James Rebanks - Pastoral Song

This book only exists because I have a whole gang of amazing people who make my writing life possible, and to whom I owe a heartfelt thanks:

Thank you to Jim Gill and the rest of my team at United Agents.

Thank you to Helen Conford for commissioning this book and being my first editor, helping to shape it in the early months of its development. Thank you to Stefan McGrath, Ingrid Matts, Penelope Vogler, Jane Robertson, Helen Evans, and all the other Penguins for going above and beyond the normal efforts.

I will always be grateful to my editor Chloe Currens for helping me to make this book what it has become. I feel blessed to have such a brilliant editor who I know will always fight for me and push me to be better. I love being part of the Penguin familyit is an impossible dream-come-true for the teenager who used to marvel at the Penguin Classics on my mums bookshelves.

Thanks to all those who have helped me write this in countless little ways through our conversations on social media@herdyshepherd1.

Thank you to all the booksellers, journalists, and festival folk who have supported my writing and hand-sold my books.

Thanks to hundreds of readers and writers for being kind and supportive to me, both face-to-face and by writing. I havent had time to reply to all letters, but your thoughtful messages have meant a great deal to me.

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A farming life is full of people who teach you things and help, and I am grateful to all those folk who have done that for me. Thank you to my friends for their support, for keeping it real, despite the hype, and for giving uninvited visitors the wrong directions when they are trying to find my house.

Thanks to Alan Bennet, who is a good farming neighbor and whom I enjoy discussing these things with on the roadside by our fields. Thank you to Peter Lightfoot for keeping me right. Thank you to David Cannon for being a gentleman and the friend he said he would be. Thanks to Joe Weir for being my partner-in-crime with Herdwick tups. Thanks to Richard Woof for all the help and the chainsaw work on those bloody hedges. Thanks to Chris Davidson, Derek Wilson, Scott Wilson, Tom Blease, and Hannah Jackson for covering for me when I am away.

Thank you to Ken Smith for driving me down long, straight Midwestern roads in the United States. And thank you to Renae and Kevin Dietzel for giving me an insight into farming life in Iowa. Although I have written about the bad things in that farming system, it would be remiss not to point out that I have had the good fortune to meet many fine and progressive American farmers and to admire their fighting backmuch of the best regenerative agriculture thinking is coming out of America. I owe a debt to Greg Judy of Green Pasture Farms for teaching me a great deal about soil and grazing via his YouTube channel.

Our farm has transformed in the past ten years because a lot of people with environmental knowledge spent time with us and helped us to change how we think and how we manage our land. Lucy Butler and Will Cleasby came many years ago from Eden Rivers Trust and began our conversion. Thank you to the current staff of Eden Rivers Trust for carrying on that good work, including Elizabeth, Lev, Tania, and Jenny.

Rob Dixon has helped us understand our land, particularly our wild plants, and has got his hands very dirty laying dikes and planting the missing plug plants that will begin to flower in our meadows in the next two or three years.

Caroline Grindrod has perhaps had as much influence on our farm as anyone in the past few years, through teaching us about soil and grassland management, and she deserves sincere thanks.

Lee Schofield and other colleagues at the RSPB have been an interesting sounding board to exchange views with and have also shaped our thinking. Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree were kind hosts and guides to what they have done at Knepp Castlewhich has also influenced the way I think about our farm. Cain Scrimgeour and Heather-Louise Devey helped us to better understand our moths and bats and made our wildlife fun with their fresh perspective. Thank you to Becky Wilson for doing our carbon audit and multiple soil tests and bringing it to life with her enthusiasm. Thank you to the Woodland Trust for supporting us with trees. Thank you to everyone who has donated to do projects across the valleyparticularly the Bray family. Thank you to Natural England and Environment Agency staff, who have made good stuff happen behind the scenes. Thank you to Paul Arkle for helping us navigate the bureaucracy required to get our farm into the best environment schemes, and for being so enthusiastic about what we are trying to do. Thank you to James Robinson for his insights into dairy farming, and the challenges of doing anything different in the current system.

Huge thanks are due to my friend Danny Teasdale, who has helped us both understand rivers better, and found the money and the diggers to get stuff done. Danny is a pragmatic conservationist of the kind we need everywhereif youd like to help him do conservation works in this valley, please donate to his cause (www.ucmcic.com). I am proud of our Nature-Friendly Farming Partnership and hope it goes from strength to strength.

Thank you to everyone who has volunteered to plant trees and hedgerows. Thank you to all of our school partners, who remind us all the time how lucky we are to live here, and how much joy there is in sharing it.

Readers should also know that we are not unique or special: this valley and the next are full of good farming people all finding new ways to manage their land better for food production and for nature. There are a lot of very good farmers who care, and they give me hope.

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The following friends kindly read the manuscript of this book and provided helpful feedback: Nicola Wilding, Adam Bedford, Rob Dixon, Caroline Grindrod, Kathryn Aalto, and Patrick Holden. Thank you also to Jane Clarke for reading the manuscript and providing incisive comments.

Any mistakes, of fact or judgment, that remain are mine alone.

Thank you to Malcolm Maclean for letting me stay in the bungalow on Uig when I needed headspace.

Thank you to Maggie Learmonth and Ozman Zafar for being good friends and being there when needed. Thank you to my Polish brother Lukasz for coming one bad spring and just helping me without asking for anything in return; you picked me back up. And thank you to Nick Offerman for showing my work respect, making me laugh, and being a class act.

Thank you to Ian and Liz for all you do for us when things get a bit manic.

Thanks to my mum for being there and supporting us.

Thank you to my children, Molly (totally uninterested), Bea (mildly uninterested), Isaac (proud cheerleader), and Tom (completely oblivious and single-handedly responsible for about a year of delays), and my beautiful, tough, and very smart wife, Helen. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Helen. I am so lucky to have you backing me, doing all the mundane stuff that no one celebrates but without which our life would be a shambles. None of it gets done without you shoving me forward and propping me up when the going gets tough. I love you.

Lastly, this book was inspired by two of my heroinesRachel Carson and Jane Jacobswriters who dared to question the accepted wisdom of their age and fight back against the dogmas making things worse for ordinary people. And my sincerest thanks and respect to my friend Wendell Berry, who lit a way in the dark, long ago, for us all to follow.

The Shepherds Life

The Shepherds View

JAMES REBANKS runs a family-owned farm in Englands Lake District. He is the author of The Shepherds Life , which was named one of the ten best books of the year by Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times and was also a New York Times bestseller. He uses his popular Twitter feed (@herdyshepherd1) to share updates on the shepherding year.