PASTORAL SONG: A Farmer’s Journey

TITLE:  PASTORAL SONG:  A Farmer’s Journey
AUTHOR:  James Rebanks
PUBLICATION DATE:  2021
PUBLISHER:  Custom House

As I was finishing up the training to become a Missouri Master Gardener one of my classmates recommended this book to me.  It is a great read celebrating what it means to love the land and have pride of place.  A celebration of three generations of farmers and their faith, hope and love of their family farm in England’s Lake District.  A patchwork of crops and meadows grazed with livestock and hedgerows teaming with wildlife.  Yet the land our author inherited was anything but the utopia we dream of.  By the time James inherited the farm, it was barely recognizable. The men and women had vanished from the fields; the old stone barns had crumbled; the skies had emptied of birds and their wind-blown song.

 This is a story of an inheritance.  An inheritance that affects each one of us.  It brings us into the world of industrial farming that is bringing our world closer and closer to collapse.  Yet this story is one of hope. 

 “We can build a new English Pastoral, not a utopia, but somewhere decent for us all.” The author writes as he does his best to restore the life that has almost vanished and builds a future for his family and the rest of us as well.

 Here’s a favorite passage from the book:
 “It is possible to work the land and still have healthy soil, rivers, wetlands, woodlands, and scrub.  We can have fields full of wildflowers and grasses, swarming with insects, butterflies, and birds.  We just have to want this enough to legislate for it and pay for it.  To do this we have to opt out of the cheap food dogma that has driven farming and food policy for the past few decades.  We might have to stop gullibly accepting every new technology and new ideology, and care instead about some fairly simple old technologies and ideas… like valuing mixed farming and enlightened land stewardship.”
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 The cost is not cheap, but it is sustainable.  It is worth it for the future of our farms and our planet.  We don’t need to build a utopia, but simply somewhere decent for us all.