The Running Hare: The Secret Life of Farmland

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The author of The Private Life of an English Field looks for ‘restorative reads’ after long, chilly days working his land. From a period Parisian thriller to nature-led poetry, here’s what’s been on his bedside table in 2019. Droppings are left in clusters of little, round, hard balls. They are usually yellowy-brown or green in colour, and full of grass. Hare droppings (on the right) tend to be slightly bigger and flatter than rabbit droppings (left-hand side).

Smashing bit of nature writing. John Lewis-Stempel rented a field, with permission to turn it over to wildflower cultivation in its first year, and documented the diverse wildlife it attracted. Fans of Lewis-Stempel's bestselling Meadowland will find here the same easy-reading prose fuelled by daft-as-a-brush enthusiasm and embellished with lyrical flourishes ... the mud-spattered details of a farming life lend The Running Hare a unique realness." ( Mail on Sunday) He describes beautifully the changing of the seasons and the habits of animals such as the hares that make their home in his field. The book is a superb piece of nature writing. Ian Critchley, Sunday TimesA stirring rural fantasia...Lewis-Stempel's heart and mind are absolutely in the right place. I salute him and I adored his appreciation of the quirky detail." ( The Times) I did also learn quite a lot from this book; he includes a lot of agricultural history, pastoral poetry, snippets of folk songs, myths and rural legends, as well as offering startling figures about the declining wildlife in the UK. Here are some things I enjoyed learning: The Running Hare is just the most sumptuously gorgeous book. John Lewis-Stempel is simply the best of the many outstanding nature writers we have today. His forte is writing in great detail about very small areas - by concentrating our minds on the detail he expands our knowledge and view of the world around us. Simply brilliant! What an extraordinary writer he is. Such an engaging tale of his attempts to change the ecology of a single field.

Whether your bringing the whole family or enjoying a night off from the kids, we have plenty of options for everyone.How about trying one of our show stopping burgers such as the Ultimate Spicy Beef Burger? Or, If you fancy a pub classic, try our hand-battered fish and chips. Happiness can truly be enhanced by soil - scientists at the University of Bristol report that a specific soil bacterium Mycobacterium vaccae activates a set of serotonin releasing neurones in the dorsal raphe nucleus of the brain - the same ones targeted by Prozac. So your mood can genuinely lift, just form working with, or walking over soil.One field, naturally sown and tended, attracted wildlife to it that were completely absent from the surrounding agri-cultured, chemically-induced fields. Hares, red-legged partridges, rabbits, pheasant, many different birds and insects were all drawn to Flinders, a field that the author tended with love and farmed with old methods rather than spraying with chemicals. Amongst the wheat, he sowed an abundance of wildflowers, horrifying neighbouring farmers who termed them ‘weeds’. Agriculture has decimated British nature so I admire anyone who makes an effort to reverse the process, even in a small way. Went to The Village for a 2 night stay and decided to visit the Running Hare for my wife’s favourite meal “A Carvery” when were out . Very surprised to find 2 carverys for a tenner! What a bargain! This price for a medium but for an extra few pounds there is a large carvery on offer.

In a way, this book reads like a love letter to the English countryside, and one field in particular. There is a heady mix of agricultural history, rural folklore, geography, childhood memories and an odd grab-bag of facts. For example, in an aside on the joys of ploughing by hand, we learn that the ploughman’s lunch was an invention by the British Cheese Bureau in the 1950s to increase the sales of cheese! Nearly 3.5) This is the record of a year of old-fashioned farming: Lewis-Stempel rented a several-acre field called Flinders, planted wildflowers in with his wheat and corn, and plowed it himself. Not a pesticide in sight. He attracted hares and other mammals, as well as numerous species of birds – all in all, much more life than your average field farmed by modern methods. The Running Hare pub is in St David’s Park, Ewloe, North Wales. You’ll find us just off the A494, close to Junction 33B of the A55 (North Wales Expressway). We’re also close to the B5125, handy for families visiting from Mancot, Sandycroft, and Dobshill.Such vulnerability is unable to survive in the modern landscape of mass farming and incessant chemical sprays. Our overworked and abused farmlands have long been avoided and abandoned by wildlife and birds who have gradually lessened or even disappeared with the removal of old traditions. His column on nature and farming in Country Life won him Magazine Columnist of the Year in the 2016 BSME Awards. [3] His monthly column in The Countryman magazine began in March 2023. He has written on a range of subjects from Native Americans to fatherhood, but specialises in military history and natural history under his family name. He is a former columnist for The Sunday Express (for which he still writes features), and currently a columnist for Country Life and The Times. His Times column, Nature Notebook, focuses on both nature and farming across the UK. [2] Industrial farming has succeeded in turning turn fields into open roofed factories. Copious amounts of fertiliser and weed killers have decimated the natural environment. Plants, birds and animals that were once common sights in the countryside are now very rare or no longer exist. The fields are now only able to support the growing crop. Six Weeks: The Short and Gallant Life of the British Officer in the First World War: The Life and Death of the British Officer in the First World War (2011)