Red Devon

In the late 90’s the poet Hilary Menos moved from Camden Town in London to a farmhouse two miles from a small village in Devon. Over the next ten years, together with her husband Andy Brodie and three sons, she turned this into a 100 acre organic farm with a herd of pedigree Red Devon cows and a flock of Wiltshire Horn sheep. In Red Devon, her second collection, Menos reveals her experiences as a blow in from upcountry moving into a tight-knit rural community and seeing at first hand some of the human and animal costs of the conflict between traditional farming methods and the demands of modern commercial agriculture. She also tells the story of a burgeoning love affair between farmer Grunt Garvey and haulier Jo Tucker, a romance which ends in tragedy. Alongside these two stories, one fictional and one very real, runs a concern for farmers around the world whose livelihoods - and lives - are threatened by global changes in agriculture.