
Green and Pleasant Land: Four New Books About Farming - Vigier
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/09/27/green-pleasant-land-family-farm/
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teddyh
FYI: The title is a reference to “ _And did those feet in ancient time_ ”, a
1808 poem by William Blake, later set to music by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916,
and that version is commonly known as “ _Jerusalem_ ”. The last lines of the
poem (and hymn) reads:

    
    
      I will not cease from Mental Fight,
      Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
      Till we have built Jerusalem,
      In Englands green & pleasant Land.

~~~
Lio
Also might be interesting to point out that the “feet” referred to in the
titile and opening line are those of a young Jesus. A medieval story claimed
he visited England and connected him with the mythical Kimg Arthur.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_did_those_feet_in_ancien...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_did_those_feet_in_ancient_time)

~~~
NeedMoreTea
if you visit that page, don't go believing Wikipedia's first interpretation of
"dark satanic mills". It is certainly the second - that the dark satanic mills
were the churches.

Blake was an _extreme_ non-conformist who was against pretty much all
organised religion of the time.

Interesting that Blake's page on Wikipedia properly points this out, but the
poem's page goes heavily into the conformist interpretation of the poem that
would have Blake spinning in his grave, then rather downplays the other.

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CalRobert
If you find these interesting, you might also like this -
[http://www.themarketgardener.com/book/](http://www.themarketgardener.com/book/)
\- I was surprised that I could find a book on profitable small farming (1.5
acres, 60k+ year net) so hard to put down. It also avoids fluff and woo and is
very practically focused.

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singularity2001
What happened to the famous TED talk by Allan Savory about holistic pasture
management?

YouTube seems to be very positive about it

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZfaMEsTMcg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZfaMEsTMcg)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4b8SFSIGK0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4b8SFSIGK0)

however most papers seem very negative about the results:

[https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/rangelands/artic...](https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/rangelands/article/view/11560/10833)

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codeulike
Farming is the hacking of ecosystems, when you think about it. Looking for
exploits and so on.

