English Pastoral by James Rebanks (100 books to read .txt) 📕

A pitch-black carrion crow, or ‘dope’, as we call them, tries half-heartedly to mob it, but after a quick tumble both birds continue on their ways. The valley is silent, except for the bark of a roe deer. I squeeze my daughter between my knees. She says nothing. She is spellbound.

Such moments are the reward we get for trying to do the right thing on our land. Beauty doesn’t pay the bills, of course. It isn’t enough on its own, but it makes life better. Country people always knew that before they were made slaves to the gospels of industrial efficiency and consumerism. I am grateful that my grandfather and father taught me that a good life has little to do with money or shop-bought things. Their disdain for the obsessive financial values of the modern world is something I respect more than ever. None of us can escape commercial realities, but we can try and reshape our society to make it fairer, more decent and kinder. I am sick of 1980s economics bullshit.

Away across the silver-shadowed field, the barn owl tacks from side to side, backwards and forwards. Then, eye locked on its prey, it folds its wings back and falls like an arrow into the grass. We hold our breath for a few silent seconds that seem to last forever. Then the owl lifts up from the grass, and labours slightly back to a gate stoop carrying a small, shuddering brown corpse, and we breathe.

There is nothing beyond this. Nothing higher. Nothing more profound than these simple things; nothing that matters more than trying to live our little life on this piece of land.

I hope Bea lives for a hundred more years. I hope she lives a healthy life full of kindness and joy. And maybe when she is an old woman, wherever in the world that might be, she will remember this spot in time when she sat with her father and watched a white owl hunt. A tiny moment of beauty and magic shared. Or, maybe, she will stand in this same place as a farmer, long after I am gone, and remember that I tried my best to look after this land.

This is my inheritance to my children.

This is my love.

Tell them what is happening on the land. Someone has to tell them …

When I was young there was cowslips and ragged robin everywhere, and butterflies on the thyme in the rocky crags on the fell. The becks were full of minnows, the pools alive with them, and water boatmen skating on the top …

I’m maybe old and stupid, but I like to see them things. But you don’t see them anymore. And greed is to blame. Greed. And it will get worse if they don’t change things.

Tell them.

Mayson Weir, Dowthwaite Head Farm

Acknowledgements

This book only exists because I have a whole gang of amazing people that make my writing life possible, and to whom I owe a heartfelt thanks:

Thank you to Jim Gill and the rest of my team at United Agents.

Thank you to Helen Conford for commissioning this book and being my first editor, helping to shape it in the early months of its development. Thank you to Stefan McGrath, Ingrid Matts, Penelope Vogler, Jane Robertson, Helen Evans, and all the other Penguins for going above and beyond the normal efforts.

I will always be grateful to my editor Chloe Currens for helping me to make this book what it has become. I feel blessed to have such a brilliant editor who I know will always fight for me and push me to be better. I love being part of the Penguin family – it is an impossible dream-come-true for the teenager who used to marvel at the Penguin Classics on my mum’s bookshelves.

Thanks to all those who have helped me write this in countless little ways through our conversations on social media – @herdyshepherd1.

Thank you to all the booksellers, journalists and festival folk who have supported my writing and hand-sold my books.

Thanks to hundreds of readers and writers for being kind and supportive to me, both face to face, and by writing to me. I haven’t had time to reply to all letters, but your thoughtful messages have meant a great deal to me.

~

A farming life is full of people who teach you things and help, and I am grateful to all those folk that have done that for me. Thank you to my friends for their support, for keeping it real, despite the hype, and for giving uninvited visitors the wrong directions when they are trying to find my house.

Thanks to Alan Bennet who is a good farming neighbour and who I enjoy discussing these things with on the roadside by our fields. Thank you to Peter Lightfoot for keeping me right. Thank you to David Cannon for being a gentleman and the friend he said he would be. Thanks to Joe Weir for being my partner-in-crime with Herdwick tups. Thanks to Richard Woof for all the help and the chainsaw work on those bloody hedges. Thanks to Chris Davidson, Derek Wilson, Scott Wilson, Tom Blease and Hannah Jackson for covering for me when I am away.

Thank you to Ken Smith for driving me down long straight Midwestern roads in the US. And thank you to Renae and Kevin Dietzel for giving me an insight into farming life in Iowa. Although I have written about the bad things in that farming system, it would be remiss not to point out that I have had the good fortune to meet many fine and progressive American farmers and to admire their fighting back – much of the best ‘regenerative agriculture’ thinking is coming out of America. I owe a debt