Apple Acre by Adrian Bell (1942)

My edition is from 1964, with a new foreword and epilogue by the author. Illustrations by Richard Kennedy.

Apple Acre is the story of farming and bringing up young children in the dark days at the beginning of the Second World War. " I had come to this village of Gruncham from West Suffolk just before the Nazi War. I had a few acres there, and later in 1943, I acquired more. Our children were infants when the war started, Anthea was three, the twins (Martin and Sylvia) were only one. We were five miles from the nearest town, and had no car nor petrol to get there. There was a bus twice a week. Otherwise we relied on bicycles or a pony trap for our shoppings. We seldom left the village in those years. There were shortages of the necessities of life - of clothes, food, milk, eggs. We were lucky in having our own pig, our own hens. Our staple food was potatoes and bacon. My wife made all the children's clothes from old garment of hers or a store of material we had laid in in August 1939. We had no piped water. Our well ran dry regularly every summer: unless it rained we could not have baths."

This is the story of Adrian's farm, the landscape, the farmers,  craftsmen and other people in the village. Or rather, it is not so much a story as a collection of Adrian's thoughts and observations. After reading the book you don't actually know much about his farm, but you do know what it felt like to live there at the beginning of the war. Adrian needs few words to paint a picture.

One day he and his wife Nora buy six goslings who turn out to be voracious creatures. "We referred to a book and read: "Goslings require very little artificial food, as they consume large quantities of grass." I wished these goslings could read.  And then one day towards Michaelmas, they happened to be at the far side of the orchard when I went out with their food. They stretched their necks and came full pelt - full waddle, that is - their wings flapping. Suddenly the leading goose became airborne and then the others. Their feet continued paddling the air. My impression was that they were as surprised as I was to find themselves flying. They gathered momentum, overshot the food, gave one despairing honk at it, and sailed out of sight over the hedge." The geese return to the farmer who sold them to Adrian ...

At first the war hardly seems to intrude and life goes on like it always did. The children seem to take the noises they hear (guns and planes) for granted: "It's only an aeroplane," Anthea says, as we look up and see one of England's battle planes sailing over at two or three hundred miles an hour, and she stoops again to make another sand pie. Aeroplanes are not very interesting birds, Anthea thinks. Not as interesting as the blackbird sitting on five eggs in the hedge." But later the threat of invasion becomes more real and Nora and the children spend a year in northern England.

"The war is more than bombs, it is a state of being. I feel it in the furtive quiet of the town. It is the soul of civilization that has fallen, caved in, long-decayed, hollow: and everybody goes furtively, knowing the end has come."

I especially like this book because of the way Adrian Bell writes about his children. He has an eye for their behaviour, an ear for their talk.

 

"Martin has seen the big mirror. Nora is left playing nursery rhymes to herself. Mirror superseeds music. Martin is stood up in front of it. He looks first at us in the mirror. They are here, yet they are there: what is the solution? His eyes get wider and blacker. Sylvia is held up to it. She quickly takes it for granted that there should be two of everybody. Anyhow, she is not going to worry about it. Grandma swings her to her reflection: she laughs uproariously. Martin is not amused. To be waved at in the mirror makes it the more puzzling. He struts around the room very worriedlooking."

"Filling being put into a new cake. Anthea has got on to a chair to see. 'I want a piece'. Occasionally she tries something quite obviously unpermissible. 'I want a piece now.' 'Whoever heard of such a thing!' It has worked: she begins to chuckle: 'I want a piece now.' Taking off my boots, feeling warm and cheerful beside the chrysanthemums, I begin, 'Do you know, when Father was a little boy - '  That always makes Anthea look. 'Yes?' 'When Father was a little boy he always had to have two slices of bread and butter before he was allowed to have a piece of cake.' 'Yes. And did your mummy make you a chocolate cake, with fillin' in it?' 'No, it was just a plain sponge cake: (I do remember a lot of plain sponge cake) and no filling in it.' 'Yes." A small voice. I look up sharply. The head is lowered, the face red. The thought of Father getting only plain sponge after the dutiful two slices is almost too much. I hasten to add, 'But if he had been a good boy he used to have a chocolate biscuit sometimes." Yes." A whisper. 'But then', crescendo, 'when it was his birthday he used to have a lovely cake, all sugar icing, and Happy Returns of the Day written in pink, and candles -' 'Yes' The head higher. 'And he used to have lots of little boyes to tea with him, and they played all sorts of games.' A smile. 'Why, look at pussy - she's trying to catch her tail.' She is having a whirling fit on the floor. Relief and joy."

Much has been written about Adrian Bell, there is an Adrian Bell Society , but this book seems to be less well known.

The back flap of my 1964 reprint gives an interesting glimpse into how men and women were thought of at that time: The children of whom he writes in Apple Acre have now grown up. Anthea and Sylvia are married and have young children of their own, while Martin is a journalist. Quite.

Anthea became an eminent translator , perhaps best known for her translations of the Asterix comics.

Christmas in The Netherlands, 2021

For years we didn't bother getting a Christmas tree, but when I saw this one, made of branches and string I could not resist it. Like last year, we hung it on the wall before Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas eve, 5 december), really a faux pas, but since corona has entered our lives that seems to be what most people are doing. We enjoy decorating it, and cards and ribbons, and whatever else comes in,  are added as December progresses.

Hope you all have a wonderful time!

Christmas in The Netherlands, 1944

" Monday, 25 December. Christmas if fortunately behind us. It was a day full of good things. This morning by the Christmas tree I again read the Christmas story to the children. Then came four Germans who wanted to billet themselves, but it was too small for them. Then we sang Christmas carols with piano accompaniment until 5 anti-aircraft guns came rattling by on the road. Then we went out. It's clear and freezing - bitterly cold - and we put on many layers of clothing to save our calories.

Moeder had come to drink a cup of coffee and then walked with us until we were at the family Jos' house, which was our destination. At 1: 00 we had dinner (meat! and canned peas and rice pudding made with half milk and half water!) and at 3: 00 we went with the four of us to Stameren to visit Annetje and Floris, where we got real tea with white bread - pinched from the Germans - to serve instead of cake! By moonlight home through the snowy woods. Then I really missed you! And now with all our clothes on we go under the blankets."

From: This Faithful Book by Madzy Brender à Brandis

Christmas in the Woods

"Christmas in the woods is much better than Christmas on the Outside. We do exactly what we want to do about it, not what we have to do because the neighbours will think it's funny if we don't; or because of the kids, who will judge our efforts not by their own standards but by the standards set up by the parents of other kids. We don't have any synthetic pre-Christmas build-up, no window displays, no carol singers in department stores, no competetion in the matter of lighting effects over front doors. At the intersections where the deer-runs cross the Carry Road, no Santa Clauses ring bells in the interest of charity. We didn't even have a Santa Claus until last year. We thought it would be nice if Rufus grew up knowing who gave him presents and bestowing his gratitude in the proper places. So we had never mentioned the name of You-know-who. However, a visitor at Millers let him in on the secret, explaining to him that Santa Claus is the man who brings things for little boys. Rufus knew very well that Larry Parsons brings in everything we get from Outside. Q.E.D., Larry is Santa Claus. He still persists in this belief, which makes him perfectly happy and we hope it does Larry, too."

From We Took to the Woods, by Louise Dickinson Rich

Land for our Sons (1958) and This Faithful Book (2019) by Maxine Brandis / Madzy Brender à Brandis

 

This was a tip from Clarien, who blogs here (in Dutch) on her smallholding. Looking up information on the book and the author made me curious so I ordered it, plus her World War Two diary This Faithful Book. 

First of all a note on names: the author, Mattha van Vollenhoven (always called Madzy) was married to Wim Brender à Brandis (this name is not as unusual as I thought, I found extensive family trees on the Internet). In Canada she wrote under the name Maxine Brandis. Her daughter, a writer who edited the diary, also uses the name Brandis, but chose to use her mother's full name for that book. Madzy's sons (more on them later) use the full name.

Maxine and her family (she and her husband have a daughter and two sons) emigrate to Canada in 1947. They travel to Terrace, British Columbia, where they stay with friends. Soon they are able to buy a small farm. They keep goats and chickens, and grow vegetables and fruit, which they sell. The house on the farm, which is very small (at first the whole family sleeps in one room), is gradually extended. Although they have chosen a location with a very short growing season (June to September) they are successful. At first the town where they live is very isolated (three trains a week) and there is no hospital or dentist.

Maxine makes a strong point for immigrants to learn the language and to adapt to the new country. However, sometimes she herself has trouble adapting, like on the occasion when a young child calls her by her first name. She is shocked: "in the Netherlands they would call me aunt Maxine!" She then gives us a glimpse of her strict upbringing in an upperclass family, where she had to address her father with the formal "U" instead of the informal "je". Like French and German, Dutch has two forms of address. I can relate to her shock. I can still recall my discomfort when, staying with my sister in Australia in 1970, I was expected to call people aged 70 and over by their first name. At home we just did not do that. 

 

The farm prospers, and the children do well, with Maxine becoming manager of the district's cooperative society, but after a while Maxine's husband feels he should return to university (after having spent a few years there in the Netherlands) as having a degree will give him more chances. So they sell the farm.

I'm afraid I was slightly underwhelmed by the book. It is not so much a story as a series of vignettes, in which everything goes well, everyone is friendly and hardly anything goes wrong. At times it felt like an ad for emigrating to Canada. I thought the title odd as Maxine has a daughter and two sons, and the family had no plans to continue farming.

This Faithful Book was published in 2019. It is the diary Madzy kept from 1942 till the end of the war. The diary was translated and edited by her daughter Marianne. In 1942, Madzy and her husband Wim, who had been an officer in the Dutch army, are living in a small, isolated, house in the middle of the Netherlands with their small daughter Marianne (nicknamed Pankie). Wim has to report to the occupying German authorities once a month. In August 1942, two days after Madzy has given birth to their son Gerard Wim and his fellow officers are arrested without warning and sent to P.O.W. camps in Poland. He will not return until 1945. Madzy starts keeping the diary as a kind of letter to Wim, for him to read after his return.

I enjoy reading about ordinary, day-to-day life in those exceptional circumstances. This book was especially interesting to me as my parents lived nearby and also had two young children. I was once again struck by the hardship suffered by people in the last year of the war. Maxine was lucky to have people staying with her to help (mostly her old nanny, still employed by her mother), but it fell to her  to find enough food for the family, especially hard in that last extremely cold "Hunger Winter", when they sometimes had nothing more to eat than a few slices of bread or some potatoes There was no electricity, very little fuel and they lived close to a railway line that is often bombed. On top of that she has to find room for evacuees and Germans who demand a billet. I'm also sometimes amazed at the things that did still work, like delivery of letters, even from Wim in his prison camp in the Ukraine.

Sunday, 21 January. It was exceptionally beautiful in the be-snowed woods and even though we constantly heard heavy artillery fire in the distance, and now and then the bang of a V-1 or V-2, it was still beautiful, almost in a holy way. I've now wrapped each of the children in a blanket in a little nest, with a fur coat around their feet. It's terribly cold in the bedroom."

"Tuesday, 30 January 1945. Today we heard all of a sudden that we have to make do with our bread ration for two weeks instead of one. This means that we have 500 grams per person per week, Gerard 400 grams."

"Wednesday 2 May, But who can describe how overwhelmed we were when, just after that, five of those huge birds (airplanes bringing food) flew right over our little house? We screamed, waved, jumped, cried - what all didn't we do? The emotion was indescribable; it is as though a little window opens and one can again see a house of peace."

During the last months of the war they are often in the firing line, and many houses in the village are destroyed. After the German surrender Madzy still has to wait and hope for Wim to come home. In the end he returns on the 5th of June. In one of the final chapters Wim tells the story of his years in captivity.

In a postscript daughter Mariane writes: "Madzy had intended to give the diary to Wim when he returned, but she never did; he only read it after her death. It's easy to guess why she made that decision. (...) Very probably she felt that he (Wim) should not be exposed to the grimness of some of what she had written in the diary, that the best way to heal would be to look forward rather than back. Before post-traumatic stress disorder became more widely understood, this was what one did." Marianne then tells the story of the rest of Madzy's life. On emigrating to Canada she says:" It's hard for us in this time to imagine how little Wim and Madzy knew about their destination. Other than (as it turned out) misleading and romanticized information from Peter and Enid, they knew virtually nothing because there were no sources of information." Life on the farm in Terrace seems to have been more primitive than Madzy would have us believe in her story in Land for our Sons. After a visit in 1952 her mother reported to people in the Netherlands that her daughter was living in a "hut."

Madzy died in 1984. Her three children have all had interesting careers: Marianne became a historian and writer, find information on her here. Gerard became a wood engraver and maker of books, his website is here. Her third son Joost, born after the war, is known as Jock in Canada. He is a social entepeneur and inventor. An interesting article about him can be found here

I can recommend this book if you would like to know more about life in an occupied country during World War II. There are two other titles which I loved and which might be of interest to English readers: I Was a Stranger by Sir John Hacket, republished by Slightly Foxed , the story of General Hacket's escape from hospital during the battle of Arnhem and his stay with the sisters De Nooij in Ede. Because I grew up in a neighbouring village I knew that story long before I read the book. I also recommend The Cut Out Girl by Bart van Es, published by Penguin, a story of a young Jewish girl in Holland during World War II, who hides from the Nazis in the homes of an underground network of foster families, one of them the author's grandparents. Part of this story takes place in the village where I was born.

A Patch in the Forest by Elisabeth West (2001)

 

 

I bought this book years ago, but it is now out of print and second hand copies sell for 50 to 60 Euro's. The book has a few illustrations and no maps.

When Elizabeth West finished Garden in the Hills  she and Alan were preparing to leave their Hovel in the Hills because there was no way they could make a living there. Also they found that new roads and increased traffic meant they could no longer live there in peace. "We promised ourselves that one day, as soon as we were entitled to a state old-age pension, we would find another patch of land in a wild and lonely place and make another garden." In the early 90's, when they are both receiving pensions, the time has come to find a new place to live.

"Now that the time to make our plans had arrived we found that the passing years had modified our ideas. With old age ahead we didn't want our patch to be wild and lonely, nor did we reckon on coping with more than an acre of land. A place on the outskirts of a village or hamlet would be ideal - preferably on a no-through road and within a half-mile walk of a post office and bus service". After an 18 month search they buy a small house in the Forest of Dean. It has a garden with an enormous oak tree in it.

 

In 1993 they move in. The house was built in the early 1960's. Everywhere they look they find "workmanship of such incompetence that we almost begin to suspect malicious intent." So Alan does a lot of repairs. They create a kitchen and "back kitchen", remove some of the 24 doors, and rip out all the complicated water pipes and central heating, and "start again". They install an Aga in the kitchen, have an open fire in the living room and use electric heaters, when needed, in other rooms. They are allowed to gather brushwood in the forest and also buy locally dug coal.

The garden is about half an acre (on a slope). It does not get much direct sunlight, suffers from mists and frost and has bad soil (clay mixed with rubbish to level the site). Nevertheless they manage to create a beautiful garden there.  Their aim is to attract as much wildlife as possible. Part of the garden they leave "rough", part is a meadow (mown 3 or 4 times a year), there is a vegetable garden and a pond close to the house, with the rest of the garden given over to "flowers, shrubs and interesting plants." Strangely enough these include Japanese knotweed: "which we like, in spite of what the experts say." (Japanese knotweed is considered to be one of the most invasive species, which can displace many native plants).

Elizabeth describes all the vegetables they grow, stressing "this is how we do it and not suggesting how you should." They can be largely self-sufficient for most of the summer and autumn, but in winter they need the greengrocer. They grow (and dry) a lot of herbs, eat some weeds (like dandelion and chickweed), gather mushrooms and nuts.

Elizabeth and Alan clearly revel in living close to nature as becomes clear in the chapters on their observations of and encounters with birds, butterflies and other animals of the forest.

"Looking out for the birds that visit the garden is, of course, a non-stop activity in this household. We chat to them if they approach us and we mutter greetings if they are about their business in the hedge. If they are flying across the sky or soaring overhead we watch in silent admiration. This looking-out-for-the-birds activity continues even when the weather keeps us indoors, which means we spend a lot of time gazing from the windows."

"Our concern that butterflies should have food and appropiate facilities to carry out their complicated life cycles means that flowers are left to bloom for as long as they are useful and that plenty of rough grass, nettles and bramble thickets are available. We have noticed that chives are usually the earliest vegetable plants to bloom and they are very attractive to bees and butterlies. If we want to have plenty of chive leaves to eat we should really trim off the flower stalks, but we don't. The only answer is to have more chives."

Animals in the forest around them include deer, badgers, adders and squirrels. Elizabeth writes of the plans to introduce pine martens (a natural enemy to the grey squirrel) to the Forest, fearing it will mean a diminishing bird population (note: in 2019 18 pine martens were released in the Forest of Dean). Bats, frogs, toads and hedgehogs visit their garden.

"This invitation to our garden does not extend to that most ubiquitous Forest of Dean animal, the wandering sheep. " (...) "The men who own these sheep belong to a Commoner's Association through which they defend their rights to run sheep in the forest." Attempts to regulate grazing by sheep are not very successful (this still seems to be an issue today).

Elizabeth and Alan don't get many visitors, nor do they go away often. "Having spent most of our working lives engaged in various forms of humble employment (in between periods of unemployment) the need to earn a living had always occupied a lot of our time, thoughts and energies. But we no longer have to work for money, and the sense of freedom in exhilarating." They enjoy their own company, spending time in the garden, listening to music and reading. Elizabeth has become a fan of the bands and choirs in the Forest. And of course they often go for walks.

This book is a must for everyone who has enjoyed Hovel in the Hills and Garden in the Hills. Here's hoping Logastan Press will reprint!

We Took to the Woods by Louise Dickinson Rich (1942)

Who can resist a book with a cover like this?


Louise Dickinson Rich took to the woods during the 1930’s and wrote this book to answer the many questions her friends were always asking her.
„During most of my adolescence  (…) I said, when asked what I was going to do with my life, that I was going to live alone in a cabin in the Maine woods and write.”
She did end up in a cabin in Maine (though not on her own), but completely by accident: on a canoeing trip she met Ralph Rich who had recently moved  there.  Shortly after they were married. And so she moved to the Northwestern-most corner of Maine (with a resident population of about a dozen) where there are few roads and where the lakes are the main thoroughfares. This means that every autumn and spring they are cut off from the rest of the world for a few weeks. During the „fall freeze up” the ice is not yet strong enough to walk or drive on, during the „spring break up” the ice is too thin but boats can’t be used yet. During winter the place is hard to reach too, so all in all, except for summer when the visitors come, they live pretty isolated lives. And that's how Louise likes it. "Emily Dickinson once said of a little niece who had been shut up in a closet as punishment, and was discovered there hours later, perfectly composed and happy, "But no one could ever punish a Dickinson by shutting her up alone!" That applied to Emily herself. And it applies to this obscure Dickinson. It applies to my ability to be contented here, away from the world, and to the truth underlying Ralph's and my relationship: that being with Ralph is just exactly as good as being alone. Now that's written, it looks terrible; and I meant it to be the nicest thing I could say!

 

 

 

Like Helen Hoover, Louise has a Winter and a Summer House, plus various sheds and an outhouse, as there is no plumbing. Gerrish, the „hired help” works for them, he has his own house.
I would imagine that Louise writes the way she talks, so explaining what it is like to live in the woods means lots of stories: on being an official Maine Guide (Ralph), how Louise disliked school, on deer hunting, on searching for deer hunters lost in the woods, cutting ice, visiting lumberjacks, fire wardens and the annual log drive. Early in the book Louise mentions that Ralph had sold some patent rights before he came to live at Forest Lodge, so I assume he had some kind of income. Apart from that they make a living doing all kinds of work: transporting people and goods, taking in boarders, repairing the road, cooking, knitting, car trading (Ralph’s speciality) and writing.
Louise relishes living where she does and does not miss „outside”. She especially does not miss having to bother about clothes and gives us a list of her wardrobe:

 

I was interested in the prices Louise mentions:  adjusted for inflation, $1.00 in 1942 is equal to $16.80 in 2021.

 

As we learned from Helen Hoover’s book living in the woods is hard work, and the line between work and spare time is blurred. There is always something to do, like tending the vegetable garden, painting the boats or tapping trees for maple syrup. From November to January they cut wood (after the leaves fall, before the snow gets too deep). Then there is the problem of having enough supplies, as they never know when the "freeze up" will be. Every once in a while they are caught out and Louise will have to make something out of almost nothing in her kitchen.
Unlike the Hoovers Louise and Ralph seem to be completely at ease with and accepted by the people around them. They don’t believe in making wild animals pets, nor do they feed them in winter like the Hoovers did. Only one animal becomes their pet, by accident : ons day Ralph brings home an orphaned baby skunk. This animal becomes an unlikely but much loved pet named Rollo. Rollo is "raised" by Cookie, their dog, who had puppies at the time. When Rollo becomes angry he stamps his feet, but he only once makes a smell when he thinks the cat is stealing his food (the cat escapes and never returns).

The one thing that frightens them is the danger of a forest fire. They know exactly what they will take and where they will go if they have to evacuate. They are never sick („ we are living in a sort of reverse quarantine, which the germs locked out instead of in”). This is just as well, as they have no easy access to a doctor or a hospital. And just as well that baby Rufus arrives without incident. Louise, who had planned to go to hospital to have her baby, gives birth a few weeks early.  Her son Rufus was born with only Ralph in attendance on the 18th of December at 2.55 a.m. with the thermometer down to 10° F above zero (minus 12° C). To make things worse they were still in the (hard to heat) Summer House, Ralph having planned to move things to the Winter House while Louise was in hospital
„I can see him now, with a wool cap pulled over his ears, his mackinaw collar turned up to meet it, and his mittens on, reading by lantern light a little book called „If Baby Comes Ahead of Doctor”. Perspiration was running down his face. You see, he knew the doctor couldn’t possibly get there for ten hours or more.” To quell Ralph’s nerves she gives him things to do, like heat lots of water (though she had no idea what for). Then he heats up a blanket and places it in the laundry basket. „ When he came back, five minutes later, he was a father”. 

 

We Took to the Woods is one of my favourites, not least because of the wonderful map. Sometimes Louise is a little long-winded. It made me wonder is any editor was involved or if the manuscript was just accepted as it was. Then again, it makes you feel Louise is just chatting to you. 

Louise went on to write many more books. I have ordered her biography and I will return to her in future posts.

Along Came a Llama by Ruth Janette Ruck (1978)

Re-reading Along Came a Llama, I came across a passage in particular in this book that I liked, and it has nothing to do with llama's. I recently came across a new Dutch word coined by a writer : "eetlezen", literally "eat-reading", i.e. reading while you eat, which is one of my favourite passtimes.  Ruth and her family like it too:

"Reading was our main relaxation, hobby and perhaps vice. Paul, Beenie and I would read our way through most meals with our books balanced against the Golden Syrup or milk jug. Of course we did not read when we had visitors or at Saturday and Sunday dinner when the children were at home, or indeed in the school holidays. We felt that we should be setting such an appalling example and anyway, with five of us reading at the table, somebody's book or magazine would be sure to find it's way into the butter or the gravy. We confined our reading at meals to the times when there were just the three of us. There wasn't much point in keeping mealtimes for conversation. Mostly we had been working together all day and had had plenty of opportunity to say all we wanted to say."

I do like this. Sunday evening is my "eat-read" night as H. watches Studio Sport (Dutch equivalent of Match of the Day) and I read.

Anyway, llama's!

This is Ruth Janette Ruck's third and final book. Although there is a sad beginning there is plenty to smile at in this book. In the 1960's Ruth and her husband Paul move to the cottage of Ty Mawr, a few hundred yards from Carneddi, where her parents and sister Mary (who is very ill) live. In 1966 their daughter Ann is born, followed by a son, John, in 1968. Soon after, Ruth is diagnosed with Multiple sclerosis.  "Soon I decided that it was better to do something useful and feel ill than to nothing and still feel ill. Then, mercifully, I became much better and most of the sight returned to the affected eye (she had become blind in one eye). It was the beginning of a remission that lasted for a couple of years. There were to be other exacerbations but I did my best not to let them affect our lives and we all carried on as well as we could". Little mention is made of MS in the rest of the book.

Paul's sister Jean, known as Beenie, comes to live with them and proves to be a big help. During a short holiday the family visit Knaresborough Zoo, where they get to know a group of llamas.

As a child, Ruth wrote in her notebook "I want a llama" and she suddenly has the feeling that they will have one on their farm.  After her father dies suddenly,  her mother offers to pay for a llama, feeling they need something new and exciting to distract their minds from their father's death and Mary's illness. After another visit to the zoo the deal is struck and some time later 5 month old Annie, as she is called then, arrives in Wales.

Annie is renamed Ñusta, but often nicknamed The Um, after the noise she makes. She needs some time to settle in. ". . . she was curious about the room and inspected its contents, moving very carefully so as to do no damage. The inspection over, Ñusta moved to the hearth rug and then, as though taking her cue from us, she positioned her feet close together and sat down. She sat calmly and with dignity, like an invited guest - as indeed she was. (...) We were amazed by the extreme domestication of our beautiful animal, and her delicacy, cleanliness and good manners. We felt we had an aristocrat in the family."

In 1975 Ruth's sister Mary, who had been ill so long, dies. "Now my mother demonstrated to us that life must go on whatever sorrows there were. She set to work to rehabilitate her garden which had long been neglected. She had more time for her grandchildren. She took a renewed interest in the farm and pleasure in the llama. We all drew inspiration from her courage and unbreakable spirit."

The llama becomes a much loved pet, who seems to see the family as her herd. As this was a time when llama's were seldom seen in the British countryside many people are baffled when they see her. Nusta is always interested in visitors: "If she were near at hand she would hurry up to inspect them. This inspection was a sort of llama-style interview. She liked to look closely into the face of each person - and her head was now nearly on the level of most humans' - and to touch their hair lightly with her nose. Beards were also of great interest."

Finding information on how best to care for llamas is hard. Books on the subject are rare, and vets are not very familiar with the animal. "Our best authority so far was still Goldsmith's Animated Nature, published two hundred years earlier and written by a man who had, perhaps, never seen an llama." 

 

Ñusta can roam freely around the farm. "During the day she was busy about the farm, taking a llama's eye-view of all the activities and joining in whenever she could. (...) She was aware of the sound of the engine before anyone else could hear it. As I drove up the hill, I could usually see a small white face with dark eyes and long ears peeping inquiringly over the five-foot wall which ran along the crest of the spur. After a long look, the face would disappear and I knew that the Um was rushing along on the other side of the wall, to reach the yard gate at the same time that I did. When I stopped by the garage, a head and a very long neck would come in through the car window and the llama would toot an excited welcome."

The book ends with their decision to have Ñusta mated. For this they travel to Chester Zoo, where there is a small herd of llamas. And strangely this is were Ruth ends this very entertaining and well written tale: we don't know if Ñusta gets pregnant or what happens next.

My edition of this book is a 2020 reprint. Though Ruth thanks someone in the acknowledgements for preparing the photographs, there are none in the book (apart from a vague one on the back flap). 

I was surprised to find that this book was recently published in Dutch (as was a translation of Copsford).

Love in the Sun by Leo Walmsley (1939)

A few weeks ago, while looking for titles to buy for my e-reader (I'm stocking up because we are off on a trip again) I came across Simon's post on Love in the Sun by Leo Walmsley. It is described as a novel and the subject matter sounded right up my street, so I ordered it. When I started reading I was confused because it felt like non fiction: very little plot and endless technical details of doing up a house and a boat. After reading articles on the website of the Leo Walmsley Society I understood it was a thinly disguised autobiography. It is the story of a young man and woman with very little money who hire an old hut near a Cornwall village. They do up the house, create a garden and manage to scrape a living.  That's the basic story, really! I found it very entertaining. Simon mentioned there are sequels, so I will look out for them too. 

And yes, while the books were meant to read on holiday I have already read four of them, so I will have to find some more.  Anyone else find it hard to resist the temptation of a new book?

The Forest Years by Helen Hoover, with pen-and-ink drawings by Adrian Hoover (1973)

This book was published five years after "A Place in the Woods" and it covers the 16 years Helen and Adrian Hoover spent in their cabin on Gunflint Lake, on the Canadian border in Minnesota. While the text on the book flap states that they spent those years happily and rewardingly this was not alway so and the book ends with their leaving the area.

On the one hand this is the story of how Helen and Adrian make the cabin their home and how they cope with living in northern Minnesota, with its harsh climate. On the other it is a record of the nature that surrounds them and the animals that come to visit.

As we learned in Helen's earlier book, living in the woods in hard work. Even in spring or summer things don't get much easier: "the mosquitos and black flies were out in full force, ready for their coming task of fertilizing the flowers, and they bit so ferociously that we gave up on outdoor work." They don't hunt or fish and the very short summer season makes it very difficult to grow vegetables. They do keep a few chickens (in a heated run in winter). But mostly they depend on mail order and deliveries of food and oil. Missing an oil truck delivery, or being snowed in with little food, are potential disasters. Their first years in the cabin are very hard, as they struggle to pay their bills. They earn just enough money selling notepaper printed with Adrian's designs and they live on such an unbalanced diet that at one time Helen even suffers from scurvy. 

 "Ade and I had come to the forest believing that we would have to work harder than we had ever worked and thinking the depression years had prepared us, but we discovered they had been relatively easy. We had been poor in the sense of having to cut corners during our first year and a half in the woods. Two years later we were poverty stricken - cold, hungry, ragged, sick and touched by flashes of paralyzing terror. This was not the fear of death but the fear of living, of never having some small pleasure or physical comfort of a moment free of worry so long as life should last. (...) And yet I warmed to the happy moments we were finding in this innocent forest. The wild creatures were our friends and companions, our teachers, our entertainers ..."

Gradually Helen starts to earn some money when she sells magazine articles and the hard years are over when she gets her first book contract.

"When the book was roughed out, I roamed the forest, burdened with two field guides that I carried around my neck in a two-pound clothespin bag, checking my reported observations for accuracy. (...) When I grew tired I sat at the base of a big pine or spruce, leaned back, and closed my eyes. My skin grew sensitive to the touch of the special air of spring, the drier air of summer. Faint creakings told me of branches rubbing together. One day my nose crinkled to an acrid scent, something like rancid oil, and I opened my eyes to see a black bear strolling toward me. I sat without moving while he came almost to my resting place, observed me with shifting eyes as I was observing him, sniffed and wandered away, presumably no longer curious."

Later in the book there a more encounters with (hungry) bears and one winter things become so dangerous, as bears could easily smash their doors and windows, that they go and spend some time in a motel.

While they still encounter a lot of kindness, they are also seen as weirdos, living without a car and refusing to have a power line put in (because it would mean cutting down lots of trees). They also refuse to cut down trees or use DDT during an infestion of budworms that takes a few years. In the end their policy of letting nature take care of itself pays off. 

A lot of animals, especially deer, come to the cabin in winter, in search of food.  They order food for animals but word gets round and this attract hunters, and some of the deer that have been visiting them for years are killed.

With the extra money they earn they do up their cabin and they can afford a few more luxuries, but things start to change: the road is repaired, more tourists come, the solitude they cherished is gone and they begin to feel uncomfortable where once they were so happy.

"Power, phone and road together attracted more and more people, which meant more and more building. This necessitated clearing, which increased run-off water and silting of the lakes, and the installation of many cesspools that released an effluent that stimulated algae growth in the clear water, as the privies of the old days had not done. More planes and boats to accommodate the larger number of people added their oil films to the lake."  

In the end they take a vacation, the last item on their list (see book flap below), and start looking for another place to live.

 

 

If you would like to read more about Helen Hoover, a very good article by David Hakensen can be found here

Baking Bread, and Household Hints

Bara Hafod

A lot of "my" writers bake their own bread. Here is Elizabeth West's recipe, from Garden in the Hills.

"Put into a jug: 4 rounded teaspoonfuls of dried yeast, 3 rounded teaspoonfuls of sugar and about 1/4 of lukewarm water. Give it a stir around, cover with a cloth, and put to one side. Whilst you are waiting for the yeast to get working, weigh up 2 lb of flour - either wholemeal or plain white, or a mixture (I usually mix 11/2 wholemeal with 1/2 white). Put this into a mixing bowl. Sprinkle into flour a teaspoonful of salt. Mix well. Grease and flour two 1-lb bread tins. 

Now go and look at your yeast in the jug. It should be at least a quarter way up the jug, frothing and bubbling.  If it's not, then it's probably due to the yeast being stale - not necessarily your fault, I have found stale yeast in a newly opened tin - so give it a bit longer. In fact, go and do something else for ten minutes. If it is still the same when you come back, never mind. Carry on and use it. It just means that your bread won't rise quite so well. 

Make up the contents of the jug to about one pint with lukewarm water, and pour this into your flour. Using the right hand only (it's just as well to keep one hand clean) work the mixture around, squeezing and kneading between your fingers. After a while it should be one moist, pliable lump in the middle of your bowl, with no flour sticking to the sides. If it feels to dry, add some more lukewarm water. If, on the other hand, it is all sticky and wet, add some more flour. Divide the dough into equal pieces and put into your tins. Put the tins to one side, cover with a cloth and leave for about one hour. The dough should rise to the top of the tins (leave for longer if necessary). Put bread into a moderately hot oven for about 40 minutes. By this time you should be able to "bounce" them out of their tins (if they won't come out easily, slip a knife around their sides). I then usually put the loaves back into the oven, upside down, in order to get them crisp all over.

Please note that none of these measurements is critical. I have written down what I do. Alan doesn't measure anything. He simply throws in what he thinks looks right. Don't take any notice of instructions to "put it in a warm place to rise". You are more likely to put it into too warm a place. The temperature of the room in which you are working is quite adequate."

I notice there is very little kneading and only one rise, making it a simple recipe. During lockdown I made a similar "no-knead bread", which was OK, but I had to have my oven on, on its highest setting, for an hour, which I felt was using way to much energy for one small loaf. Besides, unlike Elizabeth West, there are many shops where I can buy bread near my home. Her telling us to knead with one hand reminds me of a friend who went to domestic science school in the sixties. She used to say that the one thing she remembered being taught was: always knead with one hand only, because the telephone might ring.

Household hints

Louise Dickinson Rich (whose We took to the Woods will be covered in a future post) tells us exactly how she butchers and preserves deer meat, which I guess not many of us will get a chance to do.  But she has two tips which I thought worth sharing:

- .... a pane of window glass which I put over my open cook book. I'm a messy cook, splashing flour and milk and batter and egg yolk all over the table. If they splash on the book, the pages will stick together and you can't use that recipe again, as I have found to my sorrow. If they splash on the glass, that's all right. Glass washes. 

- .... a way to crumb fish or croquettes or cutlets or what-have-you easily and quickly. I put my crumbs or flour in a paper bag, drop in the object to be crumbed, close the bag and shake violently. This does not sound like much of an invention but it saves an awful lot of mess. When you're through you have nothing to clean up. You just shove the paper bag into the stove and burn up the scanty leavings.

I'm going to try the crumbing in a bag. I usually use a plate and end up with my fingers coated in egg and crumbs, looking like they are ready to be fried too.

          

A Place in the Woods by Helen Hoover, illustrated by Adrian Hoover (1968)

After Adrian Hoover becomes ill he and Helen spend two months in northern Minnesota, but when the time comes to go home they decide to stay (this is in 1954). In Chicago Adrian worked as an art director of a publishing firm, and Helen was a research metallurgist in a laboratory.

Someone later tells Helen: ". . . but you might as well know that some people up here have been betting - really betting, I mean - that you won't stay the winter"

This is hardly surprising. While Adrian is the ultimate handyman, and it seems they have visited this area before, both Helen and he are strangely naive about living there. For instance, it seems it has not occurred to them that they might need warm clothes in winter.  Helen also hadn't realised she does not need a fridge or freezer: Adrian sat down and laughed till he choked. Finally: "How were you ever so good in science? Look:"He waved a hand at the window. "Out there everything is frozen and will stay that way, in the shade at least, until spring". I do like Helen for telling us all this.

Their time in the woods starts with a series of mishaps.The first cabin they buy, which is not very well made, is damaged by heavy rain and floods which wash away part of the basement (this coincides with a very scary visit by a bear when Helen is on her own). By one stroke of good luck they find someone to make repairs, and by another the neighbouring cabin is for sale. This looks much nicer, plus it comes with lots of furniture that they like. But there is one thing they haven't taken into account: this cabin is only built for summer use. So it is back to the first cabin again for winter, and they head into town (a three hour drive in good conditions) to buy provisions, warm winter clothes and to collect their mail order purchases, which include two stoves. On the way back to the cabin, they collide with another car. Running out of money, recovering from the accident and stuck in the cabin without a car, Adrian misses an appointment to sign a contract which could have earned him a lot of money. But as Helen says: "if he had been there on time to sign the contract we'd have had an easy life and another car. And it is very possible that I should never have written anything except letters to my friends". 

They adapt to life in the cabin, getting to know the land and the animals that live there. One morning Adrian calls Helen to come outside. "Frost, he said in an awestruck voice. "It's frost".  I've always thought of frost as something white sprinkled on grass like sugar, but this was a feathery miracle. Every twig was fringed by it, every branch festooned, every bud tufted. Delicate ice plumes hung inches long from our eaves. The windows were barley sugar and the cabin logs were netted over by tiny ice fans.

The snow stopped before dark, as suddenly as it had begun and Ade and I stepped out to look at the fresh white. The silence was so deep that I could hear my blood throbbing in my ears. The air carried a scent like the taste of snow. A feeling of being watched from the white forest was very strong. "They're all around us", I said. "The natives. We're a minority of two". During the winter they get to know some of those natives, among them mice, deer, birds, squirrels, weasels and an animal I had never heard of: the fisher (see picture below).

They need to find a way of making money and buy a mimeograph, which they use to produce note paper decorated by Adrian. This sells well. He also manages to sell woodwork. Another small source of income is taking care of a rain gauge for the US Weather Bureau. By the end of the book Helen has sold a few articles to magazines.

During the winter Adrian reads from David Copperfield while Helen crochets or embroiders. Copperfield was a fortunate selection because from it came the motto that for several years was tacked onto a log in the kitchen: SOMETHING WILL TURN UP.  J.Wilkins Micawber.

The winter passes. Helen looses track of time and is astonished it already is 19 February. I looked up and across the lake to the clear blue above the far hills and thought about my disorted time sense that seemd to have lost me three weeks. But it wasn't really distorted and I hadn't lost anything. I'd just been seeing things in a way that was new and different to me, a way that I'd probably known in early childhood and forgotten.

They are happy with what litle they have.

A Chicago friend wanted to know when we were coming back to civilazation. I looked out of the window and up through the bare lacework of a birch top to the blue, blue sky. I smelled the faint fragrance of balsam smoke from the stove. I listened to the querulous piping of some nuthatches. I thought of the woodpiles and my white ceiling and the stored groceries - all of the fall work behind and the winter chores ahead. Of the dim, tantalizing glimpses of possible independent careers. Civilization? We were as civilized in our forest setting as my friend was in het concrete beehive, but it would be useless to try to tell her so.

I could quote from this book endlessly. A recent acquisition and an instant favourite, it has everything:  domestic and financial detail, hardship, nature, animals, the kindness of strangers and of course a map. Helen wrote 7 books for adults (also some children's books). The Years of the Forest is another book about their cabin life, which I will cover in a future post.

Back home again

Sorry for the poor lay out. Blogger is giving me a hard time with pages full of code. I hope they sort this out soon, so far I haven't had any response to my questions. Anyway, we are back from cycling to Berlin. Cheated a bit in the Harz: as the hills were a bit too steep for us we took the train! Now it is back to reading for the blog. I still have many titles to cover. Also I have received recommendations from Avis, who likes: The Shepherds Life by James Rebanks, Counting Sheep by Philip Walling, Corduroy by Adrian Bell, Glory Hill Farm by Clifton Reynolds, Fools Rush in by Tina Spencer-Knott, and books by AG Street. And Sue told me about these: Hope Bourne - Wild harvest, Neil Ansell - Deep Country, Denise Hall - Stones and Stars, Sally Borst - Self Deficiency, Daniel Butler -Urban Dreams, Rural Realities, Anne Cholawe - Island on the Edge, Patrick Rivers - Living on a Little Land, Katherine Stewart - Croft in the Hills, Hilary Burden - A Story of Seven Summers. Some of these I already own, others I will keep a lookout for. As it is I have a few shelves that I mean to cover in this blog first:

Back soon!