Irene Soper's paintings

I know many of you are interested in Irene Soper, so I was very grateful to receive information from one of her cousins. She told me she owned some of Irene's and Arthur's paintings. Here they are:

 

 

 

She also told me that Irene, who sadly passed away a few years ago, self-published a book in 2000, called In Grandfather's Footsteps.

 

 

People looking for informaton on Irene and Fordingbridge  (where she lived) can also try the local Facebook group 

All my other posts on Irene can be found here 

My thanks again to Irene's cousin!

Good Husbandry: Growing a Family on a Community Farm, by Kristin Kimball (2019)

This is Kristin Kimball's second book. In her first, The Dirty Life, she describes meeting her partner, Mark, and moving to the small village of Essex NY where they start a new farm. This book is about life on Essex farm. Kristin and Mark run it with a mixed bag of helpers.

I have often wondered, when reading books for this blog, how hard life must have been for some of the authors. While the writers may mention setbacks they rarely talk about how hard it really gets, how they suffer mentally or if they are on the verge of giving up.
Kristin Kimball does write about this and that makes a refreshing change. This is the story of the farm, the village, the workers, the cattle, the produce, the horses, the house but most of all of her and her  husband and children. After a 100 pages I was beginning to think: how does she cope, why does she stay with this impossible man, who is obsessed with farming, does not care that the house they live in is in a terrible state (the access to the staircase to the bedrooms is outside), does not care they have no privacy and loves dangerous sports (He tells her: 'Worry is your choice'). 

 

By this time they have two children and, while combining working on the farm with looking after a baby was doable, 'A toddler plus an infant equaled one full-time job, and instead of splitting it between us or even discussing it much, we seemed to assume that job was mine.'

When helpers don't show up she still has to pitch in and the cold and sleep deprivation get to her.
'This was not at all what I had pictured, way back at the beginning, when I imagined raising children at the farm. (...) The winter weeks wore on. Milking was a liberation from the house, but it added to my exhaustion. On nights when Miranda didn't sleep well, it felt nearly impossible to get out of bed at four-thirty and continue all day. The house, meanwhile, seemed to be closing in on us, filling with visiting young farmers interested in our horses and our full-diet model. Mark loved company, new opinions and the constant underlying hum of youth and action, which fueled our winter work. To me, the house felt increasingly crowded and dirty, and there was way too much noise for a family with an infant.'

She decides to get all of the helpers (who, while living elsewhere, had been spending their time and eating in the house) out, and relocate the office to an old trailer. 

'The house was so quiet without the farmers in it. I took all the extra leaves out of the dining table (...) We would set a place for Mark, but most days, he didn't have time to come in. As winter faded, the separation increased.'

'As the baby howled and the rain fell, I looked at the cards on the table and thought: Sometimes the hardest hand to play is the one you dealt yourself.'

She is saved by wise friends ('He is so extreme, I complained. Yeah, you would never be happy with a normal person') and the marriage is saved by a therapist. Slowly she and Mark find a way to be together again.

Meanwhile there are droughts and, in another year, endless rain, when it seems the crops will drown. There is also is the completely unexpected kindness of a stranger who donates money which they use to install drainage in their fields. In the final chapter walls are torn down, new windows fitted, the rooms re-designed so that at last they don't have to go outside to go to bed.

Of course this book also tells the fascinating story of a small farm in the 21st century (especially interesting for those interested in working with horses) but I felt that it is in the personal story that this book really stands out. Highly recommended!

Kristins website can be found here and her farm's website is here

Authors on the map: Northern America

 

Here is a map with North American authors. It includes Kristin Kimball, whose book Good Husbandry  I am reading right now.

I Bought a Mountain by Thomas Firbank (1950)

Some reviews just write themselves, some are a bit harder and some ...
When you don't much like a book and reading it is a struggle, well, what can you say about it.
I can't rememember struggling like this with a book since reading Copsford.

Read the reviews on Caught by the River ,  Senior Reader  and Resolute Reader to get an idea of the book.

Thomas takes us through the farming year at a great pace. If you like to read about keeping sheep in the hills this is the book for you. If however, like me, you enjoy reading about how people learn to run a farm, how they adapt, make mistakes, get to know their neighbours and about their domestic life: there is not much of that here.
I have been struggling to wroite about this book, but I admit defeat!

Mike Howe writes about managing Dyffryn farm today. The land and cottage are now owned by the National Trust and you can go and stay there.

Authors on the Map, updated

 

Here is an updated map of authors covered in this blog, living in the UK and Ireland. I have included Thomas Firbank, whose book I am rereading at the moment.
Next time I will have to make a separate map for Wales as it is getting very crowded there!

Once again all locations are approximate. I am working on a map with American and Canadian authors.

A Shoulder on the Hill by Carol Madeline Graham (2020)

 

 

One of the joys of visiting second hand bookshops is finding books you did not know existed. This was such a discovery (at Barter Books in Alnwick).
It is the story of Carol and her husband John who, in their fifties, move to Weardale (county Durham). Carol has lived here before and she has always longed to return. On seeing Hill House West she immediately knows this is where she wants to live. She and John decide to go for it, though the house and outbuildings need a lot of work. Their ultimate aim is to start a B&B.
When they first move in there is no heat or hot water, but they manage to get things fixed just before Christmas.

Although they know they will always be 'Incomers' they soon make friends, especially with Ian, a farmer neighbour who becomes a regular visitor and helps them on many occasions. John, in turn, becomes a regular helper on Ian's farm. 'The relationship was completely symbiotic; Ian gave John every bit as much help as John gave him. Anything that needed moving, fetching or digging and he would be there.'

'That first winter was long, cold and hard.' Carol works as a teacher in Durham. Often she arrives 'attired more like an arctic explorer than a teacher into a city that was barely scattered with a handful of snowflakes.'
Slowly they start work on the house, installing a multifuel stove and French windows, building wardrobes and repairing floors.
They get some chickens and offer the field they rent to Ian, to keep his sheep. Having had "midwife lessons" from Ian's wife Lynne (helping with lambing) Carol is offered a sheep of her own, which she calls Crumpet.

It takes four years before they feel they can welcome guests to Hill House East. Because they worry they might not like the reality of sharing their home with guests they first have a trial period with people staying for free. 'To our joy, and great relief, it worked wonderfully and we really enjoyed doing it. Weekday visitors were catered for largely by John, as I was up and off to school by 7.15 a.m. At weekends we worked together.'
When guests are there they have their own private 'bed-sitting room' in the conservatory. The glass roof enables them to gaze up at the night sky 'in all its star filled glory'

But before they become a 'real' B&B they first host the wedding of Carol's daughter Megan.

The book contains plenty of anecdotes about animals and people (B&B guests). Some of the guests become firm friends, like the Adams family from Oregon. Other guests are 'ancestor hunters' from the U.S., Canada, Australia or New Zealand. This leads to Carol finding out more about the history of the hills and valleys of Weardale, at one time a centre of lead mining. After a boom time mines closed in the late 19th century, causing many people to leave. Some of Carol's guests even turn out to be related to people who lived in Hill House East.

Life goes on: Carol becomes a grandmother and her mother dies. After working part time for some years she decides to retire from her teaching job.
After sixteen years she and John decide to stop running the B&B. The book ends with them, being determined to have no more pets, 'being adopted' by a tiny abandoned kitten. They call her Fudge and thank her for coming into their lives and keeping them young at heart a little while longer.

This a happy and well written book. Carol has written a 'companion’ volume with further tales about her life in Weardale, her family, animals and friends: A Shoulder to Lean on (2022)

Bikes and books

Years ago, when I would go on a cycling trip, I would spend hours trying to decide which books to take. Now I just pack my e-reader, a godsend for cyclists!
Among the books I bought this time was Anne Hall's Four French Holidays, which I chose mainly because it includes a chapter on The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden. A favourite book and one of the reasons I once cycled through Northern France, looking for, and not finding, its location in Epernay. It was only when I returned that I discovered I had been looking in the wrong place, I should have gone to Chateau Thierry.

My family used to spend summer holidays on the island of Ameland and I would get some extra pocket money to buy a book in the local shop. This is when I bought De zomer van de reine claudes, the Dutch translation.
I loved the story and the magical atmosphere of the book and went on to read most of Rumer Godden's books in English.

Anne Hall's book starts with an introduction by Hugh Schofield who shares her fascination with Rumer Godden. Hugh Schofield wrote this article on his search for Rumer Godden's 'famed French Summer'.
This really gives you all the information you could want, including a map.

What could Anne Hall add to this? As it turns out: not much and too much. For a start, she does not include most of the facts covered by Hugh S. in his article. So hardly any information on landmarks in the book. What she does do is give a summary of the story, thereby spoiling it for anybody who still wants to read it. She also gives us every detail she has found out about the lives of two people Rumer G. based her characters on: the hotel owner, and a mysterious Englishman staying in the hotel. Anne Hall may be good at research, but she cannot tell a story (I kept loosing the thread because of all the (grand)parents, wives and husbands she mentions).
I tried reading the other chapters on Margery Sharp, Stella Gibbons and Daphne du Maurier, but gave up. Not recommended!

Last Friday we took a cycling trip to Delft; a lovely trip along a canal. Along the way we stopped at the Kringloopwinkel (a giant charity shop or thriftshop) which usually has a good selection of English language books, thanks to the technical University and its many foreign students and teachers.
One of the books I picked up this time was a Little Toller edition of The Fat of the Land by John Seymour.
I already own a copy but this was worth it (at only E 2,50) for the cover alone, plus a very interesting introduction by John's daughter Anne.

We often visit Delft (some 14 km's from Rotterdam), as it is such a lovely old town with a beautiful market place, lots of quiet canals to wander round and many small shops and cafés. This is apart from the wonderful museums, churches and windmill.
If you ever intend to visit the Netherlands I recommend seeking out the smaller towns like Delft (or Leiden, Dordrecht, Zutphen and many many more). They are small enough to explore on foot and aren't filled with loads of tourists.

John Seymour's home

I just found this interesting blog by the people now living in John Seymour's former home in Suffolk. The bloggers, Debbie and Keith, rent from Chillesford Lodge Estate. There are quite a few references to John Semour's legacy and it is interesting reading.

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 and A Shoulder to Lean on
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