Lately I’ve been dreaming of moving to the country. There’s something about the chance to work closely with the land, to have more chooks than suburban living allows, to grow one’s own fruit and vegetables, that I yearn for. I know this is not a unique dream—the possibility of escaping into the country seems to hold out a tantalising promise to many of us. Poets and writers have been romanticising the country, the pastoral life, since at least the 3rd century bc when Theocritus poetically idealised rural life in his Idylls. In this literary tradition, happiness was associated with the simple, natural life of the shepherd tending his flocks. The opposed image was the corrupt city, with the bitter competition of its inhabitants for ever more worldly goods.
Clearly, country life is not simple or innocent like this. The predominant images of the country these days are more consistent with our nightmares than our idealisations. Rural areas are portrayed both as redneck wastelands and as places that were formerly pleasant, but have now been devastated by drought—natural and economic. We pity their lost schools, banks and other community resources while fearing their xenophobia. Or so it seems through our popular media.
And yet the dream of escaping to the country for a different, fresher life remains strong. So what are the possibilities for such a move? What are the consequences and costs? And why is the idea of uprooting and starting again in the country such a tantalising one? Two recent books, David and Gerda Foster’s A Year of Slow Food (2001) and Patrice Newell’s The Olive Grove (2000), give a sense of the dreams and realities of particular kinds of rural life. Both trace the move from the city to the country, but the country life they moved to is markedly different from our conventional imaginings.
In the mid-1970s David and Gerda Fostermoved from Sydney to a rundown house in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales and began the process of rebuilding the house and living off the land. Twenty-five years on, A Year of Slow Food charts a year of growing and cooking almost all their food. Written in journal form, it details the week-by-week activities while also reflecting on the 25 years past. It’s an engrossing tale, ranging from what it was like bringing up eight children to managing their menagerie of chooks, cows, pigs and bees. Fittingly, each