Tricia Knoll is a widely published Oregon poet. Each year she farmsits at Broadfork Farm, a small organic farm in Trout Lake, Washington. These poems herald her love of gardening, her compassion for the fur-covered and feather-clad beings that call the farm home.

In a bucolic setting next to the rushing Salmon River and below the glaciers of Mt. Adams, her record of life on the farm affirms both the humor and zest of living as well as the realization that the lives of farm animals are also witness to impermanence. At a time of environmental change, Knoll's poetry weighs the role of...