Mr. Rebanks describes with quiet eloquence the small corner of England where he grew up and returned to after graduating from Oxford — an interlude in his life that he regards as a minor detour on the path he always knew he wanted to follow: taking over the family farm and walking in the boots of his father and grandfather. Inspired partly by W. H. Hudson’s classic account of rural life, “A Shepherd’s Life” (1910), his book is, at once, a memoir, a portrait of his family’s world and an evocative depiction of his vocation as a shepherd — work subject to the vagaries of weather and luck and based on generations-old knowledge of breeding and tending to sheep.

Image James Rebanks Credit... Eamonn McCabe

Expertise — and explanations of the craft and clockwork behind the ticktock of a profession — is hugely compelling when described with ardor and élan, and Mr. Rebanks brings both to his account of shepherding. He communicates the intimate understanding his family and neighbors have of their land — “we see a thousand shades of green, like the Inuit see different kinds of snow” — and the exhausting, unglamorous tasks that define daily farm life: mending walls, chopping logs, treating lame sheep, worming lambs, moving flocks between fields.

He tells us about the hardy Herdwick sheep, native to the Lake District, that have “two functions” — “survive the winters and the tough times, and in the spring and summer months have a good lamb and rear it in the mountains so the flock is sustained.” He describes the preparations for breeding, which include giving the ewes a prenatal once-over and shearing the tops of their tails “to make it easier for the ram to get them pregnant (think removing woolly knickers).” And he introduces individual sheep, like his best ewe, who is canny and streetwise, and “has a sense of her own importance at all times,” and show-worthy rams that project an alpha-male arrogance, “like Russell Crowe in ‘Gladiator.’ ”

The summer scent of fresh hay, the sight of swallows exploding out a barn door, the sound of ewes calling to their lambs — all are conjured for the reader, as are the seasonal rituals: clipping the sheep in the summer and making the hay for winter; bringing the sheep down from higher ground in autumn and starting the breeding cycle; looking after the breeding stock through the tribulations of winter; and in early spring, preparing ewes for lambing time.

Mr. Rebanks, who also works as an adviser to Unesco, has an easy ability to shift gears between the personal and the historical, as well as between gritty descriptions of life and death on the farm and more lyrical descriptions of the land he knows like his backyard. He conveys the communal bonds and simple code of honor that tie neighboring farm families together, and the friendly rivalries they engage in when proudly showing off additions to their flocks.