The farmer who fell madly in love — with a wood

NATURE THE WOOD by John Lewis-Stempel (Doubleday €20.99)

XYLOPHILE is the correct word for a lover of woodlands.

Historian, naturalist and farmer John Lewis-Stempel admits he ‘came late to woods’, but succumbed to a delirious xylophilia during the four years he managed Cockshutt Wood, which he describes as ‘three-and-ahalf acres of mixed woodland with a secluded pool where the winter moon lives’.

This lyrical book is the diary of his last year at Cockshutt Wood. It begins in December: a ‘minimalist, milk-toned’ month. The hedgehogs, toads, frogs, snakes and insects with whose activities Lewis-Stempel enlivens later pages are all hibernating.

Instead he watches the gaudy cock pheasants ‘samurai bowing’ at each other and brings his pigs to rummage for goodies among the leaf litter.

As a farmer, Lewis-Stempel is keen to remind readers that although the woodland is no longer part of modern farming, historically, its bounty sustained livestock through winter.

Holly would have been ground up for cattle fodder, hawthorn was cut for the sheep and pannage — the traditional practice of releasing pigs in woods — was widespread.

Indeed, according to the Herefordshire Domesday Book, not much else mattered locally.‘ There was woodland there for 160 pigs, if it had born mast [fruit],’ runs the entry for Pembridge. Lewis-Stempel’s mother’s family held the pannage rights up the lane in the Golden Valley until 1600. Today, he is funny and tender about his pigs and their rootling expeditions.

His favourite sow, Lavender, smells of freshly-ironed linen. They’re always escaping. When a woman calls the farm to ask if his pigs are free range he replies: ‘Madam, they are practically wild!’

Historically, pannage served a dual purpose, providing food for the pigs and tidying up beech nuts and acorns which can be poisonous to cows and horses.

Later, Lewis-Stempel forages along with his pigs. He shares his recipes for wild garlic dolmades in April, elderflower champagne in June, mushroom pate in August and chestnut soup in October.

It’s not all cosy. Lewis-Stempel often goes armed into his sanctuary. ‘Carrying a gun concentrates the naturalist’s mind, sharpens the senses,’ he writes.

On one occasion he reluctantly takes his son to execute a pair of Canada geese which have made their home on his beloved

pond. The birds have attacked frogs, moorhens and mallards. He takes out the gander with one shot and expects the goose to fly, but she stays by the floating corpse of her mate.

‘Is it love? Loyalty?’ he asks. ‘Dead on the water, the Canadas float on their backs, and when the wind blows them towards us they are as menacing as pillows.’

As so often throughout his work, Lewis-Stempel turns to poetry for company and consolation.

Elsewhere his love of language finds him unearthing forgotten, regional words for wild things. In Olde Hereford, a rabbit was a clover snapper, a small twig was a yimp and a thrush was a Mavis.

He’s brilliant on birds and their habits, enjoying the company of blackbirds as they squawk round the wood .When he shoots pheasants for his table, they fall ‘like comets’. Cockshutt got its name from its game after all: cock for woodcock, shutt for trap.

Lewis-Stempel’s research sends him roving back deeper in time, to 2,000BC when the ancient Egyptians imported all their ash from Europe to make wheels. In the new millennium he is planting ash saplings in the hope that some will resist the ash dieback that is biting into ash trees all over Ireland.

The farmer ends his diary in November, with a murmuration of 90 jackdaws swooping through ‘leafstripper’ winds above him and a cup of acorn coffee warming his hands.

When his tenure of Cockshutt is up he finds the parting more painful than he had imagined.

‘I thought the trees and birds belonged to me,’ he writes. ‘But I now realise I belonged to them.’