Somewhere between an imaginary rural idyll packed with breathtaking scenery and charming rustics, and the hard end of real farming life, Adam Nicholson found Perch Hill, a run-down farm in the Sussex Weald. Driven there by the pressures of metropolitan life, he and his family moved to the failed farm and set about trying to put it to rights, working the fields again, raising sheep and (annoying) fowl, and receiving visits from BBC Radio 4's "On Your Farm" programme and a Haiku-obsessed poet along the way. This is the story of three years sent building a personal Arcadia, full of insight into rural life and society.