By coincidence the Woefield Poultry Collective is the second book detailing the experience of  city dwellers moving to the country that I read this weekend.  It is the book of the month for the CanadianContent Goodreads group, chosen for the theme of comedy celebrating April Fool’s Day.  The book which will keep readers smiling has a quirky group of characters that end up in all sorts of calamaties.

Prudence is a struggling writer who inherits a farm from an Uncle that she never knew.  She leaves her rent controlled apartment, arriving in Canada to find a scrubby farm with dilapidated buildings.  She meets an old farmhand named Earl who lives on the property and has a family secret.  He has been caring for a half-sheared sheep named Bertie.  Seth, a young neighbour arrives on the doorstep looking for a place to live after he is kicked out of his family home.  He had a traumatic experience and quit highschool, self-medicating with alcohol.  The cast is completed when Sarah, a young girl moves her prize-winning chickens to the farm and ends up staying while her mother is away.

What could go wrong?  Apparently a lot!  There are sheep shearing difficulties, chicken feathers coloured with magic marker, challenges building a chicken coop not to mention port-a-potties with no locks and an interesting episode at the local home depot!

Prudence is creative as she sells her lacklustre radishes at the farmer’s market and strategizes how to make money and save the farm from foreclosure.

This is a palate-cleansing, light read.  The reader gets to know each character and can’t help but to hope for the best as they struggle to run the farm.  It is one light-hearted disaster after another and I am curious as to what happens in the sequel called The Republic of Dirt: A Return to Woefield. The sequel is now on my  hold list at the library.