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

Sue says about Ghosts of the Farm: 
"A marvellous interweaving of two memoirs - the author's own, and that of Julia White, a farmer in the village of Inkpen in the 1940's. Full of fascinating social history and beautiful writing on the countryside." 

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.

Author: Chester, Nicola
Biography: historical, political & military
Published on 30 September 2025 by Chelsea Green Publishing UK in the United Kingdom.
Hardback | 224 pages
160 x 237 x 28 | 440g