The author is an illustrator who lives on a farm in North Lincolnshire that she and her husband have rewilded – or allowed to rewild itself. We don’t hear a lot about the farming but it is clear that this was difficult land to farm and some of it has reverted to sogginess and other parts to scrub since the last commercial farming occurred in 2019.
This is a month by month account of a year on this land and is a celebration of nature in words and in the author’s own attractive artwork. This land is home to a wide variety of wildlife and the author describes it well, and with real knowledge about it on this land and in a wider context. If all Lincolnshire farmland were as rich in wildlife as this land then we wouldn’t have so much to worry about.
I must drive close to the setting for this book as I travel from Lincoln to the M180 en route to or from a couple of my grandchildren. I don’t pass much in the way of interesting-looking habitat and I’m glad that there are a few oases of wildlife hidden away here.
The reader doesn’t learn about the economics of the scheme and whether this is part of a larger, more commercial, enterprise or what the farming neighbours make of it. Those meaty issues aren’t what the book is about. This book is very much a wildlife calendar of a wildlife-rich piece of farmland which is wilding and as such is a charming and well-written account.
The cover? I don’t think this is the best example of the author’s artwork and it doesn’t look much like Lincolnshire to me (though maybe it is) and so I’d give it 6/10 which is a bit of a shame as there are some far better illustrations inside the book.
A Wilding Year: bringing life back to the land by Hannah Dale is published by Batsford Books.
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