Welcome to Farm Fairytales!

My name is Jennifer Pool, and I’m a rockstar wife (I perform as Linda McCartney in my husband’s band, The McCartney Years), a farm mother, a writer, a PhD graduate, and the founder and head teacher at the Norfolk Farmschool. I live with my husband, our children, and a zoo of animals on a farm in Ontario, Canada, where we also run a farmschool for local children and cultivate thousands of Dutch tulip bulbs every year. I grew up in Michigan and also lived in New York, California, and Montana as a young adult. During my graduate school education, I volunteered at a chimpanzee sanctuary in Zambia and later taught in Kenya, learned Swahili, and was profoundly impacted by the students, teachers, and Maasai friends I gained and learned from along the way. My time in Africa continues to impact my writing for children, as well as in my personal life, in the way that I mother my children (inspired by the strong, nurturing, philosophical Kenyan mothers I met) and in the way that I teach my own students in farmschool, working out of a one room schoolhouse and using nature and hands-on farm work to teach practical life lessons.

My latest book, The Enchanted People, was just released in December 2021 by Guernica Editions.

Farm Fairytales is my signature on how I live, write, and view the world. In my writing, it’s my goal to inspire kids to dream big, be themselves, and make a difference. As you navigate this website, I hope you’ll read more about my books, our farm, our band, and the Norfolk Farmschool.  If you and your children are looking for more information about the real animals who inspired the characters and settings in my books, please check out the “The Animals” and “Gallery” pages under the “More” tab in the menu.

Welcome again to Farm Fairytales, thank you so much for stopping by, and Mungu akubariki (God bless you).

Photos by Rebecca Sprau