Brian Brett – författare

For thirty years, Brian Brett shared his office and his life with Tuco, a remarkable parrot given to asking such questions as “Whaddya know?” and announcing “Party time!” when guests showed up at Brett’s farm. Although Brett bought Tuco on a whim as a pet, he gradually realizes the enormous obligation he has to the bird and learns that the parrot is a lot more complex than he thought.Simultaneously a biography of this singular bird and a history of bird/dinosaurs and the human relationship with birds, Tuco also explores how we “other” the world—abusing birds, landscapes, and each other—including Brett’s own experience with a rare genetic condition that turned his early years into an obstacle course of bullying and nurtured his affinity for winged creatures. The book also provides an in-depth examination of our ideas about knowledge, language, and intelligence (including commentary from Tuco himself) and how as we learn more about animal languages and intelligence we continually shift our definitions of them in order to retain our “superiority.” As Brett says, “Whaddya know? Not much. I don’t even know what knowledge is. I know only the magic . . . and the mysteries.” By turns provocative, profound, hilarious, and deeply moving, this fascinating memoir will remain with the reader long after the last page has been turned.

A Times Literary Supplement and Globe and Mail Book of the YearWinner of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Canadian Non-Fiction Prize“A wonderful meditation on farm life and by extension life itself … told intelligently and often humorously, by a writer with a welcome fresh sharp eye.”—Peter Matthiessen, author of Shadow Country and The Snow LeopardIn this new special edition of a beloved rural memoir, a farmer’s intimate bond with his land and animals reveals hard-won truths about trauma, endurance, and belonging.From the straining of muscles at dawn chores to the last check of the animals under a darkening sky, Brian Brett brings readers along as he moves through a day on his farm, tending to animals, soil, and machinery while reckoning with the quiet weight of trauma that saturates the land.Both an unflinching memoir and an irreverent natural history of the small mixed farm, Trauma Farm wanders backward and forward in time, from childhood chores to present scars, from ancient Babylonian planting cycles to the pressures of globalization. Brett lingers on the feel of earth in his hands, the steam of breath from cattle in winter, the small decisions that mean life or death for vulnerable creatures. Along the way, Brett reflects on the costs of such a life—the scars etched into bodies, the grief carried for animals and people lost, and the fierce bonds that hold a rural community together.Meditating on the nature of care, the ethics of killing, the strange tenderness of routine, and the cycles of planting, harvest, and decay, the book balances raw realism with lyrical wonder. It offers a fierce critique of romanticized visions of the countryside while celebrating the miracles of birth, weather, and endurance that confront the farm every day.Passionate, practical, and frequently hilarious, this is an unforgettable portrait of one farm and the people and animals who live there. Trauma Farm is a powerful reminder of our entanglement with the natural world, and of the quiet heroism required simply to go on.

Brian Brett's farm on Salt Spring Island is affectionately known as Trauma Farm. There, he raises chickens, pigs, cows, sheep, and goats, tends an extensive orchard and vegetable garden, concocts fabulous meals from the bounties of the farm, and has various misadventures. This funny and thought-provoking memoir traces one day on Trauma Farm. In it, Brett explores the natural history of the small mixed farm, meditates on the perfection of the egg, offers critiques of factory farms and the slaughtering industry, muses on the uses and misuses of gates, and ponders the constant presence of death as he goes about the activities of farming -- birthing lambs, contending with rats, helping an aged horse to his death. Underlain with deep knowledge of biology and botany, this erudite, witty, and passionate book is an unforgettable portrait of the issues all farms face in this age of industrialization and homogenization.

Beginning naked in the darkness Brian Brett takes us on a journey through a summer's day that also tells the story of his affectionately named Trauma Farm--exploring the garden, orchards, fields, the mysteries of live-stock and poultry, and the social intricacies of rural communities. Both a memoir and a natural history of the small mixed farm, this eighteen-year-long day travels forward and backward in time, taking us all the way from Babylon to globalization and demonstrating the importance of both tall tales and rigorous science as Brett contemplates the perfection of the egg and the nature of soil or offers a scathing critique of agribusiness and the modern slaughterhouse. Whether discussing the uses and misuses of gates, examining the energy of seeds, or bantering with his family and neighbors, Brett remains aware of the miracles of life, birth, and death and the ecological paradoxes that confront the rural world every day. Threaded with a deep knowledge of biology and botany, Trauma Farm is an erudite, poetic, passionate, and frequently hilarious portrait of rural life and a rich and thought-provoking meditation on the modern world.