Why every farm needs an ass
How to be a Farmer: An Ancient Guide to Life on the Land Selected, translated and introduced by Mark D Usher (Princeton University Press, £12.99)
THE search term ‘how to be a farmer’ produces some interesting results. Farmers Weekly offers nine options, of which ‘marry into a farming family’ and ‘win the lottery’ strike me as the easiest and most practical. Google suggests that you may have meant ‘how to be a farmer with no money’ (something I know plenty about). Keep scrolling, however, and you will find Mark Usher’s latest anthological offering.
In a (wild-harvested) nutshell, Prof Usher has gathered together two dozen classical Roman and Greek pieces on vita patriae. If you are hoping for a review of the Dorothy Parker ‘it was written without fear and without research’ variety, you have come to the wrong place. This book is a gem. As Robert Graves remarked: ‘A well-chosen anthology is a complete dispensary of medicine for the more common mental disorders, and may be used as much for prevention as cure.’
Prof Usher, a farmer and a professor of classical literature, has chosen extremely well. In his own words: ‘There is a mixture here of ethical precept, local colour, historical observation, philosophical perspective, humour, satire, and poetry.’ Interestingly, he has included the original texts as well as his own translations. Greek and Latin were not my strong suits and, initially, I felt that the space could have been better devoted to more or longer extracts. However, I found myself reading O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint, agricolas!, knowing more or less what it meant (‘Oh, farmers! How lucky they are—too lucky!’—i hope) and actually enjoying the process.
Another surprising aspect is how relevant Roman and Greek writings on the countryside are today. Hesiod muses about the pleasure of self-sufficiency (‘what a banquet there is in mallow and asphodel’) and the dangers of procrastination (‘the dilly dallier doesn’t fill his barn’). Virgil waxes lyrical on the joy of rural living (‘Let the countryside be my delight… may I cherish rivers and woodlands—even if I achieve no fame’). Horace covers the same ground (‘Happy is he who, far away from financial affairs, works his ancestral lands’), as does Pliny the Elder (‘Nothing is better than farming, nothing richer, nothing sweeter, nothing more fitting for a free person’). And Columella provides an insight to mixed farming techniques (‘every farm needs an ass’). Varro, Cato, Plato and others cover topics from intensive farming to the importance of sacrificing a pig before you thin out a grove.
Prof Usher suggests ‘one need not actually be a farmer to enjoy this book’. He is absolutely right. Jonathan Self
Hesiod muses about the pleasure of self-sufficiency