Nature Book Reader June 2020 - Flipbook - Page 66
A Nature Book Reader
JOHN KILNER
Project co-ordinator, Wyke Beck Valley Pride, Leeds
What to Look For In Winter
by E. L. Grant Watson
When John Seymour sat
down to write The Fat of the
Land at the end of the 1950s,
he would have shrugged off
as ridiculous any suggestion
that his story of converting
a gamekeeper’s cottage in
Suffolk would become a
textbook for the trip back
to nature that thousands
would embark on in the
next two decades.
The Fat of The Land is a
rambling and wonderfully
stubborn description of a
family trying to live off five
acres of farmland and little
else. Illustrated beautifully
by Seymour’s wife Sally, it’s
hard not to be seduced by
its willing subjugation to
the earth. Seymour gleefully
admits to a never-ending
series of mistakes and bad
decisions in establishing
a truly rural base for his
family. This sense of ad hoc
66
peasantry was no doubt a
pull on anyone considering
fleeing the city. But as
Seymour reminds us on
page after page, getting
it together in the country
means sixteen hour days
of butchery, aching backs,
frozen knees saturated in
blood and mire – and no
money. Instead an almost
visionary delight at the
world around you:
“Our flower garden
is a thing still in our
imagination...but there are
wild flowers, and blossoms
on the wild plum trees, and
the beautiful woods and
marshes, and the cries of the
marsh birds coming to us at
night as we lie in bed, and
the song of the nightingales
in the summer time.”
Seymour, for all his stress
on toil and sweat, is not
without romance either:
