Land/Scape Portrayals in Farm and Farm Animal Sanctuary Memoirs

Introduction The farm animal sanctuary movement is a response to industrial livestock agriculture. Farm sanctuaries are spaces where formerly farmed animals are housed and taken under the sanctuaries’ care. Farm animal sanctuaries are different from other types of animal shelters (e.g. wildlife sanctuaries and pet shelters) in that they specialise in rescuing animals that were bred for the livestock agricultural sector. These spaces are positioned as more-than-human worlds in this article. Positioning farms and sanctuaries as worlds opens the perspective that both are examples of world-building. Understanding farms and farm animal sanctuaries through the theory of world-building organises these worlds as “a more or less organized sum of scattered parts, as in complex systems” (Boni 13). Farms and sanctuaries are examples of complex multispecies worlds made up of various parts; a significant facet of these is the land that these spaces are situated within. This article presents an analysis of farmed animal worlds through the stories told about them in memoir. Ten memoirs written by farmers (Baker; Browning & Finney; Connell; Forrester; Kimball; Saunders; Scott; Sigurðardóttir & Ásgeirsdóttir; Vincent; Walker) and eight memoirs written by farm animal sanctuary owners (Baur; Bishop; Brown; Jenkins & Walter; Laks; Marohn; Stevens; Zaleski) are analysed through a developed framework which draws from the field of world-building to define the ways land features in these narratives. Farm and sanctuary memoirs were chosen because the genre is “rich in the specifics of place and predicament, of voices captures and gestures duly noted” (Pinsker 315). This richness situates the study in the physical places of sanctuaries and farms and provides a glimpse into the first-hand experiences of farmers and sanctuary owners as people who live and work within the land and with the farmed animals daily. Memoirs of farmed animal life tell stories that are embedded in the land. In this article, we dissect the ways that land features within farming and farm animal sanctuary narratives. As the reality of the climate crisis looms large, we argue that a purposeful repositioning of land as a central character within more-than-human stories encourages greater care and environmental reparation. Particularly in Western worlds, stories we share about who we are tend to depict nature as a “passive backdrop” to human activity, “the scenery against which 'real' stories unfold—not a central protagonist in the narrative” (Bjornerud 14). We offer a discussion around ways the land can be foregrounded in narratives of more-than-human worlds. This article begins by outlining a framing device that focusses on how land is foregrounded, or not, within farmed animal memoirs. The following sections describe how this framing device was used to uncover how farmers and farm animal sanctuary owners tell stories of rural idyll and environmental degradation. We also highlight what is left out, such as the complexity of caring for more-than-human assemblages and a recognition of harm to the land. Creating a Framework for Narrative Land/Scapes Narrative elements Evidence of land/scape portrayal Characters Land/scape is described as a living, multi-faceted actor in the story Setting Land/scape is described in detail rather than as backdrop for human activity Relationships Stories about relating to land by assessing harms and reparations Values Environmental degradation and reparations are reckoned with Tab. 1: Framework for analysing land/scape within narratives. Methodologies of narrative inquiry (Connelly & Clandinin) inform the framework as it considers how stories about farm-worlds and sanctuary-worlds are told through the narrative elements of characters, settings, relationships, and values (Wolf). These help to develop the boundaries by which we define farms and farm sanctuaries as built worlds. The framework emerges from the acknowledgment that we live in a more-than-human world, asserting that worlds always involve co-creation with the land. The nature/culture dualism is “characterised as a way of thinking that holds human culture and nonhuman nature to be radically different ontological spheres, hyper-separated and oppositional” (Hawkins 1). Proposing the undoing of the nature/culture divide expands this recognition and aims to equalise humans and nonhumans as co-creators. It is not just humans that make worlds; nonhumans are full partners in this practice. The framework calls attention to this and teases out the ways the land is centred, or not, within stories. Land versus Landscape Real and imagined spaces with farmed animals tell stories of the land within which they exist. The framework differentiates between landscape and land to centre the importance of place by combining the ideas as ‘land/scape’. As Hunter differentiates, “land becomes landscape when seen by man, revealing the record of his activities on the surface of the earth and his relationship with his environment” (182). We use these conceptions of land and landscape to critically analyse how each is manifested and made by farm-worlds and sanctuary-worlds. Generally, how stories are told about farmed animals revolves around a preconception of land as a resource. Farmed animals are raised and reared on the land, and farmers and sanctuary owners use the land for supporting basic needs for shelter, food, and fibre for human and nonhuman residents. By purposefully repositioning landscape as land in the interpretive framework, we attempt to undo some of the human representations of landscape as a social product, and argue that placing land as a protagonist character that shapes the worlds of farmed animal spaces can help to undo the division between nature and culture. In many ways, the term landscape evokes images of European expansion into Indigenous land. We assess how well stories about farmed animals challenge this depiction of land and whether or not it is meaningfully centred in the worlds. Environmental degradation and climate change are other key parts of this structure; how do the narratives address the fact that we live in an increasingly damaged world? Scenes of Rural Idyll In both sanctuary and farm memoirs we identified persistent elements of rural idyll, described here by Shucksmith: “in many countries rural life has been portrayed for centuries as simple, innocent and virtuous as part of a pastoral myth of a lost Eden, divorced from harsher realities of rural life and masking exploitation and oppression” (163). The settings of the memoirs often represent a kind of bucolic landscape rather than the land as a multi-faceted actor in the story. This aspect of the memoirs reveals how the character of the land/scape is considered and what kinds of agency are afforded to the land/scape as the setting for these stories. Constructing an image of a rural idyll acts as a response to growing urbanisation in countries like Aotearoa New Zealand. Short’s definition of the rural idyll refers to “family values, community cohesion, a respect for necessary authority and an emblematic nationhood—all being set within surroundings that are aesthetically pleasing” (145). Our analysis of the memoirs investigates the ways they uphold this cultural and social creation of land/scape. Baur’s memoir, Farm Sanctuary, contains a description of the place in keeping with an image of a pastoral idyll: walking from the parking lot up the rutted path to the entrance, you’ll see what you imagine a farm should look like—the kind many of us thought of as we sang “Old McDonald Had a Farm” as children. (ii) In her memoir about a farm animal sanctuary, Laks describes the behaviours of nonhuman animals “springing around the yard” and “comingling in the harmony”, ultimately stating “I had healed all these beautiful things, and they were healing me, daily” (75). The animals are positioned as part of the rural idyll, and the aesthetic beauty of the landscape is also represented as serving a ‘healing’ purpose. When writing about their sanctuary, Marohn states that “it was an ideal place for sheep. They had acres to wander over at will, as much fresh grass as they could possibly want” (24). Marohn is engaging with the idea of what it means to make an ‘ideal’ world for the nonhuman animals. They present the space as idyllic for their nonhuman animals, suggesting it is a world that is perceived as the perfect home for these animals. Similarly, Zaleski writes “everywhere I look is a world of happiness” (239) when writing about their farm animal sanctuary. This, again, evokes the idea of an ideal space where animals can be ‘happy’. The carving out of an ideal space means that other worlds are not permitted or are ignored. As mentioned previously, there are certain disruptions to this idea of a rural idyll that are not accounted for when presenting a space as an ideal world. Do statements like this ignore some of the complexity inherent in caring for uneven more-than-human assemblages? Arguably, matters of care (de la Bellacasa) and a deeper understanding of the land as co-creator of the space can trouble some of these utopian views of the land and of the ‘happy’ animals within it. Shucksmith writes about the purpose of creating an ideal or utopian image of rural life: “does the rural idyll represent nostalgia for an imagined golden age of indeterminate date, a search for enchanted places with idealised qualities today, or a vision for a desired future?” (164). Within this striving for a desired future lies a contradiction: futures and the rural idyll can be seen as diametrically opposed as the rural is often seen as a passive recipient for modernity and as representational of a traditional, conservative view of the land. Shucksmith argues that “challenging the neoliberal hegemony and encouraging the collective imagining of alternatives is especially necessary during the c