James Rebanks was taught by his grandfather to work the land the old way. Their family farm in the Lake District hills was part of an ancient agricultural landscape: a patchwork of crops and meadows, of pastures grazed with livestock, and hedgerows teeming with wildlife. And yet, by the time James inherited the farm, that landscape had profoundly changed. The men and women had vanished from the fields; the old stone barns had crumbled; the skies had emptied of birds and their wind-blown song. 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 how the age-old rhythms of work, weather, community and wild things were lost. But 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. This is a book about what it means to have love and pride in a place, and how, against the odds, it may still be possible to build a new pastoral: not a utopia, but somewhere decent for us all.

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.

I cannot remember the last time I read a book that had such an impact on me. I found this absolutely fascinating and gave me so much to think about. In no way is this patronising and Rebanks can admit to his own weaknesses and downfalls. With this read you will learn about farming, natural history and family life, whilst at the same time be left with deep questions around the future of farming and of our world.

'English Pastoral' is a beautiful portrayal of an English farming family, this is incredibly enjoyable as well as being insightful. I absolutely loved this.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Press UK for an advance copy.

Wow. Just wow. I need to be a poet, or a much better writer than I am, to do this justice. This book is enchanting and educational in equal measure and a solid five star read.
A few years ago I read The Shepherd’s Life by James Rebanks, a story about farming life in the fells of the Lake District. That was a brilliant book. English Pastoral is Rebanks’ new book, an introspective retelling of his past, with frank discussion of farming life and practices with a hopeful glimpse into
the future. This is the kind of book that a deep-thinker might write once old and experienced enough to reflect back on a lifetime of endeavour.
As a child, I spent many happy weekends on my grandad’s farm, where my uncle lived with my cousins. I petted the cows with their slimy noses and surprisingly long tongues. I drank
unpasteurised milk from Rosie, the (pet) Jersey cow. I walked around the everchanging fields. I played on hay bales bigger than me and sometimes sat on the side of my uncle’s big red tractor, bouncing along. I cycled my bike around the cowpat cakes on the concrete tractor path…Rebanks
has spent almost every day of his life in such places among the wildlife, up to his knees in midden-muck, literally.
English Pastoral is divided into three sections.
Nostalgia recounts Rebanks’ childhood on his grandfather’s farm and the rented farm of his late father. He recounts delightful stories which will make you feel warm and fuzzy and grab your car
keys to rush to the nearest field you can find in search of cows and hedgerows.
In the Progress section, Rebanks goes backpacking to visit Australian farms who are adopting progressive farming methods and he starts to resent what he sees as he father’s hesitancy to adopt
ever increasing modern farming practices. Pride and nostalgia are expensive commodities when you
live off the land. And progress doesn’t come without cost somewhere, whether that be the wellbeing of the animals, health of the land or the lives of the farmers, who live under thunderclouds of debt to finance all this progress.
Like the cycling of the seasons, all things come around and so does Rebank. He describes his journey
towards consensus with his father’s views on so many disputed issues. He travels to the mass scale factory farms of the American Midwest and glimpses what would be on the horizon for farms like his own and across the UK. Sadly, his own enlightenment seems bittersweet because many of these
realisations about how right his father was with hindsight, come after his father’s passing.
The book ends appropriately on Utopia and this is where Rebanks lays out his ideas, based on his already adopted land management practices. Utopia seems almost manifesto-like in its
recommendations and I have to say, I came to view it as an apolitical solution to how we could try to manage our ecology and nutrition needs more harmoniously.
English Pastoral isn’t just a book about farming. It’s about so much more. At its heart lies our common inheritance. That we should be living today off our green and pleasant land as if we will all
live 500 years, so we only make changes we will be willing to stand in the presence of in the centuries to come. Just read it. It’s such an important book and if James Rebanks ever leaves
farming to stand as an MP, I’ll vote for him.

I hadn't read Rebanks first book, but have long been a follower of his on Twitter where, as @herdyshepherd1, he shares everything from stunning photography of his farm's Lakes setting to commentary on sustainable food and farming policy. English Pastoral was really a perfect microcosm of the 'self' he presents on Twitter, being a beautifully written blend of memoir, farming history, and polemic. My only criticism would be that moving between the sections sometimes felt jarring, jumping from poetic exploration of belonging and family ties to the land, to drier examination of, say, soil erosion, and back again, with little to signal the changes. However, I think this was perhaps because of the formatting (or lack of) on the pre-publication e-galley. I'd love to see how this book will look in physical format, because if the cover is anything to go by, it will be stunning.

This book is written from the heart. James Rebanks owns a farm on the fells in the Lake District. It is land his family have farmed for generations. It is his passion, as much, if not more than his livelihood.
With the arrival of cut-price supermarket wars small farms were hit badly and big multi-national corporations put many of the out of business. New, and ultimately dangerous, farming practices risked the very soil in which crops were grown, and the land on which livestock grazed. The natural world was thrown into decline.
James Rebanks is now the guardian and protector of his land. His job is hard and not financially rewarding, but he fights on in good spirits, creating something new from something broken. I hope he succeeds and will write another book to tell us how he did it. This is a book of extraordinary value with a very clear message for us all.

English Pastoral is a farmer’s history of working the land over three generations, and an essay on the state of the food chain today.

It covers the outcomes of monocultures and industrial-sized farming, the havoc caused by numbers-based (not ecosystem-based) policies, the loss of biodiversity, nature’s vulnerability. It promotes support of local economy, genetic diversity and heritage crops. It also engenders gentle pride in Britain’s maritime climate and farming history to support livestock.

Rebanks’s prose tends towards the labouredly poetic and archaic. This is particularly evident when he writes of his family. As the emphasis shifts towards the health of the farming industry in general, the writing becomes crisper.

Nature writing which lobbies for the environment is certainly worthy of merit. In this instance, however, the two don't seem to connect, almost as though the latter half of the book is bolted on.

I would recommend this book to anyone oblivious to the source of the food on our plates, and to those unfamiliar with the basic arguments of environmentalism.

My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Press UK for the ARC.

English Pastoral

This is an important and timely book about nature and its relationship with farming. This is a history of his family’s farming in the Lake District and his own memories of theirs and his relationship with the land and their animals. It’s told from a farmer’s perspective as he looks back over his grandfather’s and father’s experiences as famers as methods change and his own experiences. English Pastoral also contains some of the loveliest and most descriptive passages that I’ve ever read. They are so visual that I feel that I’m there seeing the animals, birds, trees and plants through the author’s eyes.
He farms on his grandfather’s modest 185 acre Lakeland fell farm. Farming is in his blood and the book begins with his memories of riding behind his grandfather on his tractor while ploughing a field. Seagulls are squawking and jostling as they fight for worms turned up by the plough and then head off to their roosts in giant V shapes. Rebanks observes that ‘ they look to me like the bomber formation in war films,’ Then the book moves to the present day as his father’s will is read and they examine the deeds to his rented farm. The history of it and the countryside from generation to generation is held in their hands. However the fight between James’ dad and his grandfather and the new, modern farming ways against the older ones was always ongoing. Rebanks recalls being in the middle of Thatcher’s Britain and listening to ‘my grandfather’s tales from the 1930’s as the sun was beginning to set on his world.’
He comments on farming’s changing role often in the book. The drive for cheaper food has brought many farmers to despair. As I wrote this I saw a supermarket newspaper ad which quoted such low prices for produce that I wondered how the farmer and suppliers made a living. However Rebanks doesn’t gloss over the downside of farming. The suicide rate amongst farmers and the decline of the farming communities that once supported them is chronicled. He mentions how people like to retire to nice villages and by doing so change the nature of them. The village becomes more genteel and middle-class and the farmers are less welcome.
New and dangerous pesticides, the destruction of hedgerows and their once abundant wildlife, the coming of factory farming are all described in the book as well as their effects. When you see vast fields in a uniform colour stretching over the landscape from a train you don’t always notice the non existent hedgerows. These were once vibrant areas for wildlife that would forage in the field. He recounts how, out of excitement, he applied a new pesticide to a field of intransigent nettles and which had the desired effect. Unfortunately it also killed off a nest of robin chicks in a hedge that he had found earlier and felt ashamed that it was he that had done it with his new modern method. Eco systems are very fragile and if you disrupt one then the rest collapse.
Rebanks is good on the realities of farming and the price that he willingly pays to farm his way. He takes the reader by the hand as he walks around his farm. Despite their problems the soil quality is among the best and contains many unusual plants. He follows his grandfather’s methods of rotational farming which works best for him. However, it’s not mere nostalgia but a recognition that the old ways were worth keeping. After all ‘sheep shouldn’t hear the church bell twice in the same field as it means that they’ve been in the same field too long.’ On his farm the cows are let out into fields at Springtime to revel in the fresh air and grazing. As he worries about a cow about to calf she wanders off and gets on with it without him and he next sees them together sitting in a field, the calf fed and mum chewing her cud. He knows his animals by name and nature and frets about the farmer’s greatest enemy – the weather. I loved his descriptions of what he sees as he walks around; the insects, the animals, the butterflies, the wildflowers. But despite the beauty of the countryside and his love of farming he doesn’t gloss over the bloodier side. An old ewe has been blinded by crows that are waiting to attack her again and his grandfather has to kill her in the final act of kindness that he can do for her.
But the book is also a call to arms as Rebanks suggests building a new English Pastoral ‘not a utopia but a better, more decent future for all.’ This includes not accepting ‘every new technology and new ideology and care about some fairly simple old technologies, opt out of the cheap food dogma.’ The need for cheaper food is a tricky one especially if you’re on a limited budget and have very little choice. He also gives a history of the arrival of pesticides and their effect on the environment including the notorious DDT which was banned after the publication of Rachel Carson’s seminal work Silent Spring.
I loved this book as it wasn’t a sentimental account of the author’s family’s farming life but a realistic view of it. Last year I stood in awe of a field of barley as it rippled in a breeze admiring its colours and the butterflies flitting in and out. The nature writing in the book has the same effect as when he describes his grandfather showing him still warm curlew eggs from a nest in the field which they had just ploughed. He replaces them in the same spot and later they see the curlew sitting on them as if nothing had happened. Also the joy of the cows being let out of their winter quarters to graze in the fields.
It is his descriptions of nature that make this book such a joy as, for example, he recounts seeing the magical sight of a barn owl on the hunt when out with one of his daughters. An important book and a timely one and one I really enjoyed reading.

English Pastoral is, in some aspects, an autobiography which is divided into three distinct parts.
In the first one, Rebanks is a kid, and he learns how to work a farm. This first part is full of anecdotes of him spending time with his grandfather, who taught him the farm life and the cycles the farm (crops and animals) go through.
In the later parts of the book, the number of anecdotes/memories diminishes, being almost non-existent in the last part. Over time, farmers realise that he "old ways" are not enough anymore, leading to the industrialization that is at that point much more established in other countries, such as Australia and the US. However, such progress has its drawbacks and dangers, and the author describes them very eloquently and in a very informative manner. Since we, the readers, learnt from his grandfather about how each part of the farm life depends on the other pieces, when industrialization comes, with pesticides and fertilisers, it is very plain to see how what was until then elegantly balanced suddenly starts crashing down, and trying to quickly fix a problem starts its own chain of events.
I loved the first two parts of the book. It's written beautifully and the way the two of them match together really brings down the main message to the reader: the danters of industrialization for the soil.
As a non-native speaker, I found myself frequently looking up words in the dictionary, and realised that even in my mother tongue it would have been difficult at times to assign a species name to a picture of a bird, for example. This did not diminish my enjoyment of the book, but it made me wonder how young readers would find it, and whether it's a more appropriate read for more mature audiences.

Thanks to #Netgalley for the ARC.

My interaction with farms is limited to walking through them on footpaths, or popping into farm shops once in a while. My day job is in procurement in a global supply chain (though not in the food sector) and, as a result, I think often about how global supply and consumer demand must be affecting the planet, usually when I'm browsing in Aldi and can get hold of pomegranates and avocados as reliably and cheaply as I can pick up potatoes and carrots. What I've never really done is connect the demands of those supermarkets with the farms whose footpaths I walk on in my leisure time; I've never considered how local British farming has been forced to change to meet the high demands and low pricing required by a growing population.

"I am not sure exactly when things that originally seemed like a good idea began to feel like a step too far." - James Rebanks in English Pastoral

English Pastoral is set on James Rebanks' family farm in the Lake District. It explores the tensions between generations of farmers and questions what it really means to do things right. He tells a story about rapid post-war evolution, from his grandfather's idealised traditional methods to his father buckling under the pressure of making farming profitable, and to his own brushes with intensive farming, making mistakes, and ultimately trying to leave things better than he found them.

"They used to call England a 'green and pleasant land' but in truth it was never entirely green, nor entirely pleasant." - James Rebanks in English Pastoral

Although this is, in many ways, the story of James's family farm, it is also a thought-provoking book which addresses the expectations of consumers and calls for a greater connection between all humans and the land that feeds them. I found this to be a sometimes uncomfortable read which affected me much more than I expected. Rebanks doesn't preach one silver bullet to fix all our problems but instead calls for consideration, kindness, responsibility from farmers and consumers alike. I enjoyed this book and, although I am about as far as anyone can be from understanding the realities of being a farmer, I have already found myself looking more closely at farmland as I walk through it. The production of all food is complex and intertwined: humans and animals, wild spaces and cultivated crops. It's not as simple as cutting out one food group to fix all the planet's problems, and Rebanks brings to the fore a considered discussion on the true meaning of compromise.

Overall found I found English Pastoral to be enjoyable, in some ways uncomfortable, but overwhelmingly full of hope.

Reading this book made me so angry about the way that the world is going. We are increasingly living in a world where the lowest price is the prime focus for people rather than the quality of what they consume and where "who cares about how it is produced" has become the norm.

This heartfelt and heart-rending book tells a story of the land from first-hand experiences of a real, multi-generation, farming family where, over the years, animal husbandry has become a forbidden phrase in their community and productivity its replacement. Where the consumer does not care that bottled water costs more than the same volume of milk and that the cows producing that milk are fit only for slaughter after their second pregnancy because they are expected and dosed to make sure they produce twice their normal volume of milk; up to 10 gallons each and every day.

Fortunately there are some farmers who see the error of those industrial ways and are moving towards their roots, where land and food actually have value; a move we should all support.

If you have a genuine interest in your environment and/or the food that you eat and/or the way that farming has become the food industry to the detriment of us all, I would strongly suggest that you read this book.

Gentle, insightful story. The ups and downs of farming life beautifully told. Very nostalgic and heartwarming, but with an understanding of how hard life could and can be in farming communities.

This was a brilliant book that I thoroughly enjoyed reading. James Rebanks is a farmer in Cumbria. He comes from generations of farmers on the same land and muses over the changes that have taken place on the same land and within farming in general within the UK.
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.
The book makes it clear that with modernity and our instant culture of now we are ruining and losing many aspects of our land. So many things are interwoven and if one thing is changed for the immediate benefit of one group, this may be at a massive and destructive cost to others. We need to think long term about the ecosystems, land, nature, wildlife and not just look at the end products wrapped in plastics in the supermarket. So many of the answers we are looking for our rooted in history if we look, even if we didn’t know why things worked like they did at the time.
What particularly stood out for me in this book was how Rebanks showed many themes are intertwined. With farming modernised and following business models and looking at scientifically engineering genetics of crops and animals this has a negative effect on the quality of soil, isn’t sustainable, wildlife is lost and becomes extinct and interestingly human communities too begin to break down. We are more entertwimed then we realise and we need to wake up and start thinking about this soon.
History, anthropology, ecology nature, farming and memoirs are all in here- a must read for everyone!

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Press for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I had loved James Rebank's first book 'The Shephard's Life' so I couldn't wait to get my hands on this. This book is a beautiful tribute to the land and farming. As someone who has grown up on a farm and knows the abuses and poor farming practises that are prevalant throughout the farming and food industry I loved that this book dealt with these topics in such a carefully considered way. I also loved his own stories of growing up with farming and nature. Highly recommend this book!

James Rebanks family has been farming in the Eden Valley in Cumbria for many years. He learned his craft particularly from his grandfather whose methods of framing owed much to the past. 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. Now it is James turn to inherit the land - in which direction will he err, the old or the new?

As I’m surrounded by two farms and enjoy watching the annual cycle of activities I was interested to read this. It is a really well written book which captures the colours, the wildlife and the landscape beautifully, in places it is almost lyrical as it’s a love affair with the land. He is passionate in how he discusses and presents his views on how he wants to farm and his concerns about modern farming. I love the sections where he recounts his early life on his grandfathers farm whilst he imparts his wisdom. His grandfather sounds like a wonderful man and a truly great teacher with his respect and love for his animals and the land. His care for the curlews eggs just sums up the goodness in his heart. His grandfathers methods are the old ways which is extremely hard work but is ecologically sound. However, James and his father are caught between making their farm pay and balancing that with nature in a rapidly changing world. Much of the book looks at the ‘progress’ of the business school approach to farming, the growing industrialisation, enormous machinery, the widespread use of fertilisers and ripping up of ancient hedgerows. 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. 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.

James makes the decision to go for the new English Pastoral of the title, shepherding the land and his livestock in a caring way that will not make him rich but will bring joy and be a wonderful inheritance for his children. I love reading about the changes that he makes and I’m sure his grandfather would be smiling down in wholehearted approval. The curlews will be pleased too.

This is a very intelligent, inspirational, well researched and thoughtful book which reflects on the massive rural change and examines what the future may hold. He advocates diversity and protecting old systems but equally the need for efficiency in order to feed a growing population. There’s real ‘food for thought’ here.

With thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Press UK.

This was an incredible book and I think everyone should read it to understand about our countryside and where our food comes from. It is the tale of the authors journey through farming and remembering the old ways of his grandfather and father.
He takes on a journey to a hillside farm in the Lake District and the reader learns all about the nature, the animals and farming practices good and bad. James Rebanks is passionate about farming and by the end of the book the reader understands why. This book should be mandatory reading in schools.

James Rebanks is to farming what James Herriott is to animals.

His book looks at the life and times of 3 generations going through the ups and downs of farm life in Cumbria and the changes to farming and agriculture over that time.

James has a lovely relaxed, but informative way of telling his story and this takes him from Cumbria in England, across to New York, then Australia and back to Cumbria.

James comes across as the lovely type of man that you would like to sit and chat with over a few drinks down at his local pub. His farming life and his family mean the world to him.

If you are interested in farming, or country life in general, you will really enjoy this book.

The only criticism I would give personally, is that I would have liked to have seen the book go along a set timescale so that you could get an idea what was going on in the world at the time. Also photographs of the farm and family would have been a nice feature (I do not know but maybe these will be in the published work).

#EnglishPastoral #NetGalley

What an incredible ode to the countryside, and a stark reminder of how precarious its future is. James Rebanks is a wonderful story teller.