Ghosts of the Farm: Two Women's Journeys Through Time, Land and Community

by Nicola Chester

From the Wainwright Nature Prize Highly Commended author Nicola Chester, a rural narrative between two women in two different eras who both wanted to become farmers.

This is the story of Miss White, a woman who lived in the author’s village 80 years ago, a pioneer who realised her ambition to become a farmer during the Second World War, and how she worked to become accepted within this community. Nicola Chester, too, dreamed of becoming a farmer but working with horses was the only path open to her. Was it easier for women to become farmers in the 1940s than it is now?

Moving between Nicola’s own attempts to work outdoors and Miss White’s desire to farm a generation earlier, Nicola explores the parallels between their lives – and the differences. Miss White buys a derelict farm and begins to renovate and modernize it. As ghost (barn) owls flit between these two worlds, Nicola draws connections with farming and rural life in both times, from the role of women in rural communities in the modern day to Miss White’s experience in the 1940s. And how those farming modernizations have left the modern day with both a denuded landscape and farming community and a disconnect from nature.

Increasingly, Nicola’s research into past and present interlinks and illuminates her own battles to raise awareness of rural communities, outdoor work and the ongoing loss of farmland birds that were so familiar to Miss White.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Nature

224 pages, Hardcover

Published September 30, 2025

About the author

Nicola is a professional, reliable, published writer with over eighteen years experience. She is a Country Diarist for The Guardian and writes for BBC Countryfile Magazine, the RSPB’s Nature’s Home and BBC Wildlife Magazine.

Other articles, features and book reviews have appeared in The Telegraph, The Financial Times, Berks, Bucks and Oxon’s Wildlife Trust’s Magazine, Berkshire Life and Earthlines.

Writing in an engaging, accessible, literary and lyrical style, Nicola can turn her writing hand and imagination to most subjects, so do ask!

Nicola writes a well-regarded Nature Notes column for the IMG_3102Award-Winning Newbury Weekly News (circ, 20,000) that explores local wildlife, landscape, weather and our relationship with it – and has done so for seventeen years. She is the longest-running female columnist for the RSPB members magazine Nature’s Home (formerly Birds, 1.3 million readers).

Nicola has also written for many years for the RSPB’s Junior Magazine Bird Life and has covered all manner of topics from Lichens to Wildcats, Fungi to Dormice, Lo Energy Parties and ideas on How to Curate your own Natural History Museum.

Reviews

[Claire Fuller]

I love Nicola Chester's nature writing but this, Ghosts of the Farm, is about people too, and she brings them brilliantly to life, so that I felt I knew Julia White. This is mostly the story of how Miss White bought a derelict farm in the 1940s and brought it back to life, but t's also about the cusp of farm industrialisation, and I loved the descriptions of harvest time, and saw that there of course was no choice but to begin to use combine harvesters. Chester delves into the decisions of those 1940s farmers and how these have impacted wildlife today, especially birds, and she looks at women farmers then, and the lack of women farmers now. I especially loved Chester's memories of working with horses and her time in Canada, and then her frustration that she never managed to get the farm she longed for. Highly recommended.

[Martin Empson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely biography of a woman who ran a farm in Nicola Chester's village in the Second World War until the mid 1950s. Its at once a love letter to farming, nature as well as the land and those who work it; at the same time as being a rumination on gender, climate change, biodiversity and horses. It is a polemic but one that doesn't hector. Rather Nicola Chester uses the contrast between her life and her subject, Miss Julia White, to teach us all about change and continuity in rural Britain. Who knew that there were so many women and gay women farmers and in the 1940s. and why did that change? There's a lot of depth to this book and a lot of love too.

[Nicola Garrard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This outstanding fusion of memoir and creative historical non-fiction is tender and sentiment-filled, without being sentimental; hitting an elegiac note without being winsome. Chester has the ear of a novelist for dialogue and imagery - much of this reads as a novel and I wanted to be haunted for longer! The past is not glorified but reflected in present-day, living communities with complex challenges and uncertain future. The ghosts of the farm are the people we used to be, the shadows of a way of life for rural working class people that has, like many species of birds, shrunk towards extinction as habitats (like hand-laid hedges, affordable tied housing and jobs) grow scarce and villages are gentrified by wealthy weekenders. Chester is an unparalleled ‘writer of rural things, conjurer of ghosts’. Just beautiful! This book will win prizes!

[Leza · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, beautiful book. Nicola Chester brings an English farming community in to our lives and straight in to our hearts. There are so many wonderful writers campaigning to protect and preserve the natural habitats that human behaviour has and is decimating…Chester sits high in their ranks and we must all listen…and act.

[Andy Helliwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved Nicola's previous book "On Gallows Down" and this is a fantastic follow-up. Combining natural and social history and memoir, it combines into an elegaic and moving reflection on identity and change. Definitely had something in my eye more than once while reading - highly recommended.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful book as my first read of 2026. So cleverly structured and I loved how Nicola Chester brought so many people to life - as well as the animals, trees, hedges and buildings - with so much love.