Lyrical and passionate … I was gripped from the very first paragraph … Rebanks has shone a brilliant light onto a world about which the vast majority of people know little … a cri de coeur for a healthier countryside, rather than a manifesto … a magnificent book.”— Literary Review Remarkable…A brilliant, beautiful book…Eloquent, persuasive and electric with the urgency that comes out of love." - Sunday Times (UK) 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." — Minneapolis Star Tribune

I must admit I struggled with the first part of the book and the description of apparently traditional and generally benevolent farming from around 40 years ago. My own recollection of farming from that time was of widespread use of pesticides, polluting stubble burning (with the added “bonus” of accidental destruction of pesty field boundaries), destruction of hedgerows, the deliberate concealment or obstruction of rights of way – and that things are much better in almost every sense since - but I think industrial farming hit East Anglia a long time before the author’s corner of the lakes. 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 There were many accolades from some very fine authors regarding this book: Wendell Berry; Richard Flanagan, and Philip Gouretivich. There was a time to live and a time to die. When he killed, he did it swiftly, with respect, but without great displays of emotion. Knowing and seeing death on personal terms, he had a kind of reverence for meat on the table. We were told not to leave a morsel, even the bacon rinds. He would have been confused that anyone could be so foolish, or rich enough, to suffer rabbits destroying a crop, or so morally elevated to think they were above killing when it was called for. He existed in nature, as an actor on the stage, always struggling to hold his ground. A risen ape, not a fallen angel." James Rebanks

Pastoral Song

James Rebanks’s story of his family’s farm is just about perfect. It belongs with the finest writing of its kind.”— Wendell Berry As a witness to his grandfather’s careful attention to the land as well as the stress and burden his own father carried trying to stay financially viable amid massive food system consolidation and modernization, Rebanks is in a unique position. And he is willing to share what he has learned, and is humble enough to admit what he has yet to figure out. “I have worked here my entire life, but I am only now beginning to know this piece of land.” Torn between what is good and what is necessary, Rebanks educates his readers on the workings of his own farm, like soil biology and animal breeding, and suggests possibilities for the future of food, such as a return to diversification in animal and plant production and a revitalization of local food-processing infrastructure. Rebanks: “The biggest lesson I have learned is that the whole idea of the heroic individual farmer is a bit of a macho-male myth.” p249 It’s gorgeous … I can’t recommend it enough.”— Caitlin Moran,NYT bestselling author of How to Be a Woman He is eloquent — scenes of mud and guts are interspersed with quotes ranging from Virgil to Schumpeter, Rachel Carson to Wendell Berry…[ Pastoral Song] 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 (UK)

Example? I say it is a good book, much of it superb writing, with paradoxical messaging that bites itself on the ankle several times. The text comes entirely from a shepherd-writer at once torn by his journey while still living this story’s outcome right now. The book IS for the most part hot on target, stirring, elegant and vital. BUT, it too often slips and becomes side-swiping, a ‘realist’s harangue’ against those who are the better and best examples because their courageous farming comes from passion and a perpetual husbandry-alignment with nature. The New York Timesbestselling author of The Shepherd’s Lifeprofiles his family’s farm across three generations, revealing through this intimate lens the profound global transformation of agriculture and of the human relationship to the land. The name of the game became productivity. Ancient field systems were broken up, traditional crop rotation abandoned. Breeds of plants and animals re-engineered to produce greater yields on massive farms.Rebanks is a rare find indeed: a Lake District farmer whose family have worked the land for 600 years, with a passion to save the countryside and an elegant prose style to engage even the most urban reader. He’s refreshingly realistic about how farmed and wild landscapes can coexist and technology can be tamed. A story for us all.”— Evening Standard (London) 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. Rebanks explores the changes of farming methods from small family farms, to larger farms that focused on machinery, genetics and businesses to now looking at a striking a balance between two- allowing ecosystems to flourish which in turn makes the land better and richer through returning to older methods, rewilding projects etc. What is good is he does so without a rose tinted naive outlook but is realistic at the challenges faced too. 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.” 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.