Near the beginning of her memoir, PIG YEARS, Ellyn Gaydos admits that she’s sort of inexplicably drawn to two things: working on farms and writing. “This story started as notes I was taking on pigs, but if I was going to write about pigs I’d have to write about the moon too and the wild creatures at the perimeters of the pig pens and eventually my eye would follow the bees into flowers; all of it connected.” She points out that she did not grow up in a farming family but has found herself drawn to the life; likewise, she’s always been subtly embarrassed to admit her desire to write. Here, fortuitously, she manages to combine the two and make all of us the richer for it.

"Gaydos’ account is thoughtful and compelling, a much-needed introduction for many readers to a story of seasonal growth and decline that is invisible to most of us but essential to everyone."

PIG YEARS chronicles five years of Gaydos’ work as a farmhand on small farms in Vermont and New York, mostly raising vegetables for eventual sale at farmers’ markets, local vendors and to CSA members. Her status as a farmhand (rather than as a farmer and landowner) gives her a sort of freedom. Sure, she works hard, she’s not paid particularly well (on a trip into town, she notes that fast food and retail employees earn higher hourly wages than she does), and her accommodations are humble at best and pretty filthy at worst. However, she is able to move to a different farm for the next season if her desire leads her there. Since her personal livelihood is not tied to the success or failure of any one farm, she is free to ignore, more or less, the business side of agriculture and instead focus on the urgent day-to-day matters.

These moments of close observation and reflection are what make up the bulk of this memorable book. Some of the descriptions are surprising, even transcendent (“I lift a sleeping bird and hold it in my hand; its warm heart beats fiercely through downy feathers like the controlled measure of a medicine dropper”). Others are, in a matter-of-fact way, grisly --- such as a detailed account of hog slaughtering and butchering for which readers need to be prepared.

Gaydos is always attuned to the cyclical nature of her work and the larger cycles of life and death as they play out annually on the farm. The pigs and other creatures have her affection, to be sure, but human concerns also recur throughout these pages --- in terms of her portrayal of townspeople, fellow farm workers and others, as well as regular appearances by her boyfriend, Graham, an NYC-based artist who is clearly fond of her, even if he’s at best indifferent to farming. Gaydos longs to have a child with him, which also plays into the cyclical nature of her writing.

For a book rooted in such earthy, visceral matters (in addition to the scenes of slaughter and butchery, there’s an indelible description of pig sex), PIG YEARS does have a periodic tendency to be overwritten, relying a bit too heavily on figurative language and seeming too self-conscious at times. That said, Gaydos’ account is thoughtful and compelling, a much-needed introduction for many readers to a story of seasonal growth and decline that is invisible to most of us but essential to everyone.