Farms have fences. People have boundaries. Mine began crumbling the day I knelt behind a male sheep, reached between his legs, and squeezed his testicles. This took place one blustery November day when I joined other shepherd-wannabes for a class on the basics of raising sheep. I was there with my partner Melissa, the woman I'd lived with for 12 years, because we were going to start a farm. When self-confessed "urban bookworm" Catherine Friend's partner...

When her parents swap urban life in Minneapolis for rural life on a farm 100 miles away, twelve-year-old Taylor feels as if she is living on another planet.