The Elves of Lily Hill Farm by Penny Kelly

The story of true encounters and experiences that Penny Kelly had with Elves and many other spirits and their assistance in helping her to maintain their farm more environmentally friendly.
1st version of this book was 1997
The version I have is from 2005
The font type is easy to read
comprehension level is about average (a bit heavy at times)
It has several pages of black and white pictures of the farm
It has 3 drawings of the elves & 3 drawings of the nature spirits
What I liked about this book was:

1: After the elves got comfortable with talking to her while staying hidden, they then approached her in physical form by walking or running up to her.  (as opposed to the general concept of them appearing out of thin air.)

2: The fact Ms. Kelly added her personal drawings of the elves in the book.

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What I didn’t like about this book was:

1: Over three years of communicating with elves and she didn’t ask them to let her take a picture of them or even have a conversation with the elves about it. (If the reason is in the book, I must’ve missed it due to having to scan through lectures to find the main storyline again)

2: Ms. Kelly showed no curiosity of, nor even mentioned, the elves origins or aspects their general living conditions outside of reserving an area to allow to grow wild for them to live. (Did they migrate from Ireland, England or someplace else? What does their homes look like on the inside? and so on…)

3: Ms. Kelly’s tale is based on the adage that elves know very little about humans and why we do what we do… and yet they speak our language and observe us in our daily life.  Except they apparently think we’re self centered, greedy or naive.

4: For a book about elves, she spent too much time on lecturing and filler material.  If Ms. Kelly truly desires to have us believe in and work with elves, I think She could’ve made a far better argument for their existence and positive influence in her life if she had of stayed on topic.

5: To me, This book has too much heavy repetitive reading on the negativity of chemicals, agriculture and food quality, and the fact we humans are messing up the earth.

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The Elves Of Lily Hill Farm may be of interest to someone if they want to read about aspects of growing grapes and the effects of chemicals in growing produce.

But if you’re looking for any reading of substance about the lives of elves, then this book may be a disappointment to you.
However, if you’re looking for a book built on the normal cliche’ of wise ol’ elves speaking and the naive human learning, then this book may be of interest to you.

My biggest disappointment of this book is the story just ‘stopped‘ without warning. The last chapters of the book were a long lecture on the negative effects of chemicals on humans and the environment and how to contact nature spirits/elves, and a dictionary of terminology,but Ms. Kelly never finished the original story.

Ms. Kelly didn’t give any further conclusions on:
-did their farm ever start to show signs of success
-did they manage to grow grapes without chemicals
-did the moles totally leave
-did the weeds obey and grow only along the roads and in the woodlands
-did they ever tap into the underground well in the mountainside
-did they ever get a yield of 100 tons of grapes
-did she quit her educational career
-did she give her heart, body & soul to the farm

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My final thoughts,

I wasn’t familiar with this author’s writings before I read this book.  I’m glad I read The Elves Of Lily Hill Farm, but I felt it wasn’t as complete of a story as it Should Have been.

It could be said that Ms. Kelly left the questions that bugged me unanswered because she had a publishing date to meet or because she left herself open for a second book.

Personally, I think she ’stopped’ the story when she did because she had reached fulfillment of self and presumed that reader would feel the same. As for the last few chapters of lecture, I can’t imagine what possessed her to do that.  It added nothing to forward her intention of encouraging folks to believe in elves, spirits or beings of that nature.

Her website is promotion for her expensive seminars, so my questions will probably never be answered.

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