Accidental Shepherd: An Interview with Liese Greensfelder

A summer job turns serious when a young woman takes the reins on a remote farm—and learns far more than how to herd sheep

Watch the interview with author Liese Greensfelder:

In May 1972, Liese Greensfelder arrived in the small Norwegian town of Øystese to startling news: Johannes, the farmer who hired her for the summer, had just been hospitalized after a stroke. Could she please watch over his place for a month or so, until he got back on his feet? Twenty years old and with no farming experience, Liese was dropped off the next day at a centuries-old mountain farm at the end of a dirt road high above the magnificent Hardanger Fjord—with 115 sheep, two cows, one calf, a draft horse, and a Norwegian herding dog to care for.

Armed with a command of Danish that enabled rudimentary communication, Liese began learning from neighbors who spoke an ancient Norwegian dialect—how to feed the animals, milk by hand, and supervise her first lambing. The farm was run in the old way: horses and wagons instead of tractors, haymaking in the rain, and hikes into the mountains to check on the sheep that ranged free over those wild peaks all summer. And, she was quick to discover, the farm was on the brink of ruin, for Johannes was a heartless man who had abused his animals and neglected his buildings and equipment for decades.

Although her employer had alienated his neighbors, they immediately welcomed the American newcomer and offered her help. As a month or so stretched to a year and Liese struggled for the survival of the farm, she joined this tight-knit enclave of farmers, learning their stories and history, adopting their dialect, and growing intimately familiar with the grass-based farming practices that had sustained them for generations.

From moments of levity, such as sampling a neighbor’s fruit wines, Christmas parties, and skiing; to soul-battering challenges, including the directive to kill a fox, sending sheep to slaughter, rotten silage, and vicious weather; to the yearnings of a young woman awash in a sea of masculinity, Accidental Shepherd is a candid account of Liese’s year in a remote farmhouse. Confronted with dangers and obstacles for which she was utterly unprepared, she tells a story of remarkable resilience and records the fascinating but rapidly vanishing traditions of the community that took her in.

Liese Greensfelder is a freelance writer focusing on medicine, biology, and agriculture. She has worked as a farm advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension and as a science writer for UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley, and she initiated an agricultural development project in the Guatemalan highlands. In 1975, an epistolary account of her first six months on Johannes’s farm became a bestselling book in Norway. She lives in rural Nevada County, California, on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Book tour
In Spring 2025, Liese embarked on a book tour that covered Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska. In July, she will visit the Pacific Northwest, appearing in Seattle and Portland:

Watch some of the segments featuring Liese on Norwegian national tv. Visit this link and scroll down to “Selected Media & Other Works”: https://liesegreensfelder.com/news-events/

See more of Hovland farm in this silent footage by NRK (Norwegian national broadcasting corp): https://tv.nrk.no/serie/loerdagskveld-med-erik-bye/sesong/1973/episode/FUHA00000673

First start the video and then click on the button “2. Fra gård i Øystese”

Book club discussion
Accidental Shepherd has been selected for discussion at the Sons of Norway Book Club’s October meeting. To participate in the Sons of Norway Book Club or find out more, send an email to: [email protected]. Please include your lodge name and district/lodge number.

Find Accidental Shepherd at your local library, bookstore or order online.
Accidental Shepherd is now available as an audiobook on Audible.com