Talking with Ghosts - the Brilliant Women of the Farms and Fields

Award-winning author, Nicola Chester's acclaimed second book, is a fusion of memoir, homefront herstory-telling, the exquisite nature writing she is known for, and a feminist take on the rural. Rediscovering the diary and records of an incredible woman farmer in the 1940s and 50s, and the female couple she apprenticed herself to, Nicola is compelled to retell their story of food production, friendship, hardship, camaraderie and community in her village, in a time of war and great change. In doing so, she revisits her own past, working with horses, as a cowgirl in Canada, and wannabe farmer in those same fields, in the 80s, 90s and beyond. From her village on the high chalk of the North Wessex Downs, she makes connections with the wider world and our current crises and asks what if the farmgate hadn't been shut on those pioneering women after the Second World War? And how listening…