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.
