Return to the Olive Farm

Released: July 2010
£ 7.99 PB 368pp
9780753826812

After sixteen months of travelling round the Mediterranean in search of the ancient secrets of the olive tree, Carol returns to her beloved olive farm in the south of France, to her husband Michel and his burgeoning family. However, the homecoming celebrations are overshadowed by disturbing discoveries.

The plight of the honey bee has become an international crisis and Carol is faced with unsettling news about the hives on her own olive farm. The bee colony that has regularly wintered at Carol’s farm has been decimated while she was away, poisoned by insecticides.

While the multinational companies are pushing for ‘bigger, better, bumper’ crops, a small band of farmers and ecologists are calling for a halt to many of the modern farming malpractices that are endangering the planet. Carol is amongst them. But it puts her own farm, her idyll, under threat. At what point do you turn your back on all that you believe in and all that you have been fighting for?

This is the story of how Carol and Michel struggle with some difficult choices, and how they decide to deal with the unavoidable disappointments and inevitable responsibilities that come with running an organic farm. Return to the Olive Farm is a song of the earth. With its lyricism, humanity and humour, Return to the Olive farm is a beautifully written book that passionately confronts the issues of today; issues that impact upon each and everyone of us.

Life and love, olive groves and bee hives in Provence – further adventures in the bestselling Olive Farm series.

Return to the Olive Farm

In my opinion this is Carol’s best book to date – THE FRENCH PAPER

… so what else makes this stand out from the rest of the heap? I think a lot of its attraction for me stems from the honesty of the writing, the attentions to detail, the intensity of the write’s relationship with the land, the willingness to take risks, the ability to deal with recalcitrant, inebriated builders with good humour and grace!! Above all you feel like you’re observing a very intimate moment in someone else’s life as they fall back in love with a place they’d left behind. – WATERSTONES