Abstract
SOME four years ago Mrs. Donaldson, tiring of town life, started farming. She had neither previous experience nor close association with the land; all the preparation she allowed herself was a six months course at the Moulton Agricultural Institute, Northampton. She did not even give herself the twelve months apprenticeship on somebody else's farm, usually recommended as the least costly way of gaining experience; she straightway purchased and stocked a Midland clay farm of 375 acres. At the end of the first year she wrote a book, "Approach to Farming", describing her experiences as a beginner; she also gave some talks for the B.B.C. and had some very direct things to say about the process and the announcers which a man would either not have noticed or not have mentioned. That part of her work was clearly successful, and her farming was satisfying enough to induce her to continue; now at the end of the fourth season she gives us another book in which she sets out quite frankly both her successes and her failures.
Four Years Harvest
By Frances Donaldson. Pp. 115 + 16 plates. (London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1945.) 7s. 6d. net.
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RUSSELL, E. Four Years Harvest. Nature 156, 280 (1945). https://doi.org/10.1038/156280a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/156280a0