Full Record

Main Title: My father and other animals : how I took on the family farm / Sam Vincent. Book Cover
Author: Vincent, Sam
Imprint: Collingwood, VIC : Black Inc., 2022.
Collation: 294 pages : map, paperback ; 24 cm.
Subject: Vincent, Sam
Vincent, David
Vincent Family
Vincent, Jane
Farmers and farming
Agriculture and farmers
Fruit industry
Writers and writing
Fruit growers
Prime Minister's Literary Award Nominations
Autobiography
Fathers and sons.
ISBN: 9781760640439 (paperback)
Notes:
A version of Chapter 13 "Settler" originally appeared in the Monthly, April 2017 and describes how Sam Vincent's farming family and Indigenous elders joined forces to recognise a special site on private land. (https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2017/april/1490965200/sam-vincent/aboriginal-place)

A moving and hilarious fish-out-of-water memoir of a millennial leaving his inner-city life to take over the family farm. Sam Vincent is a twenty-something writer in the inner suburbs, scrabbling to make ends meet, when he gets a call from his mother: his father has stuck his hand in a woodchipper, but 'not to worry -- it wasn't like that scene in Fargo or anything'. When Sam returns to the family farm to help out, his life takes a new and unexpected direction. Whether castrating a calf or buying a bull -- or knocking in a hundred fence posts by hand when his dad hides the post-driver -- Sam's farming apprenticeship is an education in grit and shit. But there are victories, too: nurturing a fig orchard to bloom; learning to read the land; joining forces with Indigenous elders to protect a special site. Slowly, Sam finds himself thinking differently about the farm, about his father and about his relationship with both. By turns affecting, hilarious and utterly surprising, this memoir melds humour and fierce honesty in an unsentimental love letter. It's about belonging, humility and regeneration -- of land, family and culture. What passes from father to son on this unruly patch of earth is more than a livelihood; it is a legacy.

Prime Minister's Literary Awards Shortlist 2023
Winner Prime Minister's Literary Awards Non fiction 2023
Result Collection Location Shelf No Status Notes
Non-Fiction Main Library 630 VIN Available