So lovely to talk across the Atlantic to @katiehillwriter.bsky.social for Offrange, 'the untold stories just beyond the fence line of American agriculture.' We had a lot in common! ambrook.com/offrange/per... #GhostsoftheFarm #WomeninAgriculture #ruralwomen @chelseagreenbooks.bsky.social
Downland before a greening field, & a curving chalk track at sundown
Gallows Down or Combe Gibbet curving above a belt of still-wintry trees, and a green field at sundown
Ham Spray Road, with mud in its middle, hedged and heading towards Parsons Hill Down
Tea with a wonderful 94yr old & his niece nr the Bloomsberries Ham Spray House, under the downs. A rambling house filled with love, art & books & a garden of fritillaries, light & daffodils. They’d read #GhostsoftheFarm & knew the incredible ’MdeB.’ A mile away, but deeper into the storied land.
Had the utter joy & honour of a #BBCCountryfile #Plodcast with old friend & former editor @blorengeviews.bsky.social - & boy didn’t we cover a lot! Accompanied by the spirit of Julia White & the #GhostsoftheFarm, the modern rural, & too much laughter from me! @chelseagreenbooks.bsky.social
These funny, warm, fierce, change making women friends of the 40s and 50s, deserve a film, don’t you think? Humbly, it’s their story not mine, but they have heard others mention ‘filmic’ & ‘cinematic’ & are clamouring! #GhostsoftheFarm
Julia White & the #GhostsoftheFarm have come to my old hometown of red-brick Reading & #BBCRadioBerks! Great chat with the very lovely Kirsten O’Brien, who thinks the book is ripe FOR A FILM! Yes please! Anyone? Lovely to pay a visit to dear childhood Thames, too… 1hr7 in & on the midday news! 1/2
Happy #InternationalWomensDay! Here’s a thread on some of the extraordinary women in my book, #GhostsoftheFarm: Farmers, Horse Breeders, Community Leaders & Change Makers, who had been all but forgotten. Their mid-life (& beyond) energy, humility & humour was an inspiration in itself… 1/21
Look! Nick has been on a little pilgrimage to see Julia White! Lovely views from the top of Gallows Down of her farm below … #GhostsoftheFarm
Such a story here. A story that is in my book, #GhostsoftheFarm in fact. This wood was part clear-felled a couple of years ago, despite my stringent, lone protestations, with other woods, in spring, without an environmental assessment. All legal, grants enabling it. Last pops of Willow Tit in Berks.
Copy of my book with the White Horse symbol of the Richard Jefferies Prize above it.
Absolutely thrilled to be Shortlisted for @rjaward.bsky.social! And in brilliant company. Lovely to have that white horse sticker on #GhostsoftheFarm. My farming women & their workers & families of all those decades ago, would be so proud! (As would younger me.) @chelseagreenbooks.bsky.social
Clare Balding & me on the ancient track known as Bunjum Lane under Gallows Down/ Combe Gibbet and Walbury Hill/ Inkpen Beacon
Clare & I holding the handles of Julia White’s horse drawn, blue and orange plough, by the church wall, after a sudden shower.
Julia White’s grave stone - a small memorial stone in the turf.
… and some of our walk pics here! We chatted all things women farmers, landscape & nature writing, horses, people in the landscape & Clare’s childhood memories of walking up that hill (it looks so smooth & innocent!) #GhostsoftheFarm @chelseagreenbooks.bsky.social
Recorded this yesterday - the most wonderful ramble & chat with producer Karen Gregor & Clare Balding. No wonder the programme (running 25yrs) is one of the best, most fascinating & warmest; Clare even more lovely, engaged & interesting than you imagine. Listen 29th Jan at 3pm, R4! #GhostsoftheFarm
Miss Julia White learnt to plough with horses, aged 40, from Jack Tucker in wartime, in the fields I know & love. I learnt (in theory) from her words, & as I recreated & reanimated them, & walked those furrows. Here’s an extract & a song for #PloughMonday from #GhostsoftheFarm, & a photo of Jack 1/4
A single furrow horse drawn plough, set alongside a flint village church wall as a tribute to those men & women that worked the land.
Me in the downland fields Julia White farmed, leaning on a log with my book.
Julia White with her dogs Jo and Dina, in the 1940s
Harvest gang on the farm. An assortment of villagers posed with various pitchforks and rakes, below a rick
It’s #PloughMonday & here is Julia White’s 1st plough. She pioneered farming 1941-1955, & with her farmer-partner Doris, pulled the plough up the church aisle to be blessed each year. I’m grateful I got to tell their story, & laugh with, listen to, & interrogate their ghosts. #GhostsoftheFarm
Excited for @orfc.bsky.social tomorrow! Will be book signing 11am, in the Main Hall, chatting #GhostsoftheFarm with lovely @benraskin.bsky.social 12.45 in St Columba’s Church, then Wild Servicing with the fab Nadia Shaikh, Sam Lee & Dan Grimston at 6 in The Story Museum. So much happening #ORFC26!
In case you’re after some reading, #GhostsoftheFarm (here in #BBCCountryfile) is a book that revealed itself in filmic, elegiac, dusty light, & haunted me. God I'd love to see this as a film. I can see my forgotten women, zipping each other into dresses, forsaking breeches, to gales of laughter.
Well this from Gordon Buchanon was absolutely wonderful - sensitive & full of love & awe. Hard to believe, but I once rode in & knew these very mountains well, crossed & drank from that river & met wild horses. Ah me … #GhostsoftheFarm #Cowgirl www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...
Chatting all things writing & #GhostsoftheFarm. An interview with the wonderful Penny Locke from @pennypostwb.bsky.social (whose weekly local news is always an extensive, positive, informative joy to read) www.mixcloud.com/4legsradio/n... @chelseagreenbooks.bsky.social
'a wonderful writer ... a book about working women, & finding a way to ‘farm’ in different ways, when the opportunities aren’t there for you... [where] the reader becomes a
virtual time traveler.' Such a lovely review for #GhostsoftheFarm @lookattheview.bsky.social in Country Smallholder!
Delighted to have a feature on #GhostsoftheFarm in #BBCCountryfile A story that revealed itself in a filmic, elegiac, dusty light, & truly haunted me. God I'd love to see this as a film. I can picture my forgotten women, zipping each other into dresses, forsaking breeches, to gales of laughter.
Nic Chester’s Ghosts of the Farm, front cover.
Just finished @nicolawriting.bsky.social’s #GhostsOfTheFarm. Bloody hell, she’s only done it again—another staggeringly beautiful book. I couldn’t stop thinking: “God, I wish I’d written that line!” No one does elegiac like she does; tender, subtle, exquisite. #naturewriting
I've gobbled up the first few chapters of #GhostsOfTheFarm by @nicolawriting.bsky.social, and I'm loving it.
#BookSky #RuralWriting #NatureWriting #LifeWriting #Memoir #FarmingWomen #WW2 #Countryside
Perhaps a Christmas book? The best nature writing & storytelling I’ve done so far: a haunting of barn owls, how we lost the birds & why we didn’t have to, proper winters & astonishing encounters (historical, modern, aural) with the northern lights. #GhostsoftheFarm Available for articles! #booksky
Daughters of Britain Land Girl (reenactment group) driving a vintage yellow tractor past Highclere Castle.
Land girls reenactment with ‘Gut’ the tractor.
Lady Carnarvon with me on the famous Downtown Abbey red sofa in the Castle Library. And yes, it has secret doors and compartments & ladders …
Wonderful to return to #Highclere Castle (we used to work & live on the estate) & be a guest on Lady Carnarvon’s Book Club with #GhostsoftheFarm. I met #DaughtersofBritain earlier who had the same sunflower yellow Fordson tractor as Doris & Julia’s Racing Lizzie! @chelseagreenbooks.bsky.social 1/2
Really looking forward to @orfc.bsky.social! So many exciting talks, panels & people in such a gorgeous place. Very excited to say I’ll be chatting #GhostsoftheFarm with @benraskin.bsky.social! And later, all things #WildService …
Karen & me chatting in The glorious Assembly Room at The Grosvenor Hotel
Book signing!
Outside the new Folde (Up) shop. Which is so sparkly & spacious & full of gorgeous stuff. Not sure I’d have made it down the cobbles at the top of beautiful Gold Hill to visit Folde Down (reopening, renewed itself as part of the new extension in the new year) on my new crutches! (Of course I would.)
Wonderful night in Shaftesbury with the lovely Karen & Amber @foldedorset.bsky.social, teasing apart the many threads of #GhostsoftheFarm Super crowd, & so good to see the legendary Sue Clifford & Angela King (of Common Ground fame) again, AND explore the new Folde Up on its 2nd day. It’s GORGEOUS!
This is lovely… the women in my book, their loyal, brilliant farmworkers & community are my community 60-80yrs ago. People knew them. Had to give the research my all to bring them to authentic, wry & funny life. They were modern, then. #booksky #GhostsoftheFarm
farming & horse people of the recent past. Hugely grateful for the lovely, insightful reviews for #GhostsoftheFarm inc this from lovely @joannacdobson.bsky.social Gotta keep plugging my book; so much work & love went into it! #booksky #horses #farming #1940s #cowgirls @chelseagreenbooks.bsky.social
My husband and 3 year old son with mare and foal at Highclere Stud where we lived & worked.
Me on my wedding day with the carriage pony ‘Pink Panther’ and my friend and neighbour who drove me to church
Bridle hung up in the tack room beside & an old pitchfork I still used, from the 1940s
Horses tell the story of the rural working class, particularly women, which is often a surprise to many (work, not ownership.) Women historically gatekept from any other influence on the land. #GhostsoftheFarm tells this story, as well as the remarkable, forgotten, warm & funny narrative of 1/2
Me on two legs with my book in the fields Miss White of Manor Farm, & I, worked in, beneath Gallows Down
My books piled up in Newbury Waterstones! Hurrah!
Book spotted at Stanford’s, Bristol
My nature writing-historical-memoiry mash-up, about pioneering, forgotten women & queer farmers has been out a month! Holed up with a broken leg (will be at Romsey Waterstones & Folde) but I’d love some cheer, shares, a review or stars on that Amzn site to help things along! #GhostsoftheFarm x
If you like your #ghosts rural, tentative, real, of ourselves & other species, because, ‘in our fatal anthropocentricity, the ghosts of the fields are always human,’ you might like #GhostsoftheFarm. It'd be remiss of me not to mention it today! Here’s an interview I did for Absolutely Berkshire.
