Charlotte Weatherley

"As for many things I value, my interest in the landscape was inspired by books.  Starting with Watership Down, I was hooked on the countryside (I was also pretty keen on rabbits and badly wanted to be Fiver) and although the symbolism of the story - our relationship with nature and the impact of urbanisation - went sailing over my head at the time, something important took root.  Much later, when I was teaching locally, I had the luxury of weaving stories about the countryside into the English curriculum, and thus into the school library.  One of the reasons I wanted to work at Bere Marsh Farm was the opportunity it would bring to tell the story of this landscape to a wider audience."  

"At 91, my mother continues to be a member of the CRT and she is an original shareholder in Fordhall Farm ('1 farmer, 8000 landlords'). Last year, she completed Ronald Blythe's book, Next to Nature, reading month by month, as it was written, and finishing off in December, as he intended.  She is a big fan of Wendell Berry, farmer, essayist and champion of topsoil, and cares how her food is produced.  Her way of thinking about the countryside has been seminal in the development of my own."