A fine guide to farming and nature

ON a recent visit to the west I was given a copy of a remarkable book called The Living Farmland — A Guide To Farming With Nature In Clare.

It’s a book that will be interesting and useful to a wide range of people, but its principal aim is to help farmers conserve the natural and built heritage of the countryside and minimise the environmental impact of their activities.

Because most of our countryside is owned by farmers this is obviously a very worthy aim. But it does sounds as though it might be rather boring, particularly in a book that runs to 228 large format pages. The book avoids this by being extremely well written — by somebody called Keville & O Sullivan Associates Ltd, plus a long list of contributing experts. It’s also beautifully illustrated with colour photographs and superbly designed by the Optic Nerve Design Group in Limerick. The design is important because there’s a mass of information, and the clever use of colour coding and cross referencing makes it relatively easy to access. I’ve already found myself using some of the appendices for reference. Nowhere have I come across things like the Irish species protected by EU Directives or waste legislation set out more clearly.