Lying on his back, he hears the insects

buzzing, pricking his ears at the louder hum

of a bumblebee . He feels ants, scuttling over

his skin. He resists the urge to brush them

off. A skylark high above him is singing its

song and he squints his eyes to try to spot it.

He suddenly feels a profound connection with

the ground beneath him and all that lives in,

on and above it. He is the f ifth generation to

farm this land, and the emotional rush of that

connection with the land is swiftly followed by

the familiar feeling of anxiety, as reality f loods

back in. The last few years, as the weather

has become more extreme and market forces

have brought his farm to its knees, he has

gotten used to this gnawing feeling in the pit

of his stomach. What future do his children

have on this farm, where they have grown up

digging for worms, hiding in the long grass,

and sneaking wildf lower bouquets into their

bedroom when he wasn’t looking? Will his

children’s children stand in the eerie light

of the moon and feel the swoosh of an owl

returning to roost in the barn, as he did? Will

they know the cacophony of the dawn chorus,

just as the sun rises? Or the sight of the

slick, black head of a seal emerging from the

waves? What future do those generations have

on this rapidly heating planet?

Brushing the dust off his overalls and pushing

the knot of anxiety back down again, he

returns to the task at hand, checking the

rows of recently sown carrots for signs of

germination. As his grandmother loved to

point out, farmers are intimately connected

to natural systems. A fact he wishes the

agricultural industry paid more attention

to, rather than trying to squeeze as much

production out of land as possible. His

father was encouraged to fall in line with

the ‘modern’ way of farming, eff iciency over

diversity. But the only way he knows to deal

with both his nagging anxiety and his falling

yields, is to invite a greater variety of species

back to the land he farms. Starting on this

tiny chunk of earth he has direct inf luence

over, he hopes that by inviting others to share

his profound connection to the ground, to all

that lives in, on and above it, they will join

him in a quest to restore the richness of our

ecosystems.

He sees the future in his mind’s eye; children

zigzagging between a line of trees separating

the f ields, picking up windfalls to turn into

apple juice; his neighbors loading crates of

pumpkins into the trailer, to be taken to the

cold storage back in the barn; others digging

potatoes out of the dark, rich soil, the thought

of a winter’s supply of deep fried chips keeping

them going. Building a farm of nature and

for nature, of the community and for the

community, that is what helps push down

the doubts and worries for the future. Maybe

one day the knot will unwind and nature’s

soothing sound, feeling and sights will heal us

all.

Jessica Hill

Jessica Hill is assistant professor of criminology

at VU Amsterdam She is a green criminologist

studying crimes against the environment by

individuals organisations and states

wwwlinkedincominjessicahilla891131b

Jessica Hill

Jessica

Hill