For anyone that has ever dreamed of working on the land, this is a pathway for escaping your 9–5 job without having to give up everything to do it. It is also a call to action for anyone who wants to reinvigorate rural communities and relocalize our food production.

‘I know when I have been at my happiest in mind and body. It is when I have a mix of the physical and cerebral, outdoors and indoors, social and introspective.’

Ben Raskin has worked as a full-time farmer, full-time non-farmer and for the last 15 years as part time. Against the background mood that farming is hard and unrewarding, with more and more people distanced from the land, there is a movement of both young and old people who want to live a life alongside nature but also want and need to continue or find other sources of income, whether from desk jobs or by diversifying farm income.  

This book comes at a timely moment in our working lives and explores what it means to be a farmer, offering both practical advice and wise and witty inspiration from Ben’s own experiences as well as case studies from around the world.

It includes:

• practicalities of accessing land
• how to get into farming
• advice on farm jobs
• the benefits to part-time farmering 

About The Author

Ben Raskin has worked in the commercial growing world for more than thirty years and has a wide range of practical horticultural experience, having started his career growing vegetables for chefs, box schemes and farm shops. He now focuses mainly on integrating trees into farming systems. Ben is head of agroforestry for the Soil Association and keeps his hands in the field implementing a pioneering agroforestry system on a 1,500-acre farm in Wiltshire in South West England. He also works as an independent advisor, trainer and author, writing books for children and adults, and is chair of the Community Supported Agriculture Network UK. Ben is the author of The Woodchip Handbook and co-author of Silvohorticulture.