The Running Hare

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, although it left me feeling a strange mix of both hope and despair.Hope, because it shows just how the countryside can be rejuvenated through careful, nature-friendly farming. In this case Lewis-Stempel simply plants a wheat field with wild flower seeds in the mix, and creates a border around the field of wild flowers. The transformation is incredible, with a range of birds, animals and insects appearing.Despair, because it’s one field amongst millions, and though the author rants against the “silent, sterile, open-roofed factories for agribusiness,” he is fully aware that the “chemically addicted agri-capitalism” he describes has taken over much of western Europe’s fields and is unlikely to change, and that the decline of farmland flowers, insects and birds is likely to continue unless widespread change occurs and not piecemeal improvements here and there.In this respect, this book is more than an enjoyable book to read; it is a highly important one.

It is due to books like this that I am becoming enraptured by the British notion of private paradises in tiny, rainy corners, staving off modernity for centuries. The author is a gentleman farmer and sometime military historian whose family has farmed in Herefordshire since medieval times. The structure of the book follows Lewis-Stempel's one-year lease over a small tract of derelict farmland, upon which he grew a crop of wheat without pesticides or artificial fertilizers, partly utilizing pre-industrial farming techniques. Though he succeeded (modestly) his real purpose seems to have been to restore a postage-stamp preserve, welcoming native birds, mammals, and wildflowers, many of them endangered. The book serves several purposes, beginning as a jeremiad against the agribusiness that has eaten away at an English paradise not all that far removed from Tolkien's Shire - though it is also revealed in all its superstitious backwardness where appropriate. The author quotes generously but not overly from rural nature writers, poets, historians, and personal reminiscences. He also shares the English fascination for the origins of place-names. Lovely and thought-provoking.

Even if I didn't like the content of this book, I'd be thrilled to have it on my shelf. It's one of those books that's just a pleasure to hold. The cover art is beautiful and vibrant, the pages are creamy and have a hand-cut appearance, and the font and layout of the pages is well designed. I strongly recommend investing in the hardback edition.As for the book itself, it is every bit as good as it is beautiful on the outside. I heard an abridged version on BBC radio 4, and was excited to read the whole thing. It didn't disappoint.I won't spend much time explaining what the book is about as other reviewers and the publisher's description has done that adequately, but my one sentence summary would be: It is a memoir falling into the "nature writing" genre that chronicles the author's two year experiment of growing a traditional wheat field in the Herefordshire countryside.Jon Lewis-Stemple's poetic writing style is a perfect compliment to the subject matter. His descriptions will place the reader right in the fields he so vividly brings to life on the page. You will feel the sun on your face, hear the birds and smell the earth. There is plenty of agricultural history, folklore, quotations from poets, and the author's childhood memories as well. Every page oozes with Stemple's love and passion for the earth and the English countryside, yet I disagree with the reviews that found the book to be environmental propaganda. I found reading about his application of traditional farming practices and the results fascinating enough that even if I disagreed with Stemple's assessments and philosophy (which I don't, for the most part) I would still find this book enjoyable to read.

The narrator begins the story by recounting three dreams, in one he comes eye to eye with a corncrake. Populations of many British birds, wildlife, and flowers have plummeted in recent decades because of the change in agricultural practices, and corncakes disappeared entirely from Britain, except for a small reinstruction. He then begins daydreaming about whether he could grow wheat in the old fashion way and see if these depressed species would flourish. John Lewis-Stempel is a writer and farmer but lives in the rocky terrain near the Welsh-England border, an area unsuitable for wheat growing. So he returns to his native and nearby Herefordshire to see if he can lease land. This book is a delightful account of his endeavor. His first challenge is finding someone willing to rent him an arable field. The local farmers are afraid that he will introduce “Weeds” into their fields. Eventually, he does secure a parcel, and it is known locally as “Flinders.” The book begins in January, and it is several months until he can plow and plant wheat. He moves some sheep onto the place and puts out a bird feeder. John then keeps track of the birds on his parcel and in the surrounding “Chemical Brothers” lands. At one point, he spots a covey of red-legged partridges in a field a few miles away and begins to ponder how he can entice these birds to move to his.He plows part of the field with his pony, then the rest with a small old tracker, plants wheat by hand and then wildflowers around the wheat and throughout the field, too. He often calls his crop “corn,” and it turns out that in British English, “corn” can mean any type of grain. Later when the wheat has ripened, he rents a reaper-binder to harvest it into sheaves because this technique leaves a lot of seeds in the field. Eventually, he must replant the field into grass before his lease runs out.Throughout the book, the narrator describes the changes in Flinders as the wheat grows and the flowers bloom. Birds, wildlife (including hares), bees, and toads return to the area, and he attempts, unsuccessfully, to keep foxes out of his wildlife sanctuary. His reflections are delightful; exploring the history of the Herefordshire, previous farming techniques, and details of the birds and wildlife he observes. He muses about his childhood on a farm in Herefordshire.His writing is poetic, vivid and mesmerizing. If you like nature writing, this is a fascinating story. I felt like I had been to Flinders and recorded a pretty sizable bird list by the time I finished reading.

The author defied conventional, toxic and destructive farming methods that produce the so-called “cheap food” we all demand. Instead, he planted a small field with wheat and seeds of almost vanished wildflowers, used older types of machinery that were both more instructive of past methods and more forgiving for the soil. Neighbors - including the aptly dubbed “chemical brothers”, produced crops on poisoned and degraded land, barren of worms, insects, birds and animals. But in the modest compass of his Flinders field, John produced not only a goodly harvest for his farm animals, but also a bounteous refuge for a host of wildlife, from toads to hares, red legged partridges to humble earthworms.In this gem of a book, written with deep knowledge, poetic lyricism and stark realism, the writer reveals to the reader not only the true value of sound conservation and insights from our forebears, but also the miserable wreck of nature and our own well-being wrought by multinational chemical companies and machinery manufacturers. Poignant, cogent and heart-lifting by turns, this book reached out to me as few have. I lived for 14 years just down the road on the breast of the Sugar Loaf mountain in South Wales, so I know the places, the names, the smell of woods and the plants of the hedgerows and love them just as much as he.I commend this book to you. If you have an open mind, if you have any love for your fellow creatures on this abused planet, if you have any wish to see our modern situation squarely and fairly, buy, read, ponder... and then do something to make the world better, as John did.

The author now has a track record of several well received nature conservation books to his credit. This one is a bit different, an experiment at field scale over a year. Taking on an unpromising arable field in a difficult (weather wise) year, and using old fashioned traditional farming methods, to try and encourage plants,animals and birds to flourish and thrive, while still taking a viable crop.From an unpromising start, things steadily improve, with a mixture of farmland birds, the hares of the title, arable weeds, and associated insects being encouraged to thrive and survive, against the modern big business agricultural practices of surrounding famers. No sprays, an old Massey ferguson tractor, forgoing a modern combine harvester. There are trials and tribulations along the way, its hard work, sometimes 2 steps forwards, one step back, with a succession of false starts.Lewis Stempel writes in a relaxed self deprecating style, and has a keen observational eye, and a lyrical turn of phrase. It shows what can be achieved at field scale if you try, but the frustration is it was only a one year experiment, to be really worthwhile such areas need to be sympathetically farmed over many years, and be expanded into larger blocks, to really make a long term meaningful impact. So informative,entertaining, and interesting, but at the end of the day a bit too short term and small scale.He is playing with nature in an ephemeral way, rather than establishing a more permament larger scale paradign shift that will make a significant difference.

A joy. I loved this book. The evocative language, the descriptions, meticulous research and message of hope. As he says in the book, if he can encourage so much wildlife into just one field, what if there were a thousand fields?

The Running Hare is just the most sumptuously gorgeous book. John Lewis-Stempel is simply the best of the many outstanding nature writers we have today. His forte is writing in great detail about very small areas - by concentrating our minds on the detail he expands our knowledge and view of the world around us.In this book he takes as his focus a four acre unremarkable and featureless field that has been cultivated using modern intensive methods, with pesticides and industrial fertilisers. Using traditional methods his goal is to see how much wildlife can be tempted back to this barren and sterile environment. His ultimate prize is to entice a hare into his rural utopia and we follow his progress throughout a single year of ploughing, sowing reaping and harvesting.What John Lewis-Stempel achieves in such a small area and in so short a time, not to mention his ability to bring it all so vividly to life for the reader, is nothing short of astounding. There is hope for us all yet.

A gem of a book. I implore everyone who has a love of the countryside and a respect for the traditional ways of husbandry to read this. A entrancing journey into a 'real' farmers mindset; someone who cares deeply about the flora and fauna of our splendid English countryside. I learned so much from this book. Fascinating facts and statistics. Some of them regarding 'losses' make you gasp in despair. But as long as there are people like JLS the 'real' old countryside will not fail. Read on!