Wilding

 Don't be alarmed. It's not a reflection on the hideous tabloid freakery from the 1980s. No, this is a documentary based on a book by Isabella Tree about revisioning a family farm.

The doc is narrated by an unnamed woman, who I assume is Tree. Odd she is never named, and she repeatedly refers to Charlie, who turns out to be her husband. Some little pointers for the viewer going in cold would not go amiss. The first three minutes are also marred by a poor sound mix as Unnamed Woman fights to be heard above the strains of T-Rex. 

Tree and Charlie had inherited the farm, Knepp, in Sussex and realised they needed to do things differently if they wanted to bring the soil back to life. After hundreds of years of ploughing, fertilising and pesticides, the soil was almost dead. So, they did some research and instituted a version of rewilding, allowing the land to regain its more ancient state.

Interestingly, at least to me, this involved bringing in animals, among them ponies and cattle and letting them roam. This would allow the animals to interact with the landscape, shaping it and revitalising it. At one point Tree refers to the animals being managed but does not elaborate. So, I wondered, how wild were these animals? Were they vaccinated, have their hoofs and teeth checked? Was there any intervention if they became sick or injured? No information was given, although the couple do refer to questions by their neighbours who are not keen, which suggests they thought these questions were beyond the pale. Not really.

Instead there is a lot of footage of pigs rootling, stags wandering, birds nesting and water flowing. Beavers are brought in but this is also not explored. I had to go online to discover the two beavers who were brought in initially did not last long at the farm. I would love to see if the beaver experiment succeeds. 

Charlie concludes he could see the animals making their way to the sea, but how would this happen, what with motorways and other human creation in the way? The film ends on this note, which is rather unsatisfactory. But the ideas are intriguing, even if most of us do not have a spare 3500 acres lying around to pursue them. 

Trailer