” After giving her sagging barn and chicken coop a look, he agreed to sell McLean and her partner, Thomas, five “pre-named” ewes: Old Spot, Hampy, Blackie, Susie, and Maggie. They would be followed by many others over the next five decades.

McLean recounts her herd’s origins somewhat differently in Shepherd’s Sight, her beguiling follow‑up to Lambsquarters. In this more recent telling, she...