The World is a Bundle of Hay: Memories of the Somerset Levels

A unique personal memoir of life, work and play on the Somerset Levels as a child growing up and working on a family farm in the 1940s and 50s. After the second world war the English countryside was flourishing, while modern farming was still mostly in the future. Many aspects of the way of life had not changed for centuries and traditional farming was what is now being rediscovered as ‘Regenerative Farming’. The author records and re-creates the flavour of life in the special landscape of the Somerset Levels while setting his story in a wider context of history and ideas which offer insights into modern dilemmas. The Somerset Levels exist precariously between sky and water. Stamp your foot on the earth in winter and you will feel the ground tremble and hear the water gurgling and undulating all around you, only inches below the surface. On clear nights a thin white layer of mist may form, lit by a bright moon above, that gives a magical feeling you are walking on a cloud and kicking it away, like autumn leaves, as you walk. The air has a soft and soothing quality; it is mixed with scents of many things: water peppermint, meadowsweet, willow leaves, the chamomile in the stony gateways, the May blossom, the sweet breath of cattle, warm milk; and everywhere the grass and hay. All is lightly salted by the presence of the sea. But with the beauty went hard work. A cowman might start work at four o’clock every morning, feed and milk his herd and send off the milk churns by nine o’clock; he had done five hours arduous and continuous work before breakfast, and in summer he helped with the harvesting until ten o’clock at night. This book gives a charming and balanced picture, both of the delights and of the hard toil of rural life.

Table of Contents:
1 The Country 9 2 The Grass 24 3 The Ricks 41 4 Self-sufficiency 63 5 Winter 92 6 The Farmhouse 117 7 Winter Work 149 8 Some Winter Jobs 173 9 The Milk Factory 201 10 Boundaries 219 11 Spring 254 Notes: Virgil's Georgics 272

About the Author :
Roy Preece grew up in the secret countryside of the Somerset Moors at a time when children could roam freely and safely over fields, farms and workshops. At age eleven he could put in a ten-hour day driving a tractor at hay-making. The brilliant headmaster of his traditional country grammar school had worked on radar research throughout the war, but after school was quite happy to put on overalls and feed the pigs which he kept to supplement the pupils' diet in the years of austerity. The boys marked out the games pitches, put up the goal posts and even stoked the school boilers. Roy has spent most of his life as a tutor, producing several books and a variety of articles, but he still maintains this deeply felt practical side to his life by inventing, building, making furniture, and caring for and sailing an old sail boat.