In the 1950s, John and Sally Seymour settled on a five-acre smallholding in Suffolk with the aim of living off the land. They grew vegetables and gathered wild food from the hedgerows, woods and sea. They bought themselves a cow because they were tired of walking to fetch fresh milk each morning, and then had to raise pigs to help drink the leftover milk, in time, as they honed their husbandry skills and turned the garden over to crops to feed themselves and their livestock, every surface of their home was put to work - preserving food, storing firewood, mending and making - so this young family and its animals could sustain themselves comfortably through the seasons. The Fat of the Land is the story of the Seymours' journey towards self-sufficiency. It is the twentieth century's seminal account of the struggles and the triumphs of living separately from the modern world, providing a practical and optimistic vision of how one family can live a less-mechanised, less-polluting life. Book jacket.