"We're not rich, Papa."
"Yes we are, boy. We have one another to fend to, and this land to tend."

When young Rob Peck saves a neighbor's cow, the neighbor gives him a pig as a reward. Pinky is Rob's constant companion as he juggles backbreaking farm work with the schooling that is so important to his father. Pinky is a pet and a friend, but on a farm, every animal must have its use. And on a farm, even a boy must sometimes be a man. Will the support of a loving family and the plainspoken Shaker teaching of his father, Haven, be enough to see Rob through on the day no pigs would die?

This gentle story about a 12-year-old Vermont farm boy "manages to evoke a sense of vanished America--when neighbors were neighborly, when food was home-cooked, and clothes and philosophy [were] homespun" ("Newsweek").