Smell of Summer Grass: Pursuing Happiness at Perch Hill

Smell of Summer Grass: Pursuing Happiness at Perch Hill
Adam Nicolson

The Smell of Summer Grass is based partly on the long out of print 'Perch Hill'. It is the story of the years spent in finding and building a personal Arcadia, sometimes a dream, sometimes a nightmare, by writer Adam Nicolson and his wife, cook and gardener, Sarah Raven.Adam Nicolson was determined to leave metropolitan life but the rundown farm in the Sussex Weald was not quite what he bargained for. The scenery was breathtaking and the rural neighbours charming but the hard end of real farming life was another matter - mud, cold, planning regulations and unco-operative livestock.But for the reader the whole enterprise is full of delight thanks to Adam Nicolson's writing: frank, witty and touching, it is a testament to the importance of holding on to your dreams and turning them into reality.

The Smell of Summer Grass

Pursuing Happiness

at Perch Hill

ADAM NICOLSON

Copyright (#ud24d535c-97c0-5253-9c65-9a0a7ce85551)

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London, SE1 9GF

WilliamCollinsBooks.com (http://www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com)

First published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2011

Copyright © Adam Nicolson 2011

Parts of this book were previously published in PERCH HILL (Robinson Publishing, 1999)

Adam Nicolson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007335572

Ebook Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780007335589

Version: 2015-02-26

Dedication (#ud24d535c-97c0-5253-9c65-9a0a7ce85551)

In memory of Simon Bishop

1958–2009

Acknowledgements (#ud24d535c-97c0-5253-9c65-9a0a7ce85551)

The following images are reproduced with many thanks:

Large parts of this book first appeared in the Sunday Telegraph Magazine between 1995 and 2000 and two-thirds of it between hard covers in Perch Hill: a new life, published by Constable Robinson in 1999. I would very much like to thank Charles Moore, Alexander Chancellor, Aurea Carpenter and Nick Robinson, my various editors in those places, for all their help and guidance. This book takes the Perch Hill story on another full decade and looks again, with a slightly longer perspective, at those early days on the farm. This time I would again like to thank my editor Susan Watt, who has stood by me through thick and thin over many years, and my dearly valued agent Georgina Capel.

Nothing at Perch Hill could ever have happened without the people who work there and I would like to acknowledge with enormous and deeply felt thanks the difference which Tessa Bishop, Colin Pilbeam, Bea Burke, Angie Wilkins and Ben Cole have all made to our lives. Nothing, in my experience, can match the feeling which a joint and shared attachment to a place can give.

Almost needless to say – as anyone who reads these pages will discover it soon enough for themselves – the part of Sarah Raven in this story is not far short of the role played by gravity in the universe.

Adam Nicolson

Contents

Cover (#udfa5b1d1-7734-597b-ac2b-a459a1130cbe)

Title Page (#u5aad5bbc-2a5a-53e2-bb41-383a283efbf9)

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Part One

BREAKING

The Bright Field

Green Fading into Blue

Part Two MENDING

The Darting of Life

Patrolling the Boundaries

Neighbours with the Dead

Part Three SETTLING

Spring Births, Felled Oaks

In Deepest Arcadia

Peaches on the Cow-Shed Wall

A World in Transition

Part Four GROWING