Pastoral Song: A Farmer's Journey

Product Information

Unlike the traditional pastoral songs of the past, from Theocritus to Milton and Shelley, Pastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey (previously published as English Pastoral in the UK), is written by a real, lifelong farmer. This is an often lyrical, sometimes nostalgic, classic rural-memoir stuff that the Brits have done well for generations. In this brilliant, deeply moving book, James Rebanks details what true rebellion and real bravery look like. As I sat in the back of his tractor watching the seagulls, it felt as if Grandad and the seagulls behind his plow were part of the same whole, the one as true as the other. He learned his craft particularly from his grandfather whose methods of framing owed much to the past.

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

We sit silently in the waiting room, perched awkwardly, like nervous crows, on the stiff-backed chairs. A healthy farm culture can be based only upon familiarity and can grow only among a people soundly established upon the land; it nourishes and safeguards a human intelligence of the earth that no amount of technology can satisfactorily replace. And yet many farmers are forced to it - or were originally - because they could not compete in any other way with huge industrial farming complexes. I feel very grateful to James Rebanks for writing it and for everything he and his family are doing, and reading the book has tempered my views on rewilding, certainly. 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.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.

Orion Magazine - Pastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey

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. Anyone who’s interested in farming, where their food comes from, or passionate about environmentalism. The first mention of my family on paper concerns a legal dispute about land ownership with a local aristocrat in 1420, in the neighboring parish.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. 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. On his Cumbrian farm, in the Eden Valley, James looks back with nostalgia to early memories, sitting on the back of his grandfathers’ tractor, plowing fields in the old traditional (but nowadays considered less efficient way), the gulls giving chase, their excited screeches filling the air, and then, their work done, heading homewards beneath a blue black sky filled with a million glittering stars. English Pastoralis a joy to read and extremely moving – a book which should be read by every citizen.

Pastoral Song - James Rebanks - Hardcover - HarperCollins Canada Pastoral Song - James Rebanks - Hardcover - HarperCollins Canada

Granted this book describes the author's farm in England, but I'm mostly referring to the US in my comments.I had inherited a complex bundle of economic and ecological challenges—and that, perhaps, was what it really meant to be a farmer.