A curious blend of memoir, social history and didactic pastoral, Bella Bathurst brings her luminous prose to shine a light on the reality of farming in Britain today.

She moves to a cottage on the 180-acre Rise Farm, a place neither pretty nor idyllic, but grimly clinging to tradition, as embodied by the aging, embittered old farmer, Bert.

The book is a record of life at Rise Farm and the lives of other rural characters who contribute to the little known but essential functions of British agriculture - the Knackerman, the lawyer, the slaughtermen, the Big Farm economists, the opportunists, the fatalists.

Beautifully written and strangely sad, the book explains how massively misunderstood is the price of wanting our farms to be picturesque yet productive, cruelty-free and yet able to provide us with cheap and tasty food.

And such writing...

"One little brown calf has detached himself from the rest of the group and is standing further down, watching the cars passing. His ears are pricked and his gaze follows us, all of us, approaching and receding. We're a herd passing on our way towards other herds - work, family, football practice - in our little tin boxes, encircled by the timings of our own lives. Around him the other cows graze on, indifferent to the road. But he looks interested, as if he'd like something explained to him.
What does he see? I wonder. I know what he is to us. But what are we to him?"