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WITH A FOREWORD BY PATRICK BARKHAM
And an essay by Welsh hill farmer, Dafydd Morris-Jones
‘I first saw Dyffryn in a November gale… the old house was quivering under the thrusts of the wind, and the wild, remote setting had already captured my fancy, and I will hold it till I die.’
So begins the remarkable story of a 21-year-old man who, with no experience in agriculture, visited a sheep farm on a near barren Welsh mountainside in 1931 and that same day bought all 2,400 acres along with its 3000 sheep for £5,000.
Set amidst the rugged grandeur of Snowdonia, I Bought a Mountain follows the struggles and triumphs of this impulsive but hard-working man and his every-bit-as-tough wife, Esme, as they fight to build the farm into prosperity.
Firbank’s writing is guileless and immediate and ruthlessly honest. His paean to the traditional, Welsh hill-farming way of life, transports you to a disappearing world, one ruled by the age-old rhythms of work, weather, livestock and a love of the land, and offers precious insights into conservation and sustainability.
And an essay by Welsh hill farmer, Dafydd Morris-Jones
‘I first saw Dyffryn in a November gale… the old house was quivering under the thrusts of the wind, and the wild, remote setting had already captured my fancy, and I will hold it till I die.’
So begins the remarkable story of a 21-year-old man who, with no experience in agriculture, visited a sheep farm on a near barren Welsh mountainside in 1931 and that same day bought all 2,400 acres along with its 3000 sheep for £5,000.
Set amidst the rugged grandeur of Snowdonia, I Bought a Mountain follows the struggles and triumphs of this impulsive but hard-working man and his every-bit-as-tough wife, Esme, as they fight to build the farm into prosperity.
Firbank’s writing is guileless and immediate and ruthlessly honest. His paean to the traditional, Welsh hill-farming way of life, transports you to a disappearing world, one ruled by the age-old rhythms of work, weather, livestock and a love of the land, and offers precious insights into conservation and sustainability.
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Reviews
'Extraordinarily relevant... this book could have been written in 2022, with Firbank talking angrily of a country that needed to improve its self-sufficiency... Above all, however, he describes so movingly the privilege of farming this miraculous landscape.'
'"There's nothing so fine as courage," Thomas Firbank writes in I Bought a Mountain and that is the motto of the book: challenge after challenge faced, suffered and, in part anyway, relished for its stimulus. One of the great no-holds-barred life-adventures in the wilds of the British landscape. Every page is alive with the presence of the Welsh mountains and and their people, every chapter with the insistent, often beautiful, often savage realities of the natural world.'
'One of the most compelling and successful 20th-century versions of the urge to escape to the country... deeply inspiring... highly pertinent.'
'A delightful book, full of vivid experiences.'
'Vitally convincing and exhilarating.'