I enjoy reading books about the natural world, the countryside, the landscape etc and I very much enjoyed this one. It is however different in several ways. This is a diary written by Michael Morpurgo of the year 1976 and was never intended for publication. During that year, I actually remember it well: drought and everlasting sunshine, he was learning about farming in readiness for setting up his charity ‘Farms for City Children.’ All the profit from this book is going to support this charity.
The diary is quite repetitive, milking after all has to happen twice a day, everyday, but for some reason it was not a problem to keep on reading. ‘All around the year’ is a lovely book to hold and contains some wonderful black and white photos of 1970s farming life in rural Devon. The photographer was James Ravilious, son of the artist Eric, and the poet Ted Hughes, a friend of Morpurgo’s from a nearby village, wrote a poem for each month of the year. So one way and another it is quite a starry book.
You may know that Michael’s wife Clare was the daughter of Allen Lane, the publisher who had a Damascus moment on the platform of Exeter railway station and began the life of the Penguin paperback book. Decades later, after his death, it was money from this publishing phenomenon that enabled the Morpurgos to give up teaching, move to Devon and buy a working farm and a large Victorian house, with a view to creating a charity so that city children could see where their food came from. There is a rather pleasing circular movement to that happening; coming from Exeter and eventually returning back to Devon.
On finishing the book, my first thought was: oh my goodness why does anyone become a farmer? The work is so physically hard, everything is weather dependent, animals sicken so easily and result in huge vet bills and it is all so relentless! However, when I lived in Somerset and had friends who belonged to farming families, there was never a poor farmer. Though I do remember eventually understanding that there was a great difference between tenant farmers and those who owned their land.
A lovely book that I happily received as a Christmas gift. I now know what a gilt is and a hogget.