ARTS
John Jackson
JJ BOOKS CELEBRATES 35 YEARS OF
A Little Piece of England
IT BEGAN BACK IN 1979 WITH A BUCKET OF NUTS AND A HERRING NET
– NOT TO MENTION GOATS IN THE MINI.
Now considered a classic of countryside literature,
John Jackson’s A Little Piece of England will
celebrate its 35th year in print with the release of
a special hardback edition. First published by the
Collins-Harvill Press as A Bucket of Nuts and A
Herring Net: The Birth of a Spare-Time Farm, the
original title came from John’s unconventional
method for rounding up sheep. It was later
released as A Little Piece of England: A Tale of
Self-Sufficiency by Merlin Unwin in 2000.
A Little Piece of England is an amusing account
of how John, with his wife and three children,
built up a smallholding in a sliver of countryside
in rural Kent, and by trial and much error, came
to make themselves self-sufficient in meat, milk,
eggs, vegetables and some fruit, while learning
various country crafts in their spare time.
John, now 84, is a polymath. He is an established
author, lawyer, businessman and political and
constitutional campaigner, but he is probably
best known as a founder of the Countryside
Alliance.
Born in 1929, John grew up near Lyme Regis in
Devon. The family were ‘flat broke’ and lived on
what they could grow or forage and "if the tide
was right, what we could get out of the sea,"
John explains. "By the time I was four, I knew
about the land. I knew how to use it. We had
had an early lesson in how to look after ourselves."
Later, John wanted some of the experience of
his own early years to be passed on to his childr n.
e
In 1965, at the height of his corporate career in
the city, the family moved from London to
Underriver, southeast of Sevenoaks, where they
started out innocently enough with a few chickens.
Before long, they had assembled a cast of
memorable characters including bullocks, cows,
horses, sheep, goats, and geese, as well as a
few four-legged freeloaders, largely kept on land
borrowed from neighbours on a ‘barter’ basis.
"The book is about more than the activities of a
family and their animals. It is an attempt to make
a small statement about people’s relationship
with the land they live on and the importance of
that relationship.
"The best way to get an understanding of the
land is to use it. I have long believed that the
health of a nation is better and its communities
and their cultures stronger the more it cleaves to
and values the land it lives on," John said.
This entertaining tale