The Running Hare

The Secret Life of Farmland

De: John Lewis-Stempel

Narrado por: Bernard Hill

The Sunday Times best seller. Winner of the Thwaites Wainwright Prize 2015. BBC Radio 4's 'Book of the Week'.

Traditional ploughland is disappearing. Seven cornfield flowers have become extinct in the last 20 years. Once abundant, the corn bunting and the lapwing are on the Red List. The corncrake is all but extinct in England. And the hare is running for its life.

Written in exquisite prose, The Running Hare tells the story of the wild animals and plants that live in and under our ploughland, from the labouring microbes to the patrolling kestrel above the corn, from the linnet pecking at seeds to the seven-spot ladybird that eats the aphids that eat the crop. It recalls an era before open-roofed factories and silent, empty fields, recording the ongoing destruction of the unique, fragile, glorious ploughland that exists just down the village lane.

But it is also the story of ploughland through the eyes of man who took on a field and husbanded it in a natural, traditional way, restoring its fertility and wildlife, bringing back the old farmland flowers and animals. John Lewis-Stempel demonstrates that it is still possible to create a place where the hare can rest safe.

©2016 John Lewis-Stempel (P)2017 Random House Audiobooks

trapped thinking.

It's entertaining and enjoyable. Having said that I feel this book should be pitched as a study into how a farmer can make monoculture as benign as possible. And as such it's interesting.
However monoculture has to become our past. Permaculture and an understanding and respect for the soil -food-web our future.

This book is a beautiful complaint but offers no solution, other than 'be more like me'. things would improve if more people were, but it offers little more than 'a bit better'. However ecosystem recovery with rewilding and permaculture is possible.