Hope Tod

Time Beyond Time: a Magical Memoir of Rural England Hope Tod

Time Beyond Time is a tenderly crafted memoir of bygone days in rural England-of the period when machinery and mechanization were just beginning to usurp the central role animals had always played on small farms. As a volunteer serving in the Women's Land Army, the author-a young woman whose assignments as an Emergency Relief Milker take her from farm to farm-manages to fulfil her longing for a sense of continuity in her otherwise peripatetic existence when she happens to locate and acquire an authentic gypsy caravan, 'a fairytale farmhouse on wheels' which she transforms into a cosy, self-contained home of her own. Surrounding herself with the comfort of a few familiar personal possessions, she travels along the byways. Hope Tod relishes learning about the details of her new home's origins and history, shares her enjoyment of the daily rhythm of farm work, of being reunited with her true-love, their sojourn in India, their first farming job together, finding land of their own, and gradually acquiring all of the cows, hens, and pigs to establish a freehold farm at the edge of the South Downs in her beloved West Sussex.