Are you sure you want to know?
I had very mixed reactions and I have copious notes. Rather than dump it all here and now, I thought I would start with my positive reactions (because the notes for these are shorter):
The book was supposed to be about rural life in the Lake District (or that's how it is marketed), and this aspect of the book I quite enjoyed. It was interesting to note both the similarities and differences to my own rural childhood.
(I grew up on a dairy farm on the flood plains of the Murray River; so a different sort of farm and a very different sort of landscape.)
I think he lays it on a bit thick at times. Which is not to say any particular incident is exaggerated, but the sheer concentration of incidents obscures the real payoff that exists in farming, the reason why people keep doing it. I think he does try to convey that, but it's not as clearly presented as the hardships.
While my parent's farm was dairy, we had a few sheep (raised for the table), and I had relatives that farmed sheep. So there were some strange déjà vu moments in the book, like where he speaks of treating fly-struck sheep ("the smell of the noxious stuff") and I could smell the liquid we used to use.
(But then I wondered if it was the same smell, it seems unlikely we used the same stuff as he did.) And the lanolin smell of shearing sheds, and the oily texture of the wool. All this worked very well for me, it was real and evoked strong memories across multiple senses.