276°
Posted 20 hours ago

Pastoral Song: A Farmer's Journey

£9.9£99Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

The New York Times bestselling author of The Shepherd's Life chronicles his family's farm in England's Lake District across three generations, revealing through this intimate lens the profound global transformation of agriculture and of the human relationship to the land. As my eyes become accustomed to the script and field sketches, I see a half-familiar world opening up of field names and landscape features—trees, becks (streams or smaller rivers), lanes, and barns—a parallel paper-and-ink negative of the grass, stone, soil, wood, and landscape that I know. Later in the book, the lack of gulls following a tractor on a “modern” factory farm signals that the soil composition has been badly degraded by fertilizers to the point that worms can no longer live in it. Our land is like a poem, in a patchwork landscape of other poems, written by hundreds of people, both those here now and the many hundreds that came before us, with each generation adding new layers of meaning and experience. His own father stood on the cusp of the old and the new economical and industrial framing which caused him a great deal of internal conflict.

Summary and reviews of Pastoral Song by James Rebanks Summary and reviews of Pastoral Song by James Rebanks

Broken up into three sections, “Nostalgia,” “Progress” and “Utopia,” Pastoral Song tells the story of one family’s journey during the rapid transition from rotational crop farming to large-scale “factory” farming that took place in the latter half of the 20th century. BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. James’s grandfather was such an important part of his life, teaching him everything he needed to know about farming the land, in a manner that didn’t compromise the quality of the yield or destroy the environment. He spends a lot of time look at the financial reasons behind these changes and what’s continuing to drive practices like monoculture crops, and excessive use of chemicals in farming.When I was young there was cowslips and Ragged Robin everywhere, and butterflies on the thyme in the rocky rags on the fell.

PASTORAL SONG | Kirkus Reviews

His rhetoric fails to inspire because unlike the memoir portions of Pastoral Song, he discards concrete details for abstract ideas. And then they quickly take to the sky again, racing away, in a mad wing-flapping dash, gulping down their catch as fast as they can before they are mobbed.

A memoir of three generations of men farming one Lake District farm, Rebanks takes us through the modern agricultural revolution, what it did to the land and the pressures on farmers which forced them to go along with it. There is a barn it can live in safely, there are unpoisoned fields where the mice and voles it is hunting can live, and where his animals feed and fertilize and work the soil to support them all. Rebanks picks up the pieces and gives us his blueprint for the future of farming in the UK - a future where farms and the natural world coexist for the benefit of nature and humans alike, where there is diversity and rotation, harking back to the traditions of the past while embracing new technologies. He goes on to say that “to have healthy food and farming systems we need a new culture of land stewardship, which for me would be the best of the old values and practices and a good chunk of new scientific thinking.

Orion Magazine - Pastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey

He debates thoughtfully and passionately the ethics of modern farming and the demands of the supermarket and the consumer for cheap food which obviously negatively impacts animal welfare. This is a rare and urgent book whose beauty is not only in the writing but in what lies behind it: a gentle and wise sensibility that is alive to the human love affair with the land, and yet also intimately aware of our systematic cruelty towards it. If you get the chance to read English Pastoral, grab it with both hands - it covers some serious issues that we all need to acknowledge, and the author’s passion for the land just radiates on every page. Our response to ecological collapse may prove to be the defining legacy of our generation, one way or the other. He is passionate in how he discusses and presents his views on how he wants to farm and his concerns about modern farming.There were many accolades from some very fine authors regarding this book: Wendell Berry; Richard Flanagan, and Philip Gouretivich. I found this very interesting as it does make you step back and think about what we take for granted as we gaze at the supermarket shelves.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment