Walking around his Herefordshire farm one October John Lewis-Stempel saw a trout flash in the brook mushrooms sprinkle the fields a squirrel eat hazelnuts & thought: Wouldnt it be wonderful if one could live just on what Nature provided for free? The Wild Life" is Johns account of twelve months eating only food shot caught or foraged from the fields hedges copse & brook of his forty-acre farm. Nothing from a shop & nothing raised from agriculture. Could it even be done? John takes the reader on a Thoreau-esque journey through a landscape that is true England as he uncovers the ancient past of his five-hundred-year-old farm & the startling symmetries between his life now & that of the farms peasant founders. Lyrical observant & sometimes mordantly funny " The Wild Life" is an extraordinary celebration of our natural heritage. & a testament to the importance of getting back to ones roots
- spiritually & practically."