‘Wake up Strivers! Grab your almanacs! Let’s get idle again!’ Dominic West (from the Foreword)

Tom Hodgkinson draws on the wisdom of an eclectic range of thinkers and writers as he guides us through each month of the year, giving lists of tasks for both garden and animal husbandry, offering tips and short-cuts, and weaving in stories about his own experience of raising a young family in rural Devon. How to Live in the Country is a quirky, opinionated and downright eccentric guide to living on a smallholding. The book follows the pattern of a medieval farming calendar, with one chapter for each month. It weaves stories of Tom's (often disastrous) attempts to keep bees, grow vegetables, and keep pigs with seasonal farming advice from the great writers of the ancient past. With any luck you'll learn from his twelve years of mistakes and learn a bit about farming in history to the bargain.