The Yorkshire Shepherdess

by Amanda Owen

  He said size mattered.

  The firstborn of the triplets was, in the meantime, Clive’s pride and joy, and he gave him a name to go with his hopes for him: Glory. He kept quiet about his prospective wonder sheep around the other farmers. You can set yourself up for a right fall if you think too much of a tup – everyone else will be looking for faults in it and pulling it to pieces. It’s very competitive. We don’t show sheep at the Tan Hill Show in May because it’s too early in the season, it gives the other farmers a long time to debate what’s up with it, why it’s not a right ’un, why theirs is better. It is far safer to wait and show them at Muker Show, which comes in September, a lot closer to the back-end sales at Hawes in October.

  To win at the Hawes sale, to be named as the overall champion, is what everyone wants. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime achievement to win with a Swaledale in Swaledale country, and Clive was secretly very hopeful about Glory but there are many factors to contend with. What will the other competitors have? Who is judging?

  A decision needed to be made about what was going to happen to Lazarus. I had high hopes for him too. He was a good example of his type; definitely on the small side, but maybe time and feed could remedy that. Clive decided we’d put him with the group he keeps each year as potential breeding tups, the tup hoggs. We start out with around thirty, and as the year wears on they get whittled down and sent to auction, so that by the time of the tup sales we have only about five left, the cream of the crop. So Lazarus went with them, down to the other farm for the winter.

  Clive and his friend Steven, another Swaledale enthusiast, spend a lot of time looking at tups. They stand and study them for an absolute age, pondering, weighing up their pros and cons, consulting the breeding records and flock books, just watching and assessing them, hatching plans for how they are going to breed the perfect specimen.

  They take the tup sales incredibly seriously, these men. I am not so much of a purist, and I can’t show quite the same enthusiasm. I chose to be a shepherd because I wanted to tend sheep, any sheep. Whether it be a top-of-the-range show sheep or the humblest of fat lambs, I love them all.

  Lazarus was still with the tups come springtime when they came back to Ravenseat, and although no decision had been made about his future I was holding on to my hopes.

  It was at this time that Clive’s big break in the movies came – and went. One day a man in a suit drove up and had a cream tea. As I’ve said, the people who call at Ravenseat tend to be dressed for walking or a day out in the countryside, so men in suits always make me nervous. This chap said he was a location scout, looking for an abandoned farmhouse to use as the setting for Wuthering Heights in a new film being made of the Emily Brontë book. I showed him the abandoned Close Hills farmhouse, which is on our land south of Ravenseat. It’s not been lived in for over a century, but they built well in those days and it’s still in remarkably good condition. Trouble was, it wasn’t close enough to a road to get the equipment and the stars in, so that was that. (The farmhouse they eventually used for the film was Moor Close, at Thwaite, which had been empty since the 1970s. A famous naturalist, Cherry Kearton, was born there in 1871. He was a pioneering wildlife documentary maker, a forerunner to David Attenborough, who recently named him as a great influence.)

  When Clive came home later that day I told him about the location scout and he said he had some news too: he’d been approached at the auction by a woman.

  ‘Oh, yeah?’

  ‘Nowt like that. She wants me t’be in a film.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’

  ‘Nah, I knows how yer mind works, but she’s mekkin’ a proper arty film an’ she wants me to be in’t.’

  He showed me her card, and it said she was the casting director. He’d given her his phone number, and that evening we got a call, asking if it was all right for Andrea Arnold, the director of the Wuthering Heights movie, to come and see us the following evening. She’s an acclaimed director, but I’m afraid we are not movie buffs so the name meant nothing to us.

  Andrea came to see us, and told us that she would like Clive to play the part of Joseph, the surly manservant at the farm where Heathcliff and Cathy grow up. He would need to get an Equity card, which they could arrange, and he would be paid the going rate as an actor. I was very excited, and even Clive was quite chuffed.

  Everything was going beautifully, when Andrea said they were also looking for a child to play the young Hindley. She was sitting at the table staring out of the window and studying Miles intently. Miles, who was four at the time, was sitting on his own, playing with a stick in the dirt in the farmyard, muttering away to himself. Miles has got the sunniest smile in the world, but he’s also at his happiest in his own company and is capable of giving you an incredibly dark look, which is exactly what she was looking for: a sullen, insular child. She asked if we would consider Miles being cast as Hindley. She said he would be perfect, and that he would need a chaperone. This was it: I could be the chaperone. Hollywood, here we come.

  She got out her Filofax and as she looked though the dates she questioned Clive.

  Was he going to give this film 100 per cent commitment?

  ‘Not a problem.’ He was going to be paid handsomely, after all.

  Was he going to be OK with the violent scene? In the screenplay Clive’s character, Joseph, has to horsewhip the young Heathcliff.

  ‘Definitely not a problem.’

  Was he going to be OK spending time in costume and wearing make-up?

  ‘As long as it’s tasteful, not like drag or anything.’

  Was he all right for filming on these days? She handed him some dates on a piece of paper.

  ‘I cannae do that day. That’s tup sale day at Hawes tha’ is.’

  You could have cut through the atmosphere with a knife. Andrea was not used to offering someone a part in a movie only for them to tell her that they couldn’t come on one of the days because they wanted to sell a sheep. I desperately tried to persuade him to reconsider. I told him not to worry, I could take Glory to the sales. But Clive shot me a look that said, Are you kidding?

  He wasn’t having it: this was the best tup he’d ever bred. The film director didn’t understand, but Clive was adamant. I was furious with him: I didn’t speak to him for the rest of the day, or the next. Not only was his film career over before it began, but without him helping out with the chaperoning, there was no way Miles could be in the film, either.

  It was a rotten summer, it rained and rained. The film company turned the village of Thwaite, just along from us, into a mini-city with their Winnebagos and catering vans everywhere. The local cash and carry did great business, supplying them with all manner of exotic foods. Props were needed to set the scene, and Ian at the antique shop lent them various items to use in the farmhouse. Horses, cows and sheep were drafted in for filming and in one scene you see Heathcliff carrying a sheep across his shoulders that he later kills. That was one of our neighbour’s very best gimmer hoggs.

  Back at Ravenseat, the time had come to decide Lazarus’s future. Clive broke the bad news to me.

  ‘He’s too low. Nae bugger’ll want yan on short legs.’

  That was it, game over.

  Clive, knowing I was going to be terribly disappointed as I had become fond of him, came up with a plan so I could keep him. Lazarus was going to be vasectomized and then used as a teaser, putting him in with the yows to bring them into season before the actual breeding tup goes in with them.

  I thought, Oh well, at least I get t’keep ’im. He’ll be t’bonniest teaser on the block.

  Luckily for Lazarus (and me), before he was shipped off to the vets’ for the snip, an old friend of ours, Ron Metcalfe, came to visit and to tell Clive and anyone who would listen where they were going wrong with their sheep. Ron was the doyen of Swaledale breeders: he’d won every prize going, broken records for the highest prices made for Swaledales. What he didn’t know about the breed wasn’t worth knowing. He was the man to ask about your shee
p. He never minced his words. ‘What the hell, it’s off at black, it’s snipey, it’s nowt,’ were some of the colourful terms he used, which basically meant back to the drawing board.

  By the time he came up here to pass judgement on Glory his health was failing, he was in a wheelchair and had an oxygen cylinder with him: he died a year later. He could be a bit cantankerous, but he knew his stuff, better than anyone, and commanded respect from all around. It was coming up to tup-crowning time and Clive knew that a whole host of farmers would be following the crowners down our road pretty soon, so before they showed up he wanted Ron’s full and frank opinion of Glory.

  As it was, Ron was very taken with Glory, he really liked him. Then he said, ‘Where’s yer tup, Amanda?’ He’d heard all about the lamb that couldn’t stand who had gone on to make a miraculous recovery.

  ‘Poor owd Lazarus. Clive says he’s for the snip, he’s gaan to be med into a teaser,’ I said.

  ‘Where’s he at? Bring ’im here, let’s ’ave a look.’

  Off I went to the pens, returning with Lazarus. I held him by his horns, standing him up as squarely as I could outside the kitchen door. Ron was sitting at the kitchen table having a cup of tea.

  ‘Nay, thoo’s gonna ’ave to let me ’ave a closer look-see.’

  I dragged a reluctant Lazarus into the kitchen. Ron reached out and ran his fingers through the hair on his face and down his cheeks.

  ‘He’s got a good lug, I’ll say.’

  Praise indeed.

  ‘He’s a good sort.’

  I knew that.

  ‘Clive’s right, he’s pretty low but I’s thinkin’ he’s a helluva tup, might even be better than Glory. You’d be mad t’mek him into a teaser.’

  This was good news indeed. Nobody could ignore what Ron said.

  ‘Ron says my tup, Lazarus, might just be better than your tup,’ I crowed to Clive.

  We were like kids in the playground. Clive took it in good part, but I don’t think his faith in Glory wavered for an instant.

  The trouble was, because we hadn’t intended to have Lazarus crowned, he hadn’t had the necessary blood test. I had to arrange all that hurriedly, so that when the crowners came his paperwork was in order (all pedigree Swaledales have to be tested for their susceptibility to a sheep disease called scrapie). His test results showed him to be an A, the best possible grade. Things were looking up for Lazarus.

  So both Glory and Lazarus were put into the catalogue for the tup sale at Hawes. There was a lot of preparation to be done to get them both looking their best, using tweezers to remove any stray white hairs and to carefully tighten up the lines between the black and the white, a process known as tonsing. It takes a lot of patience, a decent pair of tweezers and excellent eyesight to become a good tonser. An undesirable side effect is that while the tups may look their very best, my eyebrows are neglected.

  The pressure was really on. The years when Clive doesn’t think so much of his tups are less stressful for me than when he’s got some he really likes. Glory and Lazarus were under close surveillance, their every move monitored.

  ‘Don’t let them tups scrat against owt,’ he’d say. It’s the time of year when the sap is rising, hormones raging, and the tups would very much like to be doing anything other than sitting quietly in a pen waiting patiently to be showed. Their one aim seems to be to self-destruct before the big event.

  Everything went well, the big day arrived and Lazarus and Glory set off for the show and sale at Hawes. Such was the worry about getting them there without any damage to their appearance that Clive risked a serious case of travel sickness by riding in the trailer with them, holding them steady. Only Glory was taken out to show as, no matter how good he was, Lazarus was always going to be too small. Clive, to our enormous delight, showed Glory and won! He was the champion, the highest accolade for a Swaledale breeder. It was a great moment.

  Then it was time for Glory to go into the sale ring. I stood up the alley that approaches the ring, craning my neck to see over the heads of the crowds, holding Lazarus, who was to be next into the ring. Clive was presented with his trophy and then Clocker, the auctioneer, set the bidding off at £1,000. A nod here and a wink there from prospective buyers, and the auction room fell silent as he reached £10,000.

  ‘Are yer all done? I’m gonna sell ’im.’

  He raised his gavel just as a flap of a catalogue at the far side of the ring set the bidding off again, this time in £2,000 increments. I couldn’t believe my ears, up and up it went. The atmosphere was electric as the hammer finally went down at £28,000. Clive’s face was blank, he was dumbfounded, in shock.

  Glory left the ring through the wooden painted double gates opposite the rostrum, and as he left the drover swung the other gates open to let Lazarus in. It was my turn in the ring. The tup sale draws crowds for the sheer excitement, the sense of fortunes being made and lost, success walking hand in hand with disappointment. The place is packed with people, a sea of faces, but the moment you walk into the ring you don’t see anyone, you focus only on the tup. Clocker introduced us, telling the assembled throng a little of Lazarus’s background and his breeding, and set the bidding off at £500.

  ‘He’s on the market, full brother to the champion today.’

  It was all over in a matter of moments: £6,000. I was astounded, and felt quite emotional. That frail scrap of a thing, who had such a struggle to live, had, against all the odds, triumphed.

  Both Glory and Lazarus have gone on to be what is known as ‘good getters’, with Lazarus being the father of the 2012 champion tup lamb at the Kirkby Stephen tup sales. Hopefully one day their names may be as famous in Swaledale sheep-breeding circles as Viceroy, Winky, Commander, King Kong and White Heather, famous tups every Swaledale sheep-breeding enthusiast has heard about.

  I’m not keen to admit it, but Clive made the right call when he chose going to the tup sales at Hawes with Glory over being a film star. We’ve watched the Wuthering Heights film on TV and it’s very good, and so is the actor, Steve Evets, who plays Joseph. But I can’t resist digging Clive in the ribs and reminding him, ‘That could’a been thi . . .’

  Winning with Glory was a great achievement, especially on our own patch where the competition is so fierce and everyone is vying for the top spot. My only tiny bit of disappointment is: how can Clive ever top that? He could do it again, but most folk only manage it once in a lifetime and, of course, he can never better it.

  I’ve always liked the idea of having people to stay at Ravenseat. It seemed the ideal place to do bed and breakfast for walkers, or people who just want to visit the Dales for a night or two. But there was no room in the farmhouse, which we have filled with children. I thought about putting up yurts, but my feeling was that they just don’t belong in this kind of landscape. They may look all right in a forest, but not on the moor.

  I wanted something in keeping with what we did. The old shepherds round here didn’t have shepherds’ huts, but after the railways came the farmers used to buy old railway carriages to use as huts in the places where there were no barns, up on the moor. You can still see some dotted about the countryside. In the summer they would have been stuffed with hay so that in the winter the shepherd wouldn’t have to carry it up to the sheep, a difficult job before quad bikes.

  So I thought, They look right. Although they had not been part of the original landscape, they fitted in. It was a natural step from railway carriages to old-fashioned shepherds’ huts with iron wheels.

  I trawled the Internet looking for a wider one, because I wanted to have a bed sideways in it, with another pull-out bed underneath. I found a firm that would adapt one to how I wanted it, but they were at the other end of the country, in Somerset.

  Clive was in the living room watching television.

  ‘I’ve found a shepherd’s hut to put in t’lal’ garth near t’waterfall. I’m gonna get it.’

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  ‘If I buy it, will ta go an’ fetch it?
’

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  It must have been a really engrossing TV programme because he wasn’t listening to me – always a good way to get an agreement out of a husband. So I bought it, then booked a night in a pub for Clive and his navigator friend when they set off with a triple-axle trailer on the back of the Land Rover. It was a seriously long haul, and he rang me when he finally arrived to say, ‘Flipping heck, I’d nay idea ’t’would be so heavy.’

  It’s built on a cast-iron chassis, and in order to get it on the trailer they had to take its wheels off. It weighs about three tons, and the tyres on the trailer went flat because of the weight.

  ‘Ne’er mind, drive back real slow,’ I said.

  It was a monumental day when we finally moved the shepherd’s hut into position a few months later and it was a little while after that Simon, the producer of a brand-new television series called The Dales, got in touch.

  ‘We’re making a television programme about life in the Yorkshire Dales, and we’re looking for a family-run hill farm. Can we come and talk to you about it?’ he asked.

  It was all quite vague, but there was no harm in talking to him. Sure enough, Simon bowled up wanting to know what we do, how we do it and what happens at particular times of the year. We chatted and got on very well; he’d got a baby girl the same age as our Violet. Then he rang again, and this time he said he’d like to bring a film crew up and start filming us.

  Of course, we had to think of things to do that would work on camera and interest the viewers. I mentioned to Simon that in and amongst the farming we were attempting to put together a shepherd’s hut. He came up with the idea of filming us putting it together and furnishing it. The hut had been languishing for a while, other things taking precedence, and what I needed was a kick up the backside to get me back on assembling it. They filmed us as we set about furnishing it. Interior design is not my forte and my intention was to make it as traditional as possible and keep the shepherding theme integral throughout. When the huts were in use at the end of the nineteenth century, there would have been a basic bed for a shepherd and, underneath that, a small pen for orphaned lambs. Although we were going for a bit more comfort, I definitely did not want the twee Cath Kidston look.