Pig Years

April 1, 2022
A writer and transient farmer chronicles multiple seasons of work and life. In her debut memoir, spanning four years of her life, Gaydos proceeds chronologically according to the season. Early on, she introduces Graham, an old friend and painter with whom she began a romantic relationship; that bond forms a constant amid the temporary settings of her jobs. Gaydos clearly loves Graham, as she also loves writing and her family, but they are secondary to the work she has chosen. Despite her other loves, "there is the problem that I am promised to the farm." Each of the farms where she has worked may have different specialties in different locations, but they are alike in their rural settings, menial pay, and painstaking labor. Gaydos describes the realities of farm life with honest precision, neither indulging in unnecessary dramatizing nor shying away from the numerous harsh realities. "The rooster named Commander succumbs to the breeding of flies," she writes. "He is under the care of the three-year-old....Commander isn't getting better. One day the farmer takes him out of his cage and cuts off his head with a shovel, [a] compassionate act." The most affecting passages focus on the people the author met in the communities where she has lived. Gaydos describes an evening spent at the Lebanon Valley Speedway's annual Eve of Destruction demolition derby event, a spectacle that was marred by the death of a driver a few years prior, killed when his RV collapsed upon impact with a Jeep. Despite the tragedy, "a lot of people wanted to keep the show going....Someone in town told me...that people die what seems like every other year on this track." The incident illustrates in dramatic fashion what Gaydos paints in broad strokes throughout her book, a complex and fraught portrait of a lifestyle that is simultaneously protective, precarious, and resistant to change. Lyrical and cleareyed insight into farming from a writer devoted to both crafts.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

April 25, 2022
Gaydos brings her experience farming, in particular breeding animals for slaughter, to a debut that’s in turns lyrical and brutal. Gaydos grew up wanting to work on a farm and quickly found after landing her first job in the field at age 18 that the life suited her. “Most years I don’t make it over the poverty line.... I could find a better-paying job if I wanted... this is the compensation for the crude work of training life into channels of fecundity.” She writes of raising animals and later slaughtering them, creating a thick sense of tension as her loving descriptions of raising “handsome” pigs give way to the revelation that, “At noon the next day we shoot them.” Indeed, Gaydos brings a realist view to her work: when killing chickens, for instance, she notes that it’s bad for beheaded birds to keep moving because doing so “could bruise the breast meat.” She’s similarly straightforward in relating emotionally fraught events, such as a miscarriage (“Working the New Lebanon farmer’s market that Sunday, I fully miscarry”). It all adds up to a powerful meditation on the cycle of life, “the flowering of the earth, its bloom and attendant rot.” This one will stick with readers long after the last page is turned.

Starred review from May 1, 2022

An ode to pig farming that waxes poetic in its simple majesty; readers will revel in the beautiful imagery and lyricism of this tribute to farm life in Vermont and upstate New York. Husbandry is portrayed with the rhythmic storytelling of Gaydos's masterful, rapturously refreshing, and immersive writing: a delicate balance between the graceful beauty and cruel reality of farm life, loss and abundance, longing and belonging. Gaydos's narration is so beautiful and omniscient, it feels less like a farmer's almanac than a guided meditation through the Northeast's harsh winters and hot summers. Her clean linen language and sophisticated writing style is sure to move readers as it turns a pigsty into an oasis and a sunburn into a warm weather kiss. Readers will fall in love with Gaydos's humble commitment to feeding her soul through farming. More than a memoir; it's a sensory experience of the complexities of loving and living the not-so simple simple life while hovering just above the poverty line. VERDICT This diamond in the rough is sure to be a bestseller. It would support and complement any library collection for its history, husbandry, and honesty.--Alana R. Quarles

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.