The Farmer's Wife: The Instant Sunday Times Bestseller

Product Information

The words in this book flowed out of me. I loved writing it. I am grateful to Louisa and the team at Faber for seeing the value in my story.’

But such methods are not practical for everyone. “A lot of farmers are trapped in awful circumstances with huge debt and not enough staff,” she says. “It is no surprise the suicide rate is at an all-time high.” She recognises that we are in an economic climate with high mortgages and fuel bills where there are people who cannot afford food, but resents the idea that “it’s on farmers to make that work. The government’s importing of food is a travesty, an exploitation of our environmental footprint on to acres somewhere else in the world.”Hers is a story that is rarely told, despite being one we think we know. Weaving past and present, Helen shares the days that have shaped her. This is the truth of those days: from steering the family through the Beast from the East and the local authority planning committee, to finding the quiet strength to keep going, when supper is yet to be started, another delivery man has assumed he needs to speak to the 'man of the house', and she would rather punch a cushion than plump it. Ein bekanntes Muster dieser Kultur: Frau wünscht sich als Lebensziel Kinder, Ehemann, Haus, erwartet aber, dass dieser Ehemann für die Kosten aufkommt ("Ich bekomme doch nicht Kinder, damit jemand anders sie aufzieht." taucht wörtlich mehrfach im Buch auf - das habe ich nicht nur von einer Frau auch in Echt gehört und mich jedesmal gefragt: "Aber der Vater schon?"). In diesem Fall umfasst das vom Ehemann zu finanzierende Lebensziel auch innerhalb weniger Jahre immer wieder neue Häuser samt komplettem Umbau und teurer Einrichtung. Rebanks berichtet von regelmäßigem Streit mit ihrem Mann ums Geld. OFFERMAN: I love to go participate in the whole thing. When I'm spending time and communing with the Rebanks, then that makes me aware. It redoubles my attention in the rest of my life. Where's this food coming from? - no matter where I am in the world. Who made this, and do they care about us in our health, or do they care more about their profits? James can remember which tup he put every ewe to, hundreds of them by sight, and has a photographic memory of them. We specialise in selling prime breeding tups in the autumn sales to other shepherds across the Lake District and beyond.

Access to good healthy food is, for me, a basic human right. But it isn’t solved by making farming worse in a race to the bottom. When I was growing up, mealtimes anchored the days. With very little experience, Mum had to find her way around managing this big farmhouse and doing all the jobs, mostly by herself. There was no money to pay a maid to live in the attic, like there had been in Grandma’s day. Doing anything about all this as an individual is complicated. It is not as simple as switching to a ‘plant-based diet’ to save the planet. The worst farming on earth is acres and acres of wheat, soy and maize grown by ploughing, which creates whole landscapes devoid of nature. These crops are wholly dependent upon synthetic chemicals – pesticides, herbicides and fossil-fuel fertilisers that are disastrous for the soil, rivers, oceans, insects and birds. Eating ‘plant-based’ products supports these systems. Ultimately, we need to understand ecosystems and farming better to make informed decisions about what to eat. My roles as a mother and a farmer’s wife demand a lot of me. Most of the time I am OK with it – I choose this life. But sometimes it is overwhelming. I regularly feel I have too many things that I am responsible for. Helen Rebanks grew up on her family’s Lake District farm and married into another just six miles away. For the past 25 years she has juggled getting up at dawn to sort out her four children, birth a sheep, drive a quad bike, cook a nutritious supper and worry about whether the generator will fail and bring the whole enterprise to a grinding halt. It is neither glamorous, nor fun nor even, as she makes clear in this vinegar-sharp memoir, necessarily fulfilling. Mostly it involves shouting at people you love and wondering whether this is the tiredest you’ve ever felt while still being, technically, awake. On our farm we try to farm ‘regeneratively’, which is a fancy way of saying we manage grazing carefully, which in turn improves the soil health, and we restore habitats for nature. We have spent 20 years learning about all this. We believe in being good stewards of the land.Scoop into balls with a spoon or your hands, flattening slightly, and bake on the prepared tray for 15 minutes until golden. This beautifully-illustrated memoir, which takes place across one day at the farm, offers a chance to think about where our food comes from and who puts it on the table. Helen's recipes, lists and gentle wisdom helps us to get through our days, whatever they throw at us. REBANKS: I think I'm finding that women that are doing roles that men have traditionally done are getting lots of media attention now, particularly in the U.K. And that's all well and good, but what about the women that do the behind-the-scenes work that keeps these farms going? The focus is the family kitchen table,” she tells me. “What I am trying to do is connect who is doing the cooking with where our food is coming from. This includes good family and traditional mixed farms, eating well-sourced produce and championing British provenance. It’s also about the choices I’ve made to be a stay-at-home mum.”