The Importance of Good Days

4min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Being a sheep farmer at Italians is a little bit like being a nurse or a doctor. You go to work, you pitch up, and you get punched in the face with reality. A lamb is dead on the ground. It's mother's given birth to a dead lamb. There's a lot of responsibility that's very elemental to about life or death. The farm isn't really a business in our minds. It's an extension of who we are, an extension of our identity.

James Rebanks's family has raised sheep in the same small English village for at least four centuries. There are records of people with his same last name going back a few hundred more. Even his sheep are rooted in place: their DNA is from Viking times. It's enough to make anyone feel insignificant--and according to Rebanks, that's a wonderful thing. Listen as the author of The Shepherd's Life speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about the deep pleasures and humbling privilege of being a sheep farmer.