Up With The Lark

My Life On the Land

By: Joan Bomford

Narrated by: Anna Bentinck

'An evocative portrait of a forgotten period of Britain's farming history... is an ode both to the soil, and those who have worked it alongside her' Daily Telegraph

Joan Bomford wanted to be a farmer so much she always wore a tie like her dad. She ran away from school whenever she could to help him. As an 8 year-old she was the first person in the family to drive a tractor. No job was ever too tough for her. Now aged 83, she's still as active, still driving tractors, still feeding the farm's beef cattle and horses, and still giving riding lessons.

This is her account of a lifelong love-affair with the land and the people who work on it. With the warmth and wit of a born story teller, she tells us what it's been like to live through an era of enormous change, her love of animals kindled by her father's shire horses who did all the heavy work until machinery took over.
Up With The Lark is not only the portrait of a forgotten era, but also the story of one woman's overwhelming desire to do the thing she cared about more than anything else - being Farmer Joan.

(P)2015 Hodder & Stoughton©2015 Joan Bomford

Up With A Love For Life

I really enjoyed this gentle and loving memoir. Joan Bomford clearly loves life, her family, the land, farming and hard work. She is a capable strong woman and beautifully conveys her story to the reader. Bomford captures the joy of tinkering with machinery and the pleasure of a difficult job well done.

I found it refreshing to hear about a life where families stuck together and were kind to each other--even though they, at times, saw things differently. It seems as though people often write memoirs to express anger or how unhappy their lives have been, how mistreated they were. This book is a breath of fresh air.

The author presented a window into farm life in rural England from her earliest memories in the 1930s through her 83+ years. The stories of coping during WWII--Joan being 14 when the war ended--were evocative of the general can-do mentality of the family and the farming community around them.

Bomford is a plain talker, funny, engaging and touching in the way she portrays the people she has encountered in her long full life. How great it was as a reader to meet a person who knows who she is and is happy being just what she is. A positive listening experience.