Summary

When a mid-life couple finds an old farm that promises refuge from hectic lives and encroaching illness, their world opens up to unexpected adventures: breeding heritage goats, hogs, and cattle; managing a half-dozen large guardian dogs; dealing with barn fires, rapacious logging, and the death of treasured animals. The farm and the surrounding forest also lead to surprising moments of beauty—from sublime sunsets and powerful connections with animals to an outpouring of help from neighbors.

Written separately by wife and husband with distinctly separate voices, the book’s essays illustrate different perspectives of life on a farm dedicated to the compassionate treatment of livestock and a deep appreciation of nature’s complexities. Priscilla embraces the intensity of loving animals; Henry explores the mysteries of living in a beautiful place. And, in telling their tales, the authors provide a glimpse into their own marriage—as complicated, improbable, and enduring as life itself. The Keep—the term for “the strongest or central tower of a castle, acting as a final refuge”—is a love letter to an unexpected place and adopted lifestyle.

Contents

Preface

Introduction

A Place to Love

Letter to Mom

Mud Between My Toes

Decisions

Tiny Tim

All that the Land Contains

Sid’s Twins

Mindful Meddling

The Dilemma of Loving Hogs

Surprises

Of These Mountains

Early Years

Hercules

Morels on the Mountain

Arnost and the Eagle

“Say What? No Way!”

Hog Gossip

The Duckness

Sex in the Pasture

Hat of Shame

From Power Take Off to Artificial Intelligence

Hard Times

Pedro

Death on the Farm

January 11, The Fire

January 12, The Fire

The Forgiving Land

The Old Oak

Gifts

Winter’s Wood

Unexpected Outcomes

Lucy

Izzy’s Bridge

Home Before Breakfast

Quiet Times

The Pond

On a Summer Breeze

A Fisher’s Solitude

Lovely October

Epilogues

The Near Final

Letter for Alice

Acknowledgements

Author

Henry T. Ireys has a forty-year career as a health policy researcher working for Vanderbilt University, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. He later became a senior researcher for Mathematica Policy Research in Washington, DC. He published numerous papers in health policy journals and, since his retirement, has been writing for The Hampshire Review about farming and the natural world. He holds a PhD from Case Western Reserve University. Priscilla M. Ireys attended the Pittsburg Institute of Art and FIT in New York. She designed and made stage clothes for country music stars such as Loretta Lynn. Under her own label, she sold expensive handmade scarves to Norstrom’s, Henri Bendel, and many high-end boutiques. She left the fashion industry after thirty years to focus on farming and the conservation of heritage breeds. She has written numerous stories for Small Farmer’s Journal. Together, Henry and Priscilla have lived on a farm in Hampshire County since 2001, tending a core herd of fifty Spanish and Savanna goats. The Keep is their first book together.

Reviews

“The Keep is honest and compelling storytelling told through the contrasting and complementarity of Priscilla’s and Henry’s individual voices. Priscilla has an intimate view of animal husbandry, while Henry is more prone to philosophizing; yet both are deeply engaged with the land, and both are thoughtful and lively storytellers. Neither shies away from complexities and challenges. In her accounts of raising goats and hogs, Priscilla captures both the necessary brutality and profound tenderness required for successful animal husbandry.” 
—Arwen Donahue is the author of the graphic memoir Landings: A Crooked Creek Farm Year (Hub City, 2022) and the oral history collection This is Home Now: Kentucky’s Holocaust Survivors Speak (University Press of Kentucky, 2022). She lives on a farm in Kentucky.

“A delightful chronicle of a moment in time on a parcel in Appalachia. I enjoyed reading about this couple, their purchase of this land, the way they cared for it, raised a family on it, the hard work of raising goats, other interactions with the natural world and with their neighbors.” 
—Gretchen Legler is the author of Woodsqueer: Crafting a Sustainable Rural Life (Trinity University Press, 2022); On the Ice: An Intimate Portrait of Life at McMurdo Station, Antarctica (Milkweed Editions, 2005); and All the Powerful Invisible Things: A Sportswoman’s Notebook (Milkweed Editions, 1995). She is professor of creative writing at the University of Maine Farmington. Legler holds a PhD in English and feminist studies and a master’s of divinity from Harvard Divinity School.