Q&A REVEALING THE REALITIES OF RURAL LIFE

We speak to author of Field Work, Bella Bathurst, whose insightful and humane record of life on Rise Hill Farm uncovers some painful truths about Britain’s relationship with its farms and the people who work on them

What was your intention when setting out to write Field Work?

I just wanted to stand and translate – to say, this is how things might seem if you were a farmer, and to offer an image of farmers from their own words. There are already plenty of people telling us we should be farming differently – rewilding, going small-scale, reducing dependence on meat, whatever – but not so many about farmers themselves. Farming isn’t like any other profession: it’s a business, but it’s also family, identity, past, money, inheritance, politics, heart, soul, future. Everything is entangled, and I wanted to say, have a look. It’s not like you think it is.

What was your experience of farming and rural life before you went to live at Rise Hill Farm in Wales?

I didn’t grow up on a farm – I grew up in London and the Scottish Borders. I spent a lot of time around farming but not in it, watching the seasonal cycles (lambing, haymaking, harvesting etc) but only taking part occasionally. I understood farming’s role in Britain’s sense of identity but it wasn’t until I moved to Wales that I realised how exceptional farming is, but also how dramatic and contradictory.

After Brexit and lockdowns, do you think the British farmer still has a bad reputation among the public?

I think it’s improving, but that’s not saying much – it’s coming from a pretty low base. At some stage over the past 30 years farming became like the police; it was once the sort of profession the middle classes respected without really understanding, now it’s the sort of profession that everyone disrespects without really understanding either.

I’d say there’s still a fair amount of suspicion on both sides.

How did you feel about witnessing the knackerman at work, and then writing about it? Why did you choose to include this in the book?

Because where there’s livestock, there’s dead stock, as the saying goes. The knackerman (and it is usually men) is as essential to farming as grass is, or weather. But I was curious – outside of farming, I’d never seen their world represented in print before.

How did I feel about it? I think they do a difficult job with professionalism and skill. Many aspects of it are not easy to watch, but it felt like it was important to do so, and to try to report honestly on it.

Now that you know all the intricacies of farming, would you choose to work on the land?

On the land, yes, as a farmer, no. Farming’s hard! And though there are plenty of extremely talented new entrants to farming, I did come to the conclusion that it really helps to be born into it, or at least to grow up connected to it.

If you keep stock, those animals don’t stop being dependent on you because it’s Christmas or you’re ill or there’s some family crisis. For anyone who’s grown up with the concept of holidays and weekends and the occasional trip away from home, the relentlessness of it can be hard. I loved the need to be 10 professions in a day (vet, economist, negotiator, haulier, chippy, plumber…), and I love the understanding between land and people. But I haven’t got the skill or the patience to be a real farmer.

Do you have any worries about the future of UK farming? Are there enough young people willing to farm?

For various reasons (cost of land etc), there’s a bottleneck at the moment. There are lots of young people bursting with ideas but very few opportunities to farm. I don’t know how it’s going to resolve itself but I’m fairly sure that it will. Farmers are like writers: there are always some in every generation. It doesn’t really matter what obstacles you put in their way, they’ll still make it through in the end.

TO PEOPLE AND WHAT PEOPLE

BY BELLA BATHURST (PROFILE BOOKS, £16.99, HB) IS OUT NOW.