Country Matters

A Countryside Companion: 74 tips, tales and talking points

Meg Clothier, Jonny Clothier

• Publisher: Profile Books
• eBook ISBN:
  9781782838814
• Year: 2023

Everything you wanted to know about the countryside, but were too afraid to ask

'A joyful companion with surprises and delights on every page'
Tristan Gooley, author of The Walker's Guide to Outdoor Clues and Signs

'Highly readable and scrupulously balanced'
John Wright, author of The Forager's Calendar

'Lovely, luminous'
Bella Bathurst, author of Field Work

Need advice on how to raise a chicken or pluck a pheasant? Wondering how to train your dog, catch a mole or sneak through a field of cows? Perhaps you're after the secret to the fattest pumpkin, the wormiest compost, the classiest snowdrop?

Or are you simply in love with our captivating landscapes, keen to unlock the history and culture of our woods and fields, our footpaths and boundaries, our meadows and moors?

In this delightful and eye-opening book, Meg Clothier and her father, Jonny, combine decades of practical know-how with a passion for literature and lore - braced up by a keen understanding of the conundrums of the contemporary countryside.

From hedges and holloways to henges and ha-has, Country Matters brings the world beyond our towns and cities - its pleasures and perplexities, its dilemmas and delights - to entertaining and illuminating life.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Welcome
• The soil
• Town mice, country mice
• Toponymy, or what’s in a name
• Farming: past
• ‘The Mores’
• Good fences make good neighbours: the hedge
• Walking
• Cow bingo
• From Pride and Prejudice
• Walking children
• Lime, limestone, lime kilns
• Farming: present
• ‘To a Mouse’
• Good fences make good neighbours: posts and wire
• Meadows, ancient and modern
• The woods and the trees
• Old-school trees
• New-school trees
• A Shropshire Lad, 2
• Good fences make good neighbours: the hurdle
• How to plant a wood
• Ticks
• Firewood
• From The Return of the Native
• Bonfires, seven uses, two sizes
• Baking bread
• Cheese, a good news story
• Back to the land
• Chickens
• ‘The Fox’
• Hunting
• ‘A Father’s Advice’
• Shooting
• From Tess of the d’Urbervilles
• Poaching
• How to pluck a pheasant
• How to have a really well-behaved dog
• Rural rebels
• ‘Lob’
• Fishing
• Eels
• Poohsticks
• ‘Heaven’
• Metaphorically speaking
• A very big house in the country
• ‘Caribbean Eye over Yorkshire’
• Oh, do grow up!
• From ‘Goblin Market’
• And is there jam still for tea?
• Horses and ponies, 1
• Horses and ponies, 2
• Gardens, gardeners, gardening
• Ten commandments
• Good fences make good neighbours: the ha-ha
• From Sense and Sensibility
• Superweeds from across the seas
• Of moles and mole-men
• The kitchen garden
• The descent of veg; or what does F1 actually mean?
• Foraging
• ‘The Cold Earth Slept Below’
• O come all ye pagans
• How to grow the biggest and best and scariest pumpkins
• Stones, still standing
• Crop circles
• Which snake am I?
• Horror
• Mad cows and Englishmen
• ‘Loud Without the Wind Was Roaring’
• The uplands
• Sheep explained, somewhat
• Good fences make good neighbours: the drystone wall
• Farming: future
• ‘The Tables Turned’
• Acknowledgements
• Copyright permissions