For ten years broadcaster Paul Heiney ran his own Suffolk farm with horse rather than tractor. In this book Paul draws on his experience in order to describe month-by-month a farming year that our great-grandparents might have recognized.
Paul shows that in traditional farming the farmer strikes a balance with nature and gives back to the land what he takes away. Detailing the work of the farm’s key players - farmer, farmer’s wife, horseman, dairyman, shepherd, labourer and farmer’s boy - he considers who took centre stage at various junctures of the farming year, in a way familiar to viewers of his Victorian Farming television series.
The book includes many 1940s and 50s photographs from the archives of ‘Farmer and Stockbreeder’ magazine.