It really isn't for us an option to sell. Charlie's ancestors have been here since the Nash castle was built two hundred and twenty or so years ago. For us, we are part of a kind of long tradition of the family owning this land. TREE: Well, in a sense, we did lease it to someone else to farm because we tried contract farming. I mean, you could have just sold the property or leased it to someone else to farm. So what was your inspiration then, to take on a project like this. And nature really wasn't part of that picture.īASCOMB: Mmhmm. So, it really did look pretty much like an intensive farm. So, we kept buying, you know, bigger machines, throwing more pesticide, more fertilizer, more nitrates, built bigger dairies and changed our types of cows to more higher-milk-yielding cows. But already when we took it over the farm was losing money hand over fist. And we just simply assumed that's what we would continue to do for the rest of our lives, is carry on the family tradition and farm. So, when we took over it was a patchwork of very small fields with hedges and it was intensive, arable, and dairy farming. And it had been intensively farmed for ever since pretty much the second World War. TREE: Well, I mean, we inherited this piece of land from my husband's grandparents. What did it look like before you started this re-wild project? So tell me briefly about your property and how it's traditionally been used. Welcome to Living on Earth!īASCOMB: Thank you.
Isabella Tree’s recent book is titled Wilding, and it’s the story of what happened to the land when they gave up farming and let nature take the reigns.
So they began to mull over another idea: Give the land back to nature and let it take its course. But the intensive agriculture of their predecessors grew increasingly difficult, and they decided that farming was no longer a viable option. When writer Isabella Tree, and her husband, Charlie Burrell, inherited an estate in West Sussex, England, they assumed they would continue to farm as generations of family had before them.
BASCOMB: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Bobby Bascomb.
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