When Nature Becomes Your Treasured Friend and Most Ardent Foe
Farmers cannot "love nature entirely"; neither should they.
Sunshine is in short supply where I live in the Yorkshire Dales. Looking out of my window across to the massive hulk of millstone grit that is Baugh Fell, I can rarely see its top; it is mostly covered by a blanket of low-lying stratus clouds — which also serve to smother out the entire district’s sunlight. For folk living up here, a “dreary grey day” is our dominant reality. Accepting this hand the climate deals us is part of what it means to “live well” in this otherwise romantically beautiful place. We can’t really complain, for the very fells and mountains that we cherish are the topographical culprits that aid and abet the westerly Atlantic air in forming the wet and overcast conditions that we endure. Every place, no matter how wonderful, has its shortcomings.
However, the last two months in the Dales have been abnormal. The sun has shone — and has gone on shining. Day after day, the fields and fells have basked in its light, and little to no rain has fallen upon the land normally drenched with moisture. Nearby waterfalls are a mere trickle, and the rivers thin and shallow; they are desperately thirsty. Conversations between Dalesfolk at present begin along the lines of “Lovely weather, isn’t it?” and “What amazing weather we have been having!” Though perhaps, some are starting to ponder afterwards that “It would be good, though, for some rain…”
It is safe to say that the Dales’ many sheep farmers are currently a very happy bunch. Lambing time for them is over and the fact that lambing coincided with this season of prolonged sunshine is a cause for jubilation. Rain is no friend for lambs, especially newborns whose entire existence up until the moment of birth has been one of perpetual security inside the warmth of their mothers’ womb. Being abruptly subject to a baptism of unrelenting rain is too much for many of their vulnerable bodies to bear. After a night of persistent bad weather, the shepherd readies himself in the morning for a scene of gut-wrenching devastation. Imagine, then, the joy of the shepherd when he can go to sleep knowing the cloudless night sky is providing his lambs with the best start to life he could hope for. Imagine how much greater the joy when these perfect conditions persist throughout the whole of the lambing season.
Life in this tragic world is never simple, and one man’s blessing is another man’s curse. Whilst the upland shepherds rejoice, lowland arable farmers are praying for relief. Their crops are withering in the parched fields, threatening their entire harvest. Apart from using expensive irrigation, there is nothing they can do to avert the slow and painful disaster unfurling in front of them. Rain is their only hope — yet the current forecast is only a harbinger of further doom. One man’s blessing is indeed another man’s curse. Such is the unpredictable life for those who live on the land.
We are confronted here with a harsh reality that agrarians, nature writers, and indeed the general public, are apt to forget. Nature, for all its beauty and all-round loveliness, can be a tyrannical beast for those who make their living from the land. It is easy to romanticise nature when you don’t have to live daily with its tyrannies, unpredictability, and hardships, and can instead observe its beauty from a safe distance. Then, and only then, do you have the privilege of “loving nature entirely”.1
Oftentimes, the very natural phenomena that give us nature lovers delight — a breathtaking storm, a murmuration of starlings, a glimpse of a shy badger — cause farmers to worry and lament. Starlings may pillage a crop; badgers may spread a hidden disease that condemns a herd of cows to death; and a storm may decimate an entire year’s worth of labour in a night. The subject of our enjoyment is another man’s foe. Such is the harsh reality of nature in this tragically fallen world.
Though many farmers also greatly enjoy nature and long to farm in a way that both protects and causes to nature to flourish, more often than not they find themselves having to work against nature rather than with it. They are daily reminded that nature, like us, is fallen. The thorns and thistles that cut their hand, the weeds which compete with their crops, and the swarm devours their fruit make sure of this.
It should come as no surprise to us, then, that farmers, and especially peasants, may hold greatly differing conceptions of nature than we do. Those who are most keenly dependent on the land for their living, or who live in the harshest of environments, may even harbour thoughts towards nature that romantics and educated urbanites might consider to be almost immoral. As Patrick Joyce highlights in Remembering Peasants, “The peasants’ view of ‘nature’ is that it is evil as well as good.”2 The Indian peasant who hates the tiger who kills his only son, and the British farmer who ruthlessly exterminates the moles that are ruining her fields may upset our modern sensibilities, but are they really doing anything that is wrong? They are not experiencing the sanitised, romanticised nature that we enjoy and marvel at from a distance. They are confronting real and raw nature in “tooth and claw”.
Those of us who still believe that peasants and farmers are mistaken for holding these “archaic and uncouth” views should listen when they remind us “You would react in exactly the same way if you had to live a year in our shoes.” Ideals and romanticism crumble in the face of harsh, lived-in reality. We must not disparage land workers for holding these negative views of nature. Doing so risks dismissing and minimising their lived experiences and can, in some cases, make their lives harder, such as when we subject farmers to well-intentioned but ignorant laws that prohibit them from destroying some of the creatures that are destroying their livelihoods.
The life of those who live off the land is already hard enough. We must make sure that we don’t make their lives even harder by forcing them to treat nature how we —who are safely removed from its consequences and tyrannies — wish it to be treated.
The tyranny of nature is not the whole picture though for the farmer. A rightful fear of nature can coexist with the deepest respect and adoration.3 Farmers long to hear the cuckoo as much as we do, and when they have the time in their hectic schedules, they also delight to watch the returning swallows nesting in the barn.4 Nature may come loaded with different meanings for those living on the land, but that doesn’t stop them from loving these creatures just as much as we do. But they are also painfully aware that nature’s beauty is not the whole picture either. Nature does have a tyrannical side, a side which may be hidden from view to those who merely visit and enjoy nature from a distance, but which is obvious to those who live within it. There are some creatures out to kill and others able to decimate livelihoods if they get the chance. Farmers can never afford to forget this “dual nature of nature”; they can never love it in its entirety. This, for the farmer, is ultimately why nature can be their cherished friend as well as their greatest foe.
If just 2% of my readers tipped £1/$1 this essay would pay for itself in terms of time spent working on it.
“Loving nature entirely” is a phrase from the brilliant essay which inspired this one by
over at Fellin Pitts Farm.Patrick Joyce, Remembering Peasants. Allen Lane, p. 115.
Joyce, Remembering Peasants.
James Rebanks, English Pastoral. Penguin. See the heartwarming section where James’ grandfather shows him the nesting swallows in the barn, pp. 89-90.
Hadden! Your voice!! Epic🌱🌿💚
Great article, Hadden. My mother lives on the prairie in western Canada and the troubles she faces with hordes of destructive deer is devastating. I wish it were legal to remove them but alas there is nothing she can do. It makes her large-scale gardening/landscaping very difficult and in some ways, impossible.