Review: 'Pastoral Song,' by James Rebanks

When James Rebanks was a child, he used to help his father and grandfather on their farms in the hilly Lake District of England. Fields of barley, hay and oats; some sheep, some cows, some pigs; a kitchen garden. The work was done the old-fashioned way.

They cut down intrusive thistles with scythes and sickles; they fertilized the fields with well- rotted dung from their cows; they built stone walls by hand and created hedgerows by bending and tying branches "until the hedge architecture became tangled and shaggy and thick."

The farm, Rebanks writes, was staggeringly beautiful, teeming with flowers, insects and birds. The problem was that as his grandfather grew old, the work grew unsustainable. It "had previously been carried out by a small army of skilled men and women, and they were disappearing." It was becoming too much for Rebanks and his father. Something had to give.

Rebanks is the author of a memoir, "The Shepherd's Life," and is well known for his twitter feed, @herdyshepherd1, where he posts photos of sheep, wildflowers and other lovely things.

This new memoir, "Pastoral Song," is his journey from petulant farm boy ("who would want to be out there, with frozen hands, working … in the rain?") to ultramodern farmer, to the farmer he is now, active in restoring the land and returning to many (but not all) of the old ways.

During his grandfather's time, crop and field rotation were part of the natural rhythm. "Sheep should not hear the church bells twice in the same field," his grandfather told him. "It meant they had been in one field too long."

Tillers of the soil respected ground-nesting curlews. The tractor-pulled plow was followed by gulls and crows, eager to swoop down and eat whatever bugs and worms the newly turned land revealed.

But the work was crushing, vacations near impossible, and debt was growing.

A few months working on a farm in Australia opened Rebanks' eyes to the modern way. "Flat fields, perfect for huge machines. Tens of thousands of sheep ranched in fields bigger than our entire farm. Herds of six hundred or seven hundred cows."

He returns to England "full of bright ideas about how we could modernize our farm" and finds many of the neighbors already embracing the new ways — drenching the fields in pesticides, fertilizing with acidic slurry, embracing monoculture farming. Huge combines chewed up anything in their path — including nesting curlews — the farmers remote and high above the field in air-conditioned cabs.

He and his father tried to follow suit. "Our fields started to look much tidier, and more like the neat modern farms we knew. … We were headed for the future."

You know this story: Farms grow more productive but farmers go deeply into debt buying more and bigger equipment. In grocery stores, the cost of food plummets, and farmers' profits plummet. They need bigger fields, more equipment.

Over time, Rebanks realizes that these modern methods aren't just sucking the joy out of farming — they are literally killing the land. He and his father note that birds no longer follow the plow. "There must be no worms in those fields. They've all been killed off," he writes. "The fertilizers, medicines, pesticides, fuels, feeds, tractors and machinery that we once bought that made our farm lose money have turned out to be the very thing that did all the damage."

A wholesale return to the old ways is not feasible, but Rebanks makes a strong, measured argument for a sensible mix between the old and the new — what he calls "a beautiful compromise." Rotate crops, end the use of pesticides, return to natural fertilizers, abandon the monoculture. "We need to put farming and nature back together."

Rebanks' lifetime spent farming gives this book its credibility; his sensible tone gives it its power. And his eloquence describing his beloved farm gives it its beauty.

Like his father and grandfather once did, he walks the land every day. He leans on the fence and studies his animals. "The riverbanks are now bustling little highways for wildlife," he writes. "They are rich in purple and yellow and pink flowers, moths, butterflies, and stoats."

Everything is connected, he notes. One change — for good or bad — can have enormous repercussions. "Our little farm is part of a very big world."

Laurie Hertzel is the Star Tribune's senior editor for books. @StribBooks

Pastoral Song
By: James Rebanks.
Publisher: Custom House, 294 pages, $28.99.