Daniil Tolstoy inhales deeply as he steps on to the soft black soil. After a passing tractor disappears over the hill in a cloud of rooks and gulls, there is only the soft glint of the sun on the freshly ploughed chunks of earth and the rustle of the wind in the nearby birch grove.
This is what Tolstoy’s great-grandfather, Count Leo Tolstoy, must have smelled, seen and heard in his fields not far from here more than a century ago. The renowned novelist spent the best part of his life on Yasnaya Polyana, the family estate south of Moscow, and took as keen an interest in agriculture as he did in writing.
