Happy the Land (1946) and My Neck of the Woods (1950) by Louise Dickinson Rich

 

 

While compiling the list in my previous post I came across these two books, which I had more or less forgotten about.
The books contain stories about life in Louise's part of Maine. Some of them are about her, but most of them are about other people.
'Happy the Land' starts with a short foreword in which Louse explains her life so far at Forest Lodge (if you have read We Took to the Woods you will now all this). She moved there after marrying Ralph Ridge. They had two children, Rufus and Dinah.
'Then (in december 1944) the bottom dropped out of my life. Ralph died. (...)  I think I need not tell you what a terrible and shocking thing it was for me, nor underline the sense of hopelessness and loss that pervaded my days for months after that. (...) I can only say that in time I began to live again, and that this was a true rebirth: for all the things I'd loved about this life here, all the places Ralph and I had been together and the things we had done were restored with a freshness of novelty, but better than that - the clear definition of new vision brought to bear on things old and precious through association and memory and experience.
So I decided that I would write a book to please myself, about the things I love, while they still shone so brightly. This is that book.'

Both books are full of names of places but, most importantly, of people, for it is clear that, while Louise loves where she lives, it is the people that make the place special, and she could not do without them.
 

'Happy the Land' is the more personal of the two books, and this is your best bet if you want to know 'what happened next'.
After Ralph died Louise leaves Forest Lodge at very short notice as she feels it is foolish of anyone to live alone in this country, and because she wants to be with her children.  By spring 1945 she feels a need to return as she has not left things as they should have been left. She hitches a ride with Larry Parsons when he is Out (Louise writes In and Out with capital letters). She takes Catherine (Gerrish's daughter) and her dog Kyak with her. 'The next two weeks were perhaps the queerest two weeks I have ever spent in my life - two weeks lifted entirely out of time.' Writing, working and sunbathing, Louise slowly begins to feel better. As the spring is unusually hot, the ice is expected to be Out a month early, which means all the "sports' will be wanting to come hunt and fish early too. This means her dear neighbour Alice has a problem getting the hotel ready. And so Louise and Catherine help her, learning all about the hotel trade in the process. Louise stays on to work as chambermaid, laundress and chef's helper.
'Then one day I looked at the calender and it was the second of June. Good Lord, the kids would be coming home from school at the end of the week!' And so her hotel work is over.

Other chapters cover Louise and Ralphs's second home Pine Point, having friends to stay, living Outside in rented accomodation with the children so they can go to school and small town life. Some people she obviously cares a lot about get a chapter to themselves, such as Gerrish, the 'hired help', who lived with them at Forest Lodge, and Alice Parsons, her friend and neighbour, who runs a hotel with her husband Larry.

 

My Neck of the Woods was written because it had occurred to Louise that in her first book she had mostly written about herself and that she had not 'paid enough attention to one of the chief factors in making life good, or even possible for me: my friends and neighbours.'

These friends and neighbours are game wardens, people running a logging camp, a guide for 'sports' (tourists who come for the hunting and fishing), a 'hermit', farmers, hotel keepers and teachers. Ordinary people 'like the large majority of their compatriots, quietly going about their business from day to day, doing their best to get along.'

My copies are paperback editions which contain no illustrations. If anyone out there has a hardback copy with photo's I would love to hear from you!

Finally, a nice article on why so many people are still reading We Took to the Woods after so many years can be found here

A l-o-o-o-o-ng list!

I am not very good at keeping a record of all the book titles I come across and mean to read. With good intentions I start an ABC-folder, then end up with notes on bits of paper, newspaper cuttings and photo's taken in bookshops, and emails. Anyway, I thought I would make a list of potential titles for this blog (many provided by you). I already own a few of them which I will write about. The steam has gone from this blog a bit, I think because I have covered all my favourite titles. But I do mean to carry on.

As I was making this list I listened to a wonderful podcast on Dervla Murphy (my favourite travel writer) by Slightly Foxed 
I do recommend it, I discovered new things about her and look forward to rereading some of her books.
Next I will listen to Slightly Foxed podcast 13, about Nature Writing.

Here is the list. Any additions will be gratefully received! I will be updating this list now and again.

Titles added after 12 May 2025 are printed in bold face

Neil Ansell: Deep Country
Diana Ashworth: Iolo's Revenge
Dave Atkins: The Cuckoo in June
Lillian Beckwith: The Hills is Lonely a.o.
Richard Benson: Farm
Teleri Bevan: Guardian of Snowdonia
Teleri Bevan: They Dared to Make a Difference
Dan Boothby: Island of Dreams
Sally Borst: Self Deficiency
Hope Bourne: Wild Harvest
Mark Boyle: The Way Home
Kate Bradbury: The Bumble Bee Flies Anyway
Steve Brown: A Song for Ewe
Hilary Burden: A Story of Seven Summers
Daniel Butler: Urban Dreams, Rural Realities
Nancy Campbell: Thunderstone
Cassels and Baer: Our Wild Farming Life
Mary Clifford: Hill-Farm Hazard
Janet Corke: A Hidden Home in the Gwydyr Forest
Elisabeth Cragoe: Cowslips and Clover, a.o.
George Courtauld: An Axe, a Spade and Ten Acres
Molly Douglas: Going West with Annabelle
Monica Edwards: The Unsought Farm
T.Firbank: I bought a Mountain
J.A.Fitton
Frank Fraser Darling: Island Years, Island Farm
Mary Elizabeth Fricke: My Life on a Missouri Hog Farm
Joyce Fussey
Carol Madeline Graham:  A  Shoulder on the Hill
Charlotte Gray: Sisters in the Wilderness
Jenny Green: A Foot in the Bucket
E.M.Harland: Farmer's Girl, a.o.
G.Henderson: The Farming Ladder
Mary Hiemstra: Gully Farm
Pam Houston: Deep Creek
Sue Hubbell: A Country Year a.o.
John Jackson: A Bucket of Nuts and a Herring Net
Deborah Kellaway: The Making of an English Country Garden
Rachel Knappett: A Pullet on the Midden
Patrick Laurie: Native
June Knox-Mawer: SA Ram in the Well
Margaret Leigh: A Spade among the Rushes
Jackie Moffat: The Funmy Farm
C.Munro: Ponies at the Edge of the World
Sarah Olds: Twenty Miles from a Match
Elaine Penwarden: It's the Plants that Matter
B.Plummer: The Cottage at the End of the World
Sue Powell: Holding on a Hillside
James Rebanks: The Sheperd's Life
C.Reynolds: Glory Hill Farm
Patrick Rivers: Living on a Little Land
Cecil Roberts: Gone Rustic
Rebecca Schiller: Earthed
Kay Sexton: The Allotment Diaries
Ken Smith: The Way of the Hermit
Lalage Snow: My Family and Other Seedlings
Tina Spencer-Knott Fools Rush In
E.Pruitt Stewart: Letters of a Woman Homesteader
Mark Sundeen: The Unsettlers
Derek Tangye: many books
Thelwell: A Millstone Round my Neck
Iain R.Thomson Isolation Shepherd
Marjorie Hessell Tiltman: A Little Place in the Country, a.o.
Catherine Parr Trail: The Canadian Settler's Guide
Sally Urwin: Diary of a Pint-sized Farmer
P.Waling: Counting Sheep
Terry Walton: My Life on a Hillside Allotment
Janet White: The Sheep Stell
Henry Williamson: Tales of a Devon Village a.o.

a.o. = and others

More Rose Cottage and Abbots Well

'Outside in the lane, under a bank of fern and bracken and shaded by a single birch tree, are the ancient wells of Abbots Well ...' writes Irene Soper in My New Forest Home.

You can see the well, and the cottage, in this film which describes a walk in the New Forest. This was another find by Joanna.

Rose Cottage in Irene Soper's garden

Kind reader Joanna sent me some photo's of Rose Cottage (taken in approx. 2021), the cottage in Irene Soper's garden. It used to serve as a home, lastly for herbalist and writer Juliette de Bairacli-Levy. I had never seen a photo of the interior of the cottage, so I was very excited to get one. Thank you very much Joanna!

20-3-2025 I have added the information Joanna sent me:
'The author and herbalist Juliette de Bairalcli Levy lived in this Rose Cottage at Abbots Well in the New Forest for three years soon after the birth of her second child in Spain in 1954. Her memoir Wanderers in the New Forest was published in 1958 with a foreword by the painter Augustus John. After visiting John’s former Fryern Court home and studio at Fordingbridge, I went to meet the late Arthur and Irene Soper who owned the cottage property. They were lovely, telling many stories about Abbots Well, showing me the interior of the cottage, the wonderful spring where Juliette, neighbors and ponies drank the clear cold water, and Latchmore Brook.'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Small Country Living Goes On, by Jeanine McMullen, with illustrations by Trudi Finch (1990)

 

For her radio programme A Small Country Living Jeanine visits the Baker family who keep Anglo-Nubian goats. Jeanine has often considered buying them but has been put off by stories of their possessive and neurotic temperament. She has more than enough to deal with at home already. 

However, when she enters the shed 'the goats were in a state of absolute calm as they sat dreamily cudding on their thick beds of straw'. 'It was a world away from the constant drama's of my own goat-shed, where I sometime feel more like the headmistress of a girls' school along the St Trinian's line, than a simple goat-keeper.
Perhaps, I thought, as we stood amongst the beautifully behaved Anglo-Nubians (...) goats, like any other animals, are simply reflecting the inward state of the people who look after them.  Given the steadying influence of the Bakers, my own British Toggenbergs might become models of rectitude; given my usually manic state of mind pervading their lives, the Baker Anglo-Nubians might turn into raging delinquints.'

I was glad Jeanine came to this insight because I was getting a bit tired of her constant state of panic. Always too late, too dark, too much work in too little time, too icy a road, not enough petrol, danger from the IRA, violent thunderstorms ... Nothing really goes wrong, on the contrary: she is welcomed everywhere and many people help her. But Jeanine makes the reader feel things will end badly regardless.

I found this book, the third of Jeanine McMullen's memoirs, at Barter Books in Alnwick.
Jeanine continues to tell us the story of her small country living in Wales, but mostly this is a record of het adventures while making her BBC radio programme of the same name.
Mrs P. (Jeanine's mother) is still there, as are her neighbours, faithfull vet Betie Ellis and of course her beloved animals.

We learn that one of the reasons for moving from Australia to the UK is her health: '... some freak of those ancient genes of ours has made it impossible to survive the Australian summer without being half-dead with asthma or hay fever ...'
Readers of other books covered in this genre may be interested in her visits to Ruth Janette Ruck in Wales and Derek and Jeannie Tangye in Cornwall.

Organizing the trips to make her programme is always a stressfull business: to save costs lots of visits have to be squeezed in as little time as possible. Sometimes she has a producer to help and accompany her. She also has helpers to 'house and mother sit' and then there are her faithfull neighbours, always ready to drive her to a far-flung destination. At home there is the farming life we got to know in her earlier books, with horse Doli and goat Dolores as the main characters.

Towards the end of the book Mrs.P. starts getting health problems, and is hospitalized for weeks. In the end she returns to Australia. 

I think this book will be especially interesting to lovers of her radio programme. Unfortunately, the Archive Hour of A Small Country living is no longer available

No Matter How Many Skies Have Fallen: back to the land in wartime Britain, by Ken Worpole (2021)

 

 

Well, I can't say I wasn't warned! Sue told me it wasn't my kind of book, but I was stubborn and ordered it anyway. The subject, and all the names mentioned made me curious.

 

 

However, I found it very hard going. I like stories and this is more like a sociological study. I only managed to read the first few chapters, then gave up. I have just been leafing throught the book and found it hard to keep concentrating on a text that  is so full of names, quotes and references.

For those who like this sort of study there are reviews to be found on the blog Caught by the River and in History Today

Seventy Miles from a Lemon by Haydie Yates (1949)

 

 

Now this was a find! During our stay in London we looked around Blackheath before walking through the park to the river (recommended, you get a fabulous view of Docklands with Greenwich in the foreground). Of course we stopped at the wonderful Bookshop on the Heath, a small shop but I certainly felt there were discoveries to be made there. The cover of this book at once caught my eye and I quickly knew it was one for me.

 

 

I have to say though that maybe the cover is the nicest thing about this book! Haydie Yates does not really tell a story, instead she bombards you with an endless stream of anecdotes, some of which are so far fetched I began to doubt how much of the book is true.

 

After a trip to Europe, Haydie and her husband Ted quickly decide city life is no longer for them. They quit their jobs, sell up, pack their belongings and drive to Wyoming, where Haydie has worked before, on a dude ranch (a farm that caters to tourists and offers such activities as riding and camping).
They buy land (and cattle) near Sheridan, build a basic log cabin and buy horses. There is an endless stream of visitors, two of which, Lester and Hallie, pitch their tent near them. They strike a deal:
'They could get logs off the mountains for us and then help us build a barn for them.'
Their first winter is very hard, they are quickly snowed in and have a hard time remembering what date it is. 'We had caught New Year's Day on the radio just before the batteries petered out. That's how we knew it was February when our food ran short.'

Here is an example of Haydie's weird anecdotes: they build a sleigh for the horses to pull to take them into town to buy provisions. On the return journey the runners fall off the sleigh, after which the horses pull the box until that too falls apart. They then find their old car, which the horses pull until that falls apart too. I found myself thinking: yeah, right.

It is unclear what Haydie and Ted do themselves in running the farm. They employed people to cook, to put up buildings, start a garden and an irrigation system etc. Sadly Haydie does not tell us anything about that, the garden is just suddenly there. Their income comes from selling cows. That is until they find themselves publisher and editor of the local paper. This is another improbable tale: they are staying in town after the birth of their son Ted when a man walks in who announces that they will be running his newspaper from now on.

The next few years they spend the week in town, running the paper, and the weekend at the farm (which is presumably run by employees). We get lots of anecdotes of Sheridan's excentric inhabitants.
There is the banker's wife: 'She always appeared at our modest after-dinner poker parties dressed in a British Guardsmen dress uniform which set off her trim boyish figure very smartly. The effect however was slightly marred by a small beaded reticule clutched in her hand in whose interior reposed a flask of gin.'

At first a nurse is hired to look after Ted, later a tutor arrives to teach young Ted and Eames, Haydie's son from her first marriage. A schoolroom is added to the property for this purpose.

Haydie observes: 'It was not easy to conform to the white-collar conventions of a small-town newspaper editor's job, and furthermore I had no will to do so. (...) Most of the sparse female population in the cow country is tied to the cookstove and cradle. (...) I wanted to do it or I probably wouldn't have. But it was a big quid to chew.' It is hard to get used to office life: 'I was conditioned to an eighteen-hour day - each one of them a serious skylark - wrestling something, throwing something, riding something, pushing, pulling, lifting, or hanging on for dear life.'

Changes in federal rules and regulations start making life difficult for Haydie and Ted and, in need of money, they head back east in search of jobs. They find a place to live outside New York. The book ends with their departure for Florida, where 'There are great chunks of land in remote corners that nobody has ever lived on, new and rugged and rich.'

An amusing tale, but don't expect to get much information on how to run a farm in the American West!

I could not find any more information on Haydie Yates. As far as I know she did not write any more books. She passed away soon after finishing this book, in 1950. Her son Ted became a documentary filmmaker. He died while covering the Six Day War in the Middle East in 1967.

Back flap

Add found in the book

Growing Goats and Girls by Rosanne Hodin (2020)

 

Well, this is a first: a book endorsed by Salman Rushdie! The publisher seems to be hedging his bets by adding a quote from the Sunday Express. These quotes plus the book's title don't do it any justice, they made me expect one of those meant-to-be-funny memoirs of smallholders swimming in mud while the goats eat their clothes, the roof leaks and the electricity goes off. But it is nothing of the kind. Rosanne Hodin can write. And she really ís funny.

Rosanne does not tell us a story from beginning to end but she presents us with a collection of short observations, anecdotes and thoughts, sometimes only half a page long. I assume this makes for easier writing. It is also very nice to read, I would say it is a great bedtime book. However, the drawback is that you don't really get an idea of developments, and that you are kept wondering: what happened next? 

These are the first lines of the book: 'I am hunched and grey, spat out by the hospital. They have battled with my bleeding and doped and stupefied me and the baby has gone.' Wow. Not exactly what you would expect from 'perfect escapist reading'. But after those first lines the tone of the book quickly changes. Escaping from her noisy neighbour Rosanne drives into Liskeard and sees a farm for sale in an estate agent's office. Three pages further on the farm has been bought, the move made.

 

Soon after moving into the farm, bringing their beehives,  Rosanne and husband Michael acquire goats, a cow, chickens, ducks, geese and guineafowl. 'Soon our Large Bottom Farm is ringing with the sound of contented creatures. We feel like Noah and his missus.' Daughter Morwenna is born and Rosanne and Michael find their feet as parents and farmers. A few years later Georgiana is born.

Rosanne goes raspberry picking with Morwenna in a baby carrier. 'I'm suddenly aware that the burble and chat from the baby has stopped and I have a sharp flash of worry that she has fallen asleep before she should. I put my fruit-stained hand on her head to turn it and look down. I find a beaming creature whose face is smeared with mushed berries, juice and the fragments of leaves. Her hands are red and sticky, her face is red and sticky, my T-shirt is red and sticky.'

Michael starts work as a teacher, while Rosanna supplements their income by taking in foreign students who come to learn English. She converts cottages on the property into holiday lets. Later she goes back to university before also becoming a teacher. Combining al these tasks is not easy. At one time she installs goat kids, who need to be bottle fed, into the back of her car, so she can feed them in between classes. This nearly gets her into trouble. 'The NSPCC have been called to investigate why babies needing bottle feeding have been abandoned in a van."

Another time they are going away for Christmas, 'and we can hardly expect anyone to come over to milk the goats', so they also come to stay with Rosanne's parents. The goats are installed in the garage.'They allow us to milk them and feed them and shut the door. But all of this is too strange for them and as we adults are sitting and eating dinner, the call of our baffled goats bleating can be heard up and along the Daglingworth valley.
A sort of Christmas carol.' 

 

 

I will give you some more quotes to give an idea of the book.

Rosanne is invited to a Tupperware party, but there is nothing she want to buy. But wait, 'that box might do for putting a leg of goat in to thaw from the freezer. Oh, no, says the Tupperware lady, you can't do that, it's a cake box. Yes, I argue pointlessly, but it will be fine for the meat and stop the cat gnawing at it and dragging it about the kitchen. Suddenly things seem to have gone very quiet ...'

'The girls have asked for riding lessons. Michael puts on a grim face about this. He has decided that we will never initiate anything horsey, but if they beg, harass, hassle and torment us about having a pony and the begging lasts for at least two months, then we will consider it. Two months have passed and it seems that they have forgotten about horses altogether. Michael is packing away his horse skills with a smug look and is buying sailing magazines. I am alarmed.'

'Buddleia attracts butterflies and me. I see them now fluttering around the two bushes, a standard, pale mauve buddleia that grows in every waste land site, and our garden specimen in deep purple. (...) I am trying not to frighten off the butterflies, but I have my nose buried into one of the marginal flowers, whose point is drooping and not yet blossoming and whose swollen body is a mass of tiny flowers with a coloured inset. The smell is ... summer, laziness, childhood.'

'Someone is coming in through the catflap at night and upsetting dishes of dried cat stars and leaving poo. I ask the cats about this, and we look together at the mess and they give worried looks with big eyes. The girls and I become detectives and look for further clues. (...) Georgie finds another poo and we bend down to inspect it. Too small for fox. Definitely not rat, because rat poo is oval like olive pits. We keep looking until Morwenna sees the culprit curled up between the washing machine and the wall, pressed close to some insulated water pipes.
We have a snoozing hedgehog.'

This is a book about running a smallholding but it is also very much about family life. I loved Rosanne's down to earth attitude to raising children, her  'free range children' as she calls them. 

After thirty years Rosanne and Michael sell the farm and go and work as volunteers in Africa.

'We need to find home for all the critters. They must go because we must go. We have shed creatures before, when there have been too many or someone has wanted to buy; we have culled almost everything if we needed meat or when old age overtook a lingering animal, and we have even dispatched cockerels as severe punishments for bad behaviour. But we feel tender about our assorted flocks and herds and today we are bracing ourselves to hustle twelve ducks into the van and deliver them to a good home at Lantallack.
This is absurdly simple, the trail of food is an easily followed pathway to the van, the future surely is bright for a well-behqved duck. But we have heavy hearts, our innocent ducks will not know the new dangers.
Letting go is harder than I thought.'

A lovely book, highly recommended.

Barter Books

 

 

During a recent stay in England I was able to visit Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland. Fortunately, watching an episode of 'Vera' had taught me that Alnwick is pronounced Allick, so the bus driver understood me when I asked for a ticket! It takes 90 minutes to get there from Newcastle and Barter Books has its own bus stop.

 

 

Much has been written about this second hand bookshop in an old railway station and when I entered I certainly felt all my expectations were coming true: nicely decorated rooms, a large mural, a toytrain, lots of chairs and sofa's, open fires and a great Station Buffet. This is certainly a destination where you can spend some time.

 

As for the books, I'm not so sure. As they cater for all subjects (see floorplan ) there is a little bit of everything. My impression was that, apart from the antiquarian books behind glass doors, they mostly stock books from the late 20th century and from this century.  When I enter a secondhand bookshop there is always that feeling of excitement, that you might discover something unexpected, find that illusive book, but that wasn't the case here. I had expected to spend hours there, but found I had quickly seen everything. All in all I would say if you have a general interest in books and like reading novels, then this is a great place to visit. If you're interest in is one particular subject, then not so much. But if you are in the neighbourhood: go, if only to have lunch or tea. 

There were two things I found odd: the loud music being played, which I felt did not suit the atmosphere of a bookshop, and the fact that lots of people brought their, sometimes very large, dogs to the shop.

Read all about Barter Books here 

Of course, these were the shelves that I was specially interested in. As you can see, not many books and most of them recent. But I did buy two, which I will write about later. Another book was found in Alnwick's other secondhand bookshop, run by Lions.

 

 

 

The Moon's Our Nearest Neighbour by Ghillie Basan (2001)

 

Ghillie and Jonathan Basan have always longed to live in a remote spot. For two years they have been looking for a small cottage with some land and outbuildings. By chance, a friend spots an ad in Exchange and Mart and they set off to view Corrunich Cottage, in the Eastern Highlands.  

'The track seemed to go on and on, over pot-holes and through snow-drifts along the side of a dense plantation of spruce.' 'To our eyes it looked enchanting. Set in open moorland, 1,500 feet above sea level, with hills rising steeply behind it, it was indeed remote.' At last they have found what they were looking for. The cottage has no central heating, no mains electricity and no phone. By selling their Edinburgh flat they can buy it outright and live off the proceeds for a year. In the long term they plan to organize photography workshops in the converted outbuildings.

The book consists of a series of very short 'chapters', observations, of a few pages, concerning: The Move, Settling in, and Making a Living.

Slowly they settle in to the cottage and get to know their neighbours. They are surrounded by sheep, lambs and ponies (including a wild stallion) who eat their washing. They get used to struggling with the generator and doing without electricity from time to time. Ghillie is an experienced cook who is used to working in primitive surroundings with basic equipment.

'Indeed, the life that first winter was fairly idyllic. Simple and solitary. Time to think and reflect.' Although: 'There was the continual fixing and filling of the generator, digging the car out of the snow, walking up and down the track for mail and supplies ...' Much later in the book, Ghillie observes: 'And it is staggering how time-consuming just living can be. There's the walking out to fetch supplies, the wood to chop and ailing machines to fix. There are gas tubes to drag up and down and vehicles to drag out of snow. There's no end to the chores (...) We can't just call in a plumber, electrician or mechanic, as no one would come.'

Their plan to organize photography workshops does not convince the man from the Enterprise Board ('The way I see it is to open the barn to bus parties and to offer tea and cakes'), so they will have to think of other ways to make a living. So Jonathan starts working in Edinburgh a few days a week and does freelance photography work.  They also decide to revive a cookbook typescript, Classic Turkish Cookery, which has already been rejected by many publishers. But it is not easy keeping in touch with publishers and employers when you live up a track, with no phone or fax! In the end the book is published and it is even nominated for an important award. 

I found this book a very entertaining and easy read, perfect bedtime reading in fact, apart from the descriptions of the delivery of Ghillie's babies. She had the hardest time, with both her daughter (Yasmin) and her son (Zeki), and I found myself gripping my e-reader *) and wanting to close my eyes. Poor woman. But fortunately in both cases she takes home a healthy baby. They find the arrival of a baby changes the attitude of some of the locals: 'A couple on their own can cause suspicion and rumour. A baby makes sense. It conveys a degree of permanency'.

After a while they start converting some of the barns into a studio, dark-room and office, they build a greenhouse and make a kitchen garden, all the time struggling to stay afloat.

'So why do we stay? People often ask us this. Wouldn't it be easier to live in the city and come to the cottage for weekends? Maybe. But now that we've had a taste of the wilderness  and isolation, it's difficult to step out of it. '

'For here, in the depth of the highlands, more than any other place we know, we can give our children the chance to run free in the wild open spaces. And, to us, that's the biggest dream of all.'

Ghillie seems to have found her calling in Scotland and still lives in the cottage, without Jonathan. She writes cookery books, gives workshops and rents out a converted barn. Her children have their own businesses in Scotland but also join forces with their mum. You can read all about it here

*) I prefer to buy paper copies of all the books I write about on this blog, but in this case I was not able to.

One Man & His Plot by Michael Leapman (1976).

I bought this book in 1979 and have not really looked at it since. Like some other books I bought in the seventies it is completely falling apart. 

In the UK 1974 was a year of strikes, power restrictions and the three-day week. And there were shortages. 'Lavatory paper, as I recall, was the first item to fall into short supply.' Sounds familiar ...   When broad beans become hard to find Times Diarist Michael Leapman decides to see about finding an allotment. This is not easy, with waiting lists everywhere, but eventually he finds one near Brixton prison, owned by the Water Board, at 35 p a year. The plot has not been used for ages and is completely overgrown with weeds.

Micheal plans to reclaim the plot gradually and sows and plants on the parts he has cleared. He reports on his progress now and then, striking a chord with readers and the letters pour in, often with (conflicting) advice. Later in the year comments and parodies appear in other papers. 

Balancing working on the allotment with his duties as a journalist is hard and he is not really able to interest family members into helping him: 'my sister-in-law went armed with a folding chair, a rug and a Sunday newspaper, which was nog the idea at all.' However, he finds that even when he returns to find everything overgrown with weeds, the shallots, beans and lettuces are still doing well.

Later on, there is the problem many gardeners face: 'your produce always comes to maturity just as you go away on holiday.' Once again the vegetables survive his absence and he continues to harvest tomatoes, lettuces, marrows and beans. One of the marrows he grows and writes about with great enthousiasm is 'Vegetable Spaghetti.' To his delight Jane Grigson,  a famous cookery writer, telephones him to say that she is writing a book about vegetables and can he advise her on how to cook a vegetable spaghetti marrow?  Alas, I got rid of this cookbook some years ago (because, although I liked reading it I never cooked any recipes from it) so I can't look up her recipe.

The book ends with a list of the vegetables that Michael grew, with notes on how they did, and tips on what to do when.

If you grow vegetables this is a fun book to read about a fellow gardener's experiences. However,  Michael was in such a hurry to finish the book that he did not wait to see how his onions and pumpkins did, nor do we know if he continued with the allotment.

It is also a little time capsule from a bygone era: a time when books on gardening and cooking were quite rare, use of weedkillers was quite common and the only thing you could do with a marrow was to boil it for half an hour and eat it with pepper and salt.

Micheal Leapman wrote many more books on a variety of subjects. He died in 2023. His obituary can be found here .

Wind in the Ash Tree by Jeanine McMullen, with illustrations by Michael Woods (1988)

  

This is Jeanine McMullen's second book on her Small Country Living.  It is about the people she meets, but mostly it is about animals. We know from her first book that Jeanine loves them and feels a need to surround herself with them. That book ended with her receiving a legacy from her father, her mother returning to Australia, and her proposal for a BBC programme called  A Small Country Living being accepted. 

In this book she backtracks a bit as once again she worries about paying the bills and hopes the BBC will take up her idea for a programme. She does not seem to be made for living alone and, after the death of her beloved whippet Merlin, and other animals falling sick, she is relieved to hear her mother, 'Mrs. P' is once again on her way to Wales.

Jeanine's small country living includes dogs, sheep, pigs, horses, ducks, chickens and goats. She is always determined not to buy any more only to succumb to temptation. First she finds a chihuahua called Winston for Mrs.P, then she is anxious to find a replacement for Merlin and a new puppy joins the pack: his great nephew called Merlyn. On one of the final pages we find Jeanine unable to resist a lurcher puppy: Lilly.

 

Most of the animals we got to know in the first book are still at the farm. A few halfbred Icelandic sheep are added when she meets a breeder for her radio show.

Doli, Jeanine's horse starts suffering from an assortment of ailments, which seem to be an indication of boredom, so she is sold to a friend who runs the Smallholder's Training Centre were there is plenty of work for her. A few years later, much to her delight, she is able to buy her back.

 

Halfway throught the book the BBC finally commissions her to make a programme.  Much to her relief it does well: 'For a success it was, in spite of being tucked away on a mid-afternoon slot and quite unpublicized. The morning after it was broadcast, there come a pile of letters which people must have written the moment we were off the air. (..) All of them were ecstatic.' Jeanine travels the length and breadth of the UK to find places, people and animals for her programme.

While this is certainly a book for people who like to read about animals, I enjoyed it because of the interesting people Jeanine meets. I had fun trying to find out more about them.

There is vet Bertie Ellis who had a long career and served on the RCVS Council.

Sue and Darrell Kingerlee ran a bookshop in Llandovery. Darrell wrote Llandovery Album: Pictures of a Welsh Market Town.

Muriel and Jack Sassoon who ran an antiques shop and a second hand bookshop in London.

Ian Wilson who wrote The Turin Shroud.

Gerald and Imogen Summers. Gerald wrote The Lure of the Falcon,  illustrated by 'the Artist ', Jeanine's erstwhile partner, whose name seems to be Duncan McLaren.

Madge Hooper, who wrote several books on herbs.

Antique dealer Barbara Leach.

Andrew and Carry Naylor , Sarah Pitt and Monica Sims, who all worked for the BBC

Diana Joly who bred icelandic sheep.

Artist Leesa Sandys-Lumsdaine.

Sedly Sweeny (who was really called Sedley Bell-Irving Sweeny) and who wrote The Challenge of Small Holding.

 Now I am on the lookout for book number three: A Small Country Living Goes On.

Wil den Hollander - Bronder

While staying at a campsite recently I was browsing the books left behind by other campers and I noticed 'Johanna' by Wil den Hollander. I took it home because I own most of this author's other books though it had been a very long time since I read any. It was only after reading part of 'Johanna' that the penny dropped: these books have a connection with my 'blog books'. It had never occurred to me, I suppose because they are on another floor, on another shelf, with my Dutch novels.

I first encountered Wil den Hollander's stories in my teens, when they were serialised in the weekly magazine my mother read. The author, born in 1915, had emigrated to France in 1947 with her husband and young son to start a farm. In France three daughters were born. She had a very hard life in a strange country, running the household, looking after the children, making cheese, looking after the animals and kitchen garden. She had a taciturn husband who mostly left her to get on with things.

And she wrote. I would say her books are autobiographies disguised as novels. I bought the books in my twenties and found them fascinating, but I had not looked at them until now. There was one thing I remembered most of all: the massive meals Wil had to cook. At times of harvesting or threshing many men came to work at the farm and they had to be fed. In Holland she would have given them sandwiches but in France that just would not do.

Just to give you an idea here is a loose translation from a chapter on threshing. This meant 20 men coming to help and they had to be fed five times a day. Three meals consisting of bread with cheese or meat, cider and coffee with brandy. 

'But it was the hot meals I worried about. Simone helped me draw up a lunch menu: hors d'oeuvres, stock made with three kilo's of beef to which I had to add cream and eggs and tapioca. Followed by green beans in cream, mashed potatoes, cauliflower, four boiled chickens with a creamy sauce, a few fruit tarts, followed by coffee and brandy. In the evening I could serve the leftovers with salad, fried potatoes, and a roast.

The food that had been so carefully prepared was appreciated, but the pudding served with cream and fruit was received with mirth: did Madame think she was entertaining babies? Anything containing milk was not men's food.

I had taken six liters of brandy from the barrel and still they were yelling for more.... 

Wil was a natural storyteller and I was fascinated once again. Apart from books on her farm she wrote about her daughter, who suffered from MS and died young, and her son, who was conscripted into the army at the time of the war in Algeria. I can certainly recommend these books to my Dutch readers.

More information in Wil den Hollander can be found here.