This was a great follow-up to other books I’ve been reading recently about environmentalism and long-term thinking, such as Losing Eden (which, similarly, took inspiration from Silent Spring) and The Good Ancestor, and should attract readers of Wilding by Isabella Tree. I hope it will go far in next year’s Wainwright Prize race. Through the eyes of James Rebanks as a grandson, son, and then father, we witness the tragic decline of traditional agriculture, and glimpse what we must do now to make it right again.” Rebanks: “… His farming dream fills me with pride, hope and fear. Pride and hope because I would of course love one or more of my children to be farming here one day in this place that has become my life. I love the idea of this old farm continuing on, and that one or more of them might feel somehing like the love I feel for this valley, and have the same sense of purpose it has given me. But I don’t want them to feel trapped in their father’s dream. I fear for them too because it is at times a crushingly hard way of life, and the economics of what we do are terrible.” p265 One quote that resonated with me, because I am so tired of seeing commercials on TV with happy people buying, buying, buying bright and shiny objects that they don’t need but they feel that they need, and the people who make the commercials are telling me I too need the bright and shiny objects to be happy…grrrrr.

Rebanks also recalls trips to Australia and the American Midwest, where he realized the true costs of intensive, monoculture farming, as opposed to the small-scale, mixed rotational farming that is traditional in the UK. Rather than wallowing in nostalgia or guilt, neither of which does anyone much good, he chronicles how he has taken steps to restore his land as part of a wider ecosystem. It takes courage to publicly change one’s mind and follow through on it, and I felt the author was aware of nuances and passionate about working with ecologists to see that his farm is heading in the right direction. He has 200 plant species growing on his land, but planted additional key species that were missing; he hasn’t used artificial fertilizer in over five years; and he’s working towards zero pesticides. A brilliant, beautiful book” ( Sunday Times): the New York Timesbestselling author of A Shepherd’s Lifechronicles his family’s farm in England’s Lake District across three generations as they lose and reclaim “the old ways,” revealing through this intimate lens the profound global transformation of food production and of the human relationship to the land. This intimate and moving book is timely and relatable.... With a critical and curious eye, he asks of himself—and society at large—what does it mean to be a “good” farmer?" — Civil Eats Hailed as "a brilliant, beautiful book" by the Sunday Times (London), Pastoral Song (published in the United Kingdom under the title English Pastoral) is the story of an inheritance: one that affects us all. It tells of how rural landscapes around the world were brought close to collapse, and the age-old rhythms of work, weather, community and wild things were lost. And yet this elegy from the northern fells is also a song of hope: of how, guided by the past, one farmer began to salvage a tiny corner of England that was now his, doing his best to restore the life that had vanished and to leave a legacy for the future.Superbly written and deeply insightful, the book captivates the reader until the journey’s end.”— Wall Street Journal Perhaps I am over sensitive. In today’s political arena the ‘reality’ mantra is so often the province of liars on the hunt. English Pastoral’ is a beautiful portrayal of an English farming family, this is incredibly enjoyable as well as being insightful. I absolutely loved this.

James Rebanks’s new book may be the most passionate ecological corrective since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring." — New York Review of Books

Pastoral Song

Rebanks is on a passionate crusade to spread the word on “how can we farm in ways that will endure and do the least harm?” He maintains that “[a]pplying industrial thinking and technologies to agriculture to the exclusion of other values and judgments has been an unmitigated disaster for our landscapes and communities.” 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.” This work explains how farming used to be and how it was changed as big supermarkets forced down prices at the farmgate and the nature of the work was transformed, and land brought to the edge of ruin.

The demise of family farms means that there are fewer and fewer people living in rural areas and that is why communities are dying on the vine and why there are fewer houses and trees – and it is also why I feel no attachment to the place where I lived from age five to age twenty-one. Today, there are no buildings or trees or any evidence that anyone has ever lived on it; it’s just 160 acres of dirt that belongs to a corporation. Winner of the 2021 Wainwright Prize for Writing for UK Nature Writing – the book was described by the prize as “the story of an inheritance. It tells of how rural landscapes around the world have been brought close to collapse, and the age-old rhythms of work, weather, community and wild things are being lost. This is a book about what it means to have love and pride in a place, and how, against all the odds, it may still be possible to build a new pastoral: not a utopia, but somewhere for us all.”Superbly written and deeply insightful, the book captivates the reader until the journey’s end.” — Wall Street Journal I will be honest, I absolutely adored “The Shepherd’s Life” and was not sure this would appeal to me. However, I was so very wrong. Rebanks has written a book that is both informative and offers an insight into his family history. Rebanks really opens up to the reader about what his family life is like, how far they have come and how far they have to go. At the same time, Rebanks reflects on modern farming and the damage that has been caused, is being caused and could be caused in the future. It was his reading of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) that opened his eyes and those of many other people about the environmental dangers of the overuse of pesticides and the culpability of both the chemical industry and governmental officials who did not challenge the industry’s claims that their products were safe for humans and wildlife. In Pastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey, James Rebanks offers a realistic perspective on the demands of farming as a profession and why farm systems across the world have shifted toward convenience and efficiency over the past four decades. Trying to balance both art and science, tradition and innovation within his own farm, Rebanks offers, “Our land is like a poem.” Compared to other treatises on the perils of modern agriculture, such as Wendell Berry’s Unsettling of America or the Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, Pastoral Song is a firsthand account of change and compromise within a multigenerational farming family that speaks to the heart our most urgent land management question: Can a commercial farm be a regenerative part of an ecosystem? We are choking to death on our own freedoms. The merest mention that we might buy less, or give anything up, and we squeal like pigs pushed away from the trough.”

James Rebanks’s fierce, personal description of what has gone wrong with the way we farm and eat, and how we can put it right, gets my vote as the most important book of the year ...Some books change our world. I hope this turns out to be one of them.”— Julian Glover, Evening Standard He is eloquent — scenes of mud and guts are interspersed with quotes ranging from Virgil to Schumpeter, Rachel Carson to Wendell Berry … English Pastoral builds into a heartfelt elegy for all that has been lost from our landscape, and a rousing disquisition on what could be regained — a rallying cry for a better future.”— Financial Times

Pastoral Song – A Farmer’s Journey

Our response to ecological collapse may prove to be the defining legacy of our generation, one way or the other. Many well-meaning, largely urban and middle class people have taken to the streets in the name of the planet in recent years. But waving placards and climbing on top of trains when something becomes fashionable is all show. In this brilliant, deeply moving book, James Rebanks details what true rebellion and real bravery look like. James Rebanks is a historian and farmer. English Pastoral is a memoir that presents a view of English farming beginning during his grandfather's farming days and ending in 2020 at the book's publication. 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. Particularly striking is the image of a young Rebanks lying under a tree devouring Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring—a book that changed his perspective on pesticide use and, he admits, changed his life. In later sections, an environmentalists named Lucy appears to offer ideas, as well as financial support, to improve water and habitat conservation on the farm. Her ideas take root and revitalize Rebanks’s perspective on stewardship. This is Nonfiction/Environment/Nature. As this one started, I wasn't feeling it. I needed to read it for a reading challenge so I plowed ahead. I eventually fell into its rhythm and I was so glad I stayed with it. This wasn't quite 5 stars, but I rounded up for the overall message. Everyone should read this, whether you grow food or eat food....this is for you. This is a timely message.