At Friend of the Farmer, we tend to focus on the tri-state area—that magical spot at the intersection of Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut

Talking to farmers, like Lynn of Dashing Star Farm, means spending time in the fields with livestock. It’s a remarkably beautiful world that lends itself to contemplation.

So I was thrilled to learn that a classmate from high school, Lisa Barbash, is debuting Sweetgrass, her film on sheep ranching, at The New York Film Festival this Saturday, September 26 2:15pm. It has been billed by one writer as “the best Western of the past twenty years.”

Lisa and her recordist Lucien Castaing-Taylor followed a family of Norwegian-American sheepherders in Montana’s Big Sky country as they “lead their band of sheep — about a hundred and fifty miles each year, all of it on hoof — up to the mountains for summer pasture.”

I only wish I could attend. Click here for tickets