Land Healer: How Farming Can Save Britain’s Countryside

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On the top of the monument you can just see the remains of a nest. It belonged to a pair of ravens that fledged a few weeks ago. It is the first time a breeding pair have ever been recorded in Norfolk. Exiting Europe and designing our own agricultural policy should be an exciting time – in that a field is no longer just about food production, but also how we maintain it and how we look after it, how we make it more resilient to climate change.’ But frustratingly, he says, of the second part of the transition to the new system, local nature recovery, which he thinks is more important, ‘we’re hearing nothing about’. There isn’t even a pilot planned until 2023. On some former arable land, including those visible from the busy coastal car park at Lady Anne's Drive, dry fields have been recreated into thriving wetlands, building bunds on old drainage channels and installing simple mechanisms to control the water, along with existing sluices.

Today though perhaps the most influential part of the Estate, which builds on Coke’s legacy, is the pioneering work (and associated campaigning) that the estate, under Fiennes leadership, is doing to practice and promote a new form of farming which actively encourages restoration of habitats (particularly wetlands, grazing meadows and hedgerows) and which sets out to create a symbiotic diversity of plants, insects and birdlife.He had previously done a bit of lambing at the Knepp Estate in Sussex (now famous for being the pioneer of rewilding), and asked its owner, Charlie Burrell, if he could visit for a few days. He ended up staying for nearly three years, working in the woods and the plant nursery and the game department and learning how to use a chainsaw and drive a tractor. He lived with Charlie and his girlfriend Isabella Tree (who has since written the best-selling book Wilding). Burrell is still one of his closest friends. ‘Charlie gave me a wonderful opportunity – he welcomed me, housed me, and generally taught me how farming works.’ Following the farming year and the natural cycle of the seasons, Land Healer chronicles a life of conservation lived at the edges, and is a manifesto for rethinking our relationship with the natural world before it's too late. Sarah Langford's book on farming is really a book about healing. All of life and death is here: family, politics, nature, climate, history, humanity. Rooted is a beautifully written, powerful reminder of where we've gone wrong, what is at stake, and how we can change. I loved it.'- Christie Watson, author of The Language of Kindness And on a wider scale, a Defra grant for "farming in protected landscapes" paid for a rotary ditcher which has excavated shallow channels in the soil along a 50km stretch of coastline from Cley next the Sea to Wild Ken Hill in west Norfolk. In Rooted, Sarah weaves her own story around these farmers - from dairy to arable, traditional to experimental - who taught her what being a farmer means. Intimate and moving, these stories shine a light on the human side of modern farming, and show us how land connects us all, not only in terms of global sustainability but in our relationships with our physical and mental health, our communities, our planet and ourselves.

The concept is a very interesting one – the execution of the book though unfortunately falls a little short of it. The book really comes to life when Fiennes either talks about his own journey and farming experiences and even more so in the often lyrical passages where he describes days on the land through the year. Too much of the rest of the book though is occupied by a blizzard of facts and statistics which, even for me as a mathematician and statistican lost interest as he does not really assemble a coherent story about them – but (if I can be forgiven a gamekeeper pun) has something of a scattergun approach. And similarly sections on various aspects of agricultural policy and law, while clearly vital to the country’s future agriculture and the likelihood of other farmers adopting his approaches, again failed to cohere, at least for me. But there is a quiet revolution taking place, and it is coming up through the soil. Pioneered by a small but rapidly growing regenerative food and farming movement in the UK and globally, which seeks to overturn how we have farmed and eaten over the last 70 years. Our film, Six Inches of Soil, tells the story of extraordinary farmers, communities and small businesses, who are leading the way in transforming how our food is produced and our land cared for.Many years ago, the old Norfolk boys would dig foot-drains to take the water off the land," said Mr Fiennes. This daily call has been an invaluable resource for me, and I hope anyone who reads here and wants to use it as a tool can also find some solace and a means at their disposal to help the land themselves. We want our film to reach multiple audiences, so our distribution strategy includes a cinema release, release on an online streaming platform together with memorable in-person screening experiences. We are also developing a cohesive plan to show our film in schools, corporate boardrooms and to key policy-makers. So he did. He turned up to a soundproof booth and the producer said, ‘Let’s start at 10 and break at 11 for 20 minutes, then have lunch from one to two.’ ‘No,’ said Jake, ‘We need to get this done – no breaks and we’ll stop for a 10-minute sandwich.’ I would have liked an index and some references, but you can’t have everything in a book and this book delivers a great deal.

It is, says Fiennes, ‘deeply depressing’. ‘It’s not a reflection on the tenant farmer, who has been here for many years; it’s the policies that created this a long time ago: policies that don’t value nature or incorporate it into our food systems.’ Even though – according to the National Farmers’ Union – almost 90 per cent of farmers are in favour of hedgerow restoration as a simple carbon-cutting measure, many still want everything to look ‘tidy’. Rooted offers us an honest look at the farming life today. It is not an easy way to make a living, but through Langford's personal story - and those of who she meets - we appreciate how it offers a connection with the land, and a firmer sense of our place in the world. Raw, earthy and inspiring.'- Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment Unfortunately however Jake Fiennes’ book just didn’t hit the spot for me. The mix of biography, history, facts and figures and descriptive narratives feels very disjointed and somewhat arrogant.As the author explains it, this regenerative farming approach can easily replace the EU’s Taliban farming model; in which everyone chases subsidies by spraying chemicals according to calendar, rather than need, and killing everything that doesn’t fit the plan. Fiennes was known as ‘the disruptor’ when he arrived at Holkham in 2018 to take on the job, at the request of its owner, Tom Coke, the 8th Earl of Leicester, whose family has held the estate since the early 17th century. Fiennes’ siblings are known mainly for their involvement in the arts. Ralph and Joseph (his twin brother) are actors; his sisters Sophie and Martha are film-makers; his brother Magnus is a composer. He has a foster brother, Michael Emery, who is an archaeologist. This book is written by the Head of Conservation on the beautiful Holkham Estate in North Norfolk. That estate is probably best known now for two things and historically for one other. Today most visitors either head for the Neo-Palladian style Hall and its extensive parklands (with lake and deer park) or even more so for the Holkham beach with its quite stunning vistas of miles of Golden sand. Historically it is known as the home of Coke of Norfolk – agricultural reformer (partly controversially as a supporter and beneficiary of enclosure) and innovator (in areas such as the growing of grass crops and the selective breeding of sheep). Even though most of us aren’t farmers, Fiennes believes that his principles can be followed in gardens, too.

Land Healer: how farming can save Britain’s countryside by Jake Fiennes is published by Witness BooksHis father, a former tenant farmer, was an architectural photographer, and his five siblings include Hollywood actors Ralph and Joseph. A key part of his strategy is the transformation of dozens of fields into wetlands, where grazing by beef cattle is carefully timed to manage the habitats for ground-nesting birds. He said this proved the value of restoring wetlands - and the crucial importance of data-collection and monitoring