Land/Scape Portrayals in Farm and Farm Animal Sanctuary Memoirs
Authors: Mañetto Quick Madelena , Caudwell Catherine , Horrocks Dylan 
Published: October 2024

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 current crisis of neoliberalism. … This is a challenge both for rural studies and for those who live in, or care about, rural places” (164). In this manner, utopian thinking becomes a method of working towards desired futures, rather than striving for utopia as an endpoint.
In her memoir about a small-scale organic farm in New York, Kimball describes the setting as “a sprawling, diversified, bewitchingly beautiful thing, composed of innumerable living parts, sometimes working in perfect synergy, sometimes descending into chaos” (11). The farm is presented as “beautiful”, and yet it is a challenge to balance the many different parts that make the farm function. The image of a rural idyll serves as a way of making all the farm work ‘worth it’. The presentation of an awe-inspiring landscape is one reason a farmer would desire to live and work with animals. Proximity to the land and the connection between the farmer and an idea of nature conveys a sense of place for the author. Similarly, farm memoirist Connell writes, “the land is what we know, they said. It sustains us, enriches us, the land is our living and we know no other way” (13).
The farm memoirs present a specific vision of nature when representing rural idyll. It is a way for them to connect with the land as a provider of resources and for them to survive on and build their livelihoods. Within the field of more-than-human studies, the dualism between society and nature, or culture and nature, is challenged and undone. This involves “doing away with the category of nature altogether in order to explore how different worldly actors with diverse capacities and affordances co-constitute one another” (Castree & Braun 169). We argue that through a focus on more-than-human assemblages, narratives should challenge the idea of nature or land as a backdrop to human activity.
The memoirs we analysed do not often challenge the nature-culture dualism, and, as such, do not adequately present land/scape as co-creator of the space. Depicting the land/scape as a ‘beautiful’ backdrop to human activity does not meet the kind of evidence asked for by the interpretive framework. The land/scape does not fully feature as a multi-faceted character or as a complex living entity. Instead, land/scape as setting is positioned as part of the setting of rural idyll the memoirists place their worlds within. This finding leads us to ask what kinds of stories and worlds could be told if land/scape is acknowledged as a character with agency, rather than as a bucolic setting for a pastoral narrative. Future research could examine where such stories and worlds can be found in fiction, poetry, nature writing, Indigenous literatures, and other genres.
Environmental Degradation and Reparation
How farm and sanctuary memoirs reckon with the environmental effects of climate change is variable. The absence of these themes across many of the memoirs troubles their representations of land. What kind of land/scape do they seek to materialise if they do not reckon with the troubling aspects of living in an increasingly damaged world? When writing about their farm, Baker states that they “love nothing more than driving up the farm track, closing the gate, shutting the world out ... and just being here” (3), creating an image of secluding oneself in a protective rural bubble. This is even more evident in the sanctuary memoirs, with the term sanctuary itself evoking a space of safety away from the perceived dangers of the world. We question whether environmental degradation is considered as one way of troubling this image and assessing how well the memoirs meet the land/scape structure of the framework.
Stories about environmental degradation and climate change appeared more frequently in farm memoirs than sanctuary memoirs. Within the farm memoirs, many of the authors write about the ways climate change affects the balance of the seasons, and how this impacts crop growth and the birth of livestock. Browning and Finney state that “the biggest challenge for us and other farmers is not having much idea what is around the corner. Weather is always our greatest unknown, and that is likely to become even more unpredictable with climate change” (197). Often, the farmers present the challenges of climate change and reckon with their responsibility of mitigating its most disastrous effects.
Saunders writes about the responsibility of practicing ‘good’ farming that adheres to environmentally sustainable practices in the face of climate change, but also laments the pressure that is placed on farmers by the media and the general public, questioning “’how come every time they have a story about climate change, they show a picture of a cow? Never a traffic jam in town, or an aeroplane. Or the sewage from a city going into the river. Just cows.’ ... ‘People have demanded more and more food and fibre for so long, and now they are blaming us for killing the environment’” (210). The responsibility of feeding people on an increasingly volatile planet is mentioned as added pressure on farmers. The idea of farmers as keepers or stewards of the land is prominent and is described as both a privilege and a burden.
Scott tells stories of her sheep farm in the high country of Aotearoa New Zealand and states that “our major goal is caring for the land and its long-term future. We believe that high-country farming is the heart and soul of New Zealand’s heritage” (99). The mention of “New Zealand’s heritage” prompts reflection about past (and ongoing) colonisation within Aotearoa New Zealand, which remains largely unreckoned with in farm memoirs. However, a few of the memoirs include this theme in varying ways. Walker is a Māori farmer who discusses “bringing Māori principles into our mahi [work]”. Vincent, a farm memoirist in Australia, when describing the land his family farm is situated on, writes that “we felt there the dispossession of the Aboriginal people” (28). The lack of stories of land dispossession highlights another tension missing in memoirs of farmed animal life. Furthermore, none of the sanctuary memoirs include reference to Indigenous peoples and land dispossession.
Within sanctuary memoirs, climate change is described in a decidedly different manner to its description in farm memoirs. Rather than noting the changes in seasons or the ways that weather patterns affect the resources provided by the land, sanctuary owners write about the effects of meat eating on the climate. They present veganism as an alternative diet to meat eating and promote the shift as one way of minimising one’s environmental impact. Brown writes that “eating is a political and social action. Environmental destruction, public health, workers’ rights, decaying rural communities, world hunger, and global poverty are all deeply affected by our eating choices” (202). In this manner, climate change is presented as part of a wider agenda to promote veganism through the sanctuary memoirs and to encourage readers to adopt a more environmentally friendly diet.
Farmers and sanctuary owners present climate change in different ways, yet there is a consistent sense of personal responsibility for mitigating its most damaging effects. Stories about environmental degradation challenge the formation of rural idyll as the idealised setting for these stories. This tension gets closer to the criteria expressed in the land/scape section of the framework in terms of relating to the land by assessing harms and reparations and reckoning with environmental degradation, rather than simplifying land/scape as a backdrop to human activity. Nevertheless, land/scape is not written about as a prominent character or protagonist in any of the stories.
Different and more complex kinds of relationships could be presented in stories about farmed-animal-worlds if land/scape featured as a character with varying relationships to other characters, rather than as a passive setting for the narrative. What kinds of stories are left out when representing the land that farms and sanctuaries are situated on? What kinds of new stories could be told that grapple more fully with these tensions? A creative and speculative writing approach is uniquely positioned to engage with these kinds of stories because it is not bound by reality. Crafting speculative more-than-human worlds, as explored through work by first author Mañetto Quick’s own written and visual storytelling (12-17), can undo some of the power hierarchies of human-land relationships in the here and now to speculate stories that dream up new and different worlds.
Conclusion
Repositioning the land as a protagonist within stories about more-than-human worlds can permit greater care for the environment. Abram captures this argument by writing: “to speak of the earth … as a living field of relationships between things—each being with its own openness or creativity—is to speak in accordance with our senses and with our spontaneous bodily experience of the world around us. … Acknowledging the inherent ambiguity and mystery of the myriad beings that surround us is a way of thinking that engenders humility and a steady wonder—the exuberant heart of a wild ethics” (53). We need more stories that live up to these wild ethics to value the land and promise restorative justice and environmental reparation.
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