The Running Hare: The Secret Life of Farmland

I do not write about or recommend books very often (although frankly, with the amount of reading I do, I probably should do so more often).  That said, I commend to your attention The Running Hare:  The Secret Life of Farmland by John Lewis-Stempel.

The book, in short, is the record of an experiment by Mr. Lewis-Stempel - a farmer and writer - to restore a 4 acre section of farmland in Herefordshire, England to wildflowers.  For a single year.  Then he has to return it to sod. The book becomes an experiment in measuring his field of wheat raised in a traditional way (versus "The Chemical Brothers" who farm next to his field) to attract birds and, ultimately, hares back to the field.

Mr. Lewis-Stempel is the kind of nature and agricultural writer I enjoy, the poetic and slightly aggravated sort in the vein of Gene Logsdon and Joel Salatin whom I love (but less so of Masanobu Fukuoka and David Masumoto and Wendell Berry) who are good writers and lyrical and yet are angry about the state of agriculture and how industry and government have encouraged bad practices as only someone who loves the land can be.

The book follows the course of a year, from January to December and chronicles the ploughing, harrowing, planting, growing, and sheaving of the wheat.  It also chronicles the return of wild birds and the hares (and foxes) to the fields.  It is also a delightful wander through history:  Lewis-Stempel is as prone to go to rabbit trails as I, and so we take trips down the ancient ploughboys' songs (the entire words to John Barleycorn are present), English countryside church carvings, names of wild birds (and their precipitous decline in England), names of hares (never good - hares were not popular in Old England), and endangered and distinct English flora (that many would call weeds).

The book is a pleasure as well because Lewis-Stempel is a good writer:  descriptive, engaging, with a slight sarcastic edge which applies equally to others and himself:

"What jobs require the social skills of a Simeon Stylites, he who sat on a pillar for thirty years?  Alone?

Oh, I know.  Farming.

Oh, I know.  Writing.  Consequently, you are reading this book."

But the book is often wistful.  And sad.  Ultimately it is a lament for a type of agriculture and the natural world which it created which is rapidly disappearing (the statistics on the drop in bird and flora populations tied to farming is shocking.  And frightening.).  And Lewis-Stempel ultimately acknowledges this.  Sadly, there is no sense from him as there is from Logsdon and Salatin that this is a trend that can be reversed or is being reversed as others reject the modern lifestyle and agricultural way of things and go "back to the land".  In that sense the book is not a uplifting song as much as a dirge.

But I think it could be.  If people got into their mind the true impact of losing traditional farming and agriculture - not just the rich history and social involvement and soil loss but the impact to the wildlife and plants that have become symbiotic with it - it might be a way to draw others into the fight that would otherwise not be engaged.

Regardless of the greater impacts, I cannot recommend this book highly enough.  If for no other reason that ultimately, there is a bit of hope at the end.  The hares return.  And they stay.