by Amanda Owen
Clive and another farmer, Raymond Calvert, helped build Clifford’s blockade, but in the end somebody complained and the council removed it with a JCB.
We were very concerned about what was happening to the animals that had been slaughtered. There were terrible tales of lorries laden with dead sheep going through the dales. There were phone calls: ‘I’ve seed a lorry an’ summat’s drippin’ from it . . .’
There were even rumours that it was being spread on purpose, lots of suspicion and speculation. Were the Ministry of Agriculture disinfectant teams carrying it? We all became paranoid. There was even a story that was reported in The Times about a cow’s leg being found in a bag behind a chip shop in Kirkby Stephen.
Farmers committed suicide when their animals were taken, that’s how bad it was, and we were all worried about each other, clubbing together to support each other over the phone. The calls were usually grim: ‘D’you know whose sheep have gone now?’
You knew this unseen thing was moving towards you, they showed its progress on maps on television, and it was absolutely bloody awful knowing that you were powerless to stop it. The disease moved ever closer to us, and the Cumbrian sheep that ran on the shared Birkdale Common were slaughtered to act as a buffer. From our bedroom window we could see men on quad bikes cutting a line across the moor and taking the sheep away to their deaths. An imaginary line, the supposed line where Cumbria meets North Yorkshire, was what determined whether something would live or die. It seemed so wrong to be killing so many healthy sheep and cows. We watched as the disease moved inexorably onwards and people’s lives were destroyed along with their sheep.
When we were told that the ministry men would come to Ravenseat to blood test our sheep, Clive and other local farmers held a meeting with them. We didn’t want them on our land, in case they had been to ‘dirty’ farms before ours. We heard they were using their own mobile sheep-handling pens: could these be carrying it? It was a hellish time. Nobody knew the truth and everyone you spoke to had different stories, none of them good. Eventually a mutual agreement was made that our local vets, who we knew and trusted, would carry out the blood tests.
I didn’t worry about my pregnancy: human beings don’t get foot and mouth. Frankly, I didn’t have time to think about myself and the baby because all our waking moments were preoccupied by worries about this dreadful disease. We were devastated when our sheep at Gretna, in Scotland, were culled. All that we had left out of the three hundred that we sent away for the winter were our eighty sheep at Catterick. We thought they would be safe, there didn’t seem to be any disease in that area.
Jennie and Clifford Harker had a terrible experience, because some of their sheep had to lamb without anyone attending them. The sheep were wintering in the grounds of Brampton Castle near Carlisle, and should have come home to lamb, but they were not allowed to move. The farmer friend who was looking after them was not allowed to go near, because he had his own sheep, and in the end the only person who could attend to them was a gamekeeper. Jennie cried and cried at the thought of them lambing on their own, and she spoke to the gamekeeper and begged, ‘Just don’t let any of ’em suffer.’
She got the word that there were some lovely healthy lambs born, but less than two weeks later the flock had to be culled, even though they did not have foot and mouth. Jenny cried every time she saw another lamb, for weeks afterwards.
In the meantime, my pregnancy was going well. I was blooming, getting bigger, but feeling fit and still working hard. I always intended having a home birth and, with all the issues regarding travelling off the farm due to foot and mouth, it made sense. The midwife wasn’t entirely happy because it was my first baby and we are a long way from medical help, but I forced the issue. They could see where I was coming from, and agreed. You can call me pig-headed, but because I spend my time calving cows and lambing sheep, it seemed to me that having a baby was going to be the most natural thing in the world. I am no earth mother, hippy type, but I am a great believer in nature and was sure I could handle whatever came my way.
I wasn’t prepared for what actually happened. I had a rough idea of what to expect: labour pains, cramps, waters breaking, a bit of pushing and then a baby. But, typically, I don’t do things the normal way. I’ve had seven babies now and I just don’t have contractions. The only way I know that I am in labour is because I start feeling a bit off, grotty, queasy, not quite right. I can’t explain the feeling, but now I recognize it. (And so does Clive – he’s straight on that phone to the labour ward!)
Back then, with my first baby, I didn’t really know for sure that I was in labour, but after a night of persistent tummy ache and feeling quite grim I decided to ring the midwife. It was 8 a.m. when she arrived at Ravenseat after a twenty-five-mile journey from Horton-in-Ribblesdale and a brief stop at a disinfection station to make sure she wasn’t bringing with her any of the deadly foot and mouth on her car wheels.
‘You’re only about an hour away from having this baby,’ she said.
‘Brilliant, I’ve only felt a lal’ bit icky.’
I was still walking about and feeling relatively OK. I even went outside to watch Clive calve a cow, with slightly more interest than usual because I was about to go through it myself. I wasn’t in any real pain, but the hour came and went, then another, and another. The midwife was a little perplexed but not unduly concerned as with first babies things can sometimes take longer than expected. Clive kept coming backwards and forwards to the house with thoughtful words of encouragement: ‘Flipping heck, you’re taking your time. My cow’s calved, the calf’s footed and up and sucking.’
Eventually by lunchtime I started to have contractions, real hard ones. I thought this was good, that the baby was soon going to arrive, but still nothing happened. The baby was stuck, jammed in my pelvis, and the midwife hadn’t realized I was having what is technically called an ‘occiput posterior’ birth, commonly called ‘face up’ or ‘sunny side up’, which is when the back of the baby’s skull is at the back of the mother’s pelvis. About 5 per cent of babies arrive this way, and it can cause longer labours and babies, especially bigger ones, getting stuck.
Which is what had happened. By this time everyone was starting to panic. The midwife rang for an ambulance when she realized that the baby was presenting wrongly. I had to get to hospital and fast. I wasn’t allowed any pain relief, because they could not monitor the baby. I was experiencing unbelievable pain; I have never, ever been in such excruciating agony. It was as if my body was in a permanent contraction. I was writhing, the ambulance crew were trying to get me to stay still, the midwife was being sick into a cardboard kidney bowl because the roads here are like roller coasters and the ambulance was rocking and rolling down the dale with the siren wailing. Clive was following in the Land Rover trying desperately to keep up. It was when the ambulance crew decided things were looking bad and that we needed to get onto a faster road that we lost him. At the Scotch Corner roundabout we took the exit for Northallerton, whereas he just went ‘North’, heading for Newcastle . . .
At the Friarage Hospital they took me up onto the labour ward, attached an ECG on the baby’s head, told me that she was in distress and that I needed to have an epidural anaesthetic and then an emergency Caesarean. I was still writhing and the nurses had to beg me to stay still while they got the needle into my spine. Then, at last, the pain subsided and I was wheeled into theatre. Clive had arrived just in time to see her born, on 12 April 2001.
Raven weighed nine pounds two ounces, much the biggest of my babies, and that explains why she got stuck. Apparently if a baby is in the occiput posterior position the chances of needing a Caesarean are much higher anyway, and if the baby is large, higher still, more than three times the normal chance. I was amused to read later that the experts think two of the reasons that women have babies in this position are because of their sedentary lifestyles and because they are small. I don’t think either of those really apply to me.
It was 5 p.m. wh
en Raven was finally born, and I was relieved it was over, after such a long, terrible day, and that we were both well. You would think I’d never have wanted to do it again . . .
Clive couldn’t stick around because we were lambing what remained of our sheep, the ones that hadn’t gone away for the winter.
Raven and I spent a week on the special care baby unit (SCBU) which was funny because she was such a big, chunky baby and we were surrounded by such tiny little things. She was puffed up, because she had been so squashed, and her head was very bruised and misshapen, but to me she was the most lovely thing I had ever seen.
Clive was unable to come and see us much because of the foot and mouth, and lambing, so I got the hospital to take a Polaroid picture of Raven. I faxed it to Raymond and Alison Calvert at Hoggarths Farm, two farms down the dale from us, and they took it to him. It was only just possible to see it was a baby from the black and white fax smudge. Talking to Clive on the phone was difficult. I had to wait for a nurse to bring the phone to my bed, and then he wouldn’t be in the house to answer it. He’d got a farm to run and it was our busiest time of the year. I’d leave a message on the answerphone and he’d ring back and get the nurses’ desk. It was very frustrating. I’d had plans to build our sheep hospital for the poorly yows and lambs, and I’d just assumed I’d pop a baby out and carry on working, but instead I was fifty miles away recovering from a C-section with a baby in the SCBU.
Because I’d been expecting a home birth I didn’t have a hospital bag packed, and had only the clothes that I arrived in. The hospital found me some knitted cardigans which the League of Friends made for patients on the geriatric ward, but they weren’t exactly flattering. I gave Clive strict instructions on what to bring for me on one of his rare visits.
‘I want the denim dress,’ I said, meaning, obviously, the tentlike denim maternity dress that I had virtually lived in for the last couple of months.
He arrived at the hospital with a bag packed with baby suits, nappies and a denim dress. Unfortunately I had forgotten there were two denim dresses in the drawer. One I had last worn when I was about eighteen to go out clubbing. It was short and skintight. The other was the billowing mumsy number. He had, of course, brought the wrong one. I spent the rest of my hospital stay bursting out of a bodycon denim dress teamed with a knitted old-lady cardigan.
I got quite friendly with the nurses and one day I was chatting to one of the young auxiliary nurses who had come to do my temperature and pulse.
‘You’re a farmer, aren’t you?’ she said.
When I said yes she asked whether we were affected by the foot and mouth.
‘My goodness,’ I said, ‘it’s been terrible. We’ve already lost over two hundred of our sheep.’
She nodded in sympathy, still staring down at her fob watch as she checked my pulse.
‘It’s spread to where I live too,’ she said. ‘I’ve had to close the curtains in my living room as they’ve killed all the sheep in the field at the back of my house. The bodies are laid in a big pile. I think they are going to burn them.’
‘Really, where do yer live?’
‘Catterick.’
My heart sank. I asked her a few more questions, she described where her home was, and I knew that the sheep she was talking about were ours.
I rang Clive repeatedly until he finally answered and, yes, he knew. He had kept it from me, he didn’t want to upset me while I was in hospital. My nurse had inadvertently let the cat out of the bag. I suppose it was just a matter of time before we lost that final packet of sheep and in my heart of hearts I was expecting it, but I’d secretly harboured a hope that this last lot would be saved, particularly because among them were a few very special sheep.
When I moved in with Clive my own little flock of sheep had come with me. These were some of the pet lambs that I had reared and kept, as they were good female breeding sheep. We called them the Princesses, because they were big, fat, spoilt sheep, mostly mules (Swaledale x Bluefaced Leicester) and Texel x yows. They were obviously not as hardy as the Swaledales and so had gone away for the winter with the hoggs. The Princesses were all in lamb when they went away to Catterick and were not allowed to come back to Ravenseat because of the movement restrictions. The farmer who was looking after them did his best: he cared for them and our other sheep and even recorded a video of the Princesses with their newborn lambs which he posted to us. It sat on the mantelpiece, but before we had watched it, while I was in hospital, Clive got the terrible news: the whole flock was being culled. During my stay in hospital Clive had appealed to the Ministry of Agriculture and got a solicitor on to the case because we had heard of some farmers getting reprieves for their flocks. But not us: they were all slaughtered, with their newborn lambs. Not one of them had the disease, they were just in the killing zone. It was a week or so after I had come home with baby Raven that I got the phone call from the Ministry confirming that our dead sheep’s blood tests had all come back negative for the disease.
We never watched the video of the Princesses with their lambs: it would have broken our hearts. One day Clive just picked it up and hurled it onto the fire.
I really grieved for the Princesses. On the one hand I had the joy and wonderment of a new baby, but the pain and stress caused by the culling of our animals was almost unbearable.
We came home from hospital a week after the birth. Clive had been busy lambing and had constructed only one pen out of old wooden pallets and hay bales for any sickly yows and lambs that needed a night indoors. Not only had he been busy making everything ready in the lambing shed, he’d also been getting everything ready for his wife and baby’s homecoming. He had clearly not mastered the washing machine and had decided that rather than strip the bed and get everything washed he would just drag the mattress and bedding out of the house and onto the bottom field and burn it. I couldn’t really complain as he was muddling on, getting by as best he could.
Every year we have pet lambs that need hand-rearing, due to their mothers not having enough milk. I was forbidden from returning to full-on shepherding activities, as I wasn’t allowed to lift anything heavy for twelve weeks after the C-section, and a compromise was reached by Clive bringing the pet lambs to the back door in a wheelbarrow, so that I could feed them without ever leaving the farmhouse kitchen.
Nobody could come to visit us to coo over the new baby as we were still on lock-down. But after a few days, parcels started to arrive. Our mail was being left in Keld because the postman could still not come to the farm. We collected it whenever we went out for supplies, and now there was an avalanche of parcels to bring home. People who I didn’t even know that well from down the dale sent presents for the new baby. There was a great outpouring of generosity and phone calls with messages like, ‘I’ve gotten a pushchair and I’ll bring it when all o’ this is over.’
It was as if folks wanted something good to think about in the middle of the foot and mouth gloom. I received some wonderful letters from other people who were in similar situations, trapped on farms, terrified to leave for fear of spreading the disease. Raven’s birth was a joyful event, she was a symbol of the future. She was a ray of hope in very bad times.
I do a baby box for all the children, a collection of mementoes of their birth. Raven’s is labelled ‘Raven/Foot and Mouth’ because the two events are so entwined. I’ve included all of the newspaper stories of what we went through, so that she will know of the terrible experiences we were having at the time of her birth.
We knew we would call her Raven even before she was born: it would have been the same name if she’d been a boy. I’ve never known the sex of any of my babies, and with the others we haven’t chosen a name until after the birth, but her name was right: she was a child of Ravenseat.
I was clueless about babies, but she was an easy, sleepy baby who didn’t begrudge me my inadequacies, and I loved breastfeeding. There were so many things I didn’t know. Until I’d had Raven I had never even held a baby before and I
’d never considered reading baby books. I wasn’t one of those little girls who grow up thinking about marriage and babies, and I certainly never thought I’d have a large family. It wasn’t until I was with the right man and in the right place in life that it suddenly seemed the most natural and important thing to do.
Clive was very good: he has always helped out with the babies, and they slot easily into our lives. Baby yoga and postnatal gatherings with other mothers aren’t for me, we just want to farm, and I didn’t see any earthly reason why a baby could not fit in. How hard could it be? She slept between us in bed and the night feeds were just a matter of sleepily turning over and plugging her in.
I’m not a parenting guru and I don’t hold myself up as any kind of example, but I think if you are relaxed and do what feels natural, you’ll be OK. If you worry about everything that could possibly go wrong you’ll become neurotic, and that will communicate itself to the baby. Babies love routine, just the same way that animals do. Not that I treat my children as animals. But you can learn from nature. My children grow up knowing they are part of something, that they are important to the whole running of the world.
I didn’t take much notice of the rule about not lifting anything heavy. It was soon time for clipping and I had no intention of taking a back seat. Raven slept in her travel cot on top of the wool sheets, setting the precedent for all the others who came after her: sleeping while the clipping machine was on, waking when it was switched off.
One fine, bright day when Clive wasn’t about I spotted some sheep out on the moor and decided to go with the dogs to investigate. It was as I was up there amongst the heather, looking out on to the vast wilderness of moorland stretching away to the horizon, Ravenseat sitting huddled below the hills away in the distance, that I thought: Summat’s not right. Ma baby’s down there and I’m up ’ere. I’m probably not supposed to do that . . .