The Yorkshire Shepherdess

by Amanda Owen

  I had a few problems feeding Sidney when we got home, he wanted to sleep not suckle. I messed on, trying to get him going, but it was a struggle: his weight dropped to five pounds and I was told that if he lost any more then he would have to go back to hospital. The weather was getting worse and snow was falling, but I knew I had to take him to the surgery at Hawes to get him weighed. We set off, Edith and Violet with me, and drove the Land Rover over the Buttertubs Pass to Hawes. The road was passable as the snowplough had been over earlier and although the fresh snow was sticking I could drive it cautiously.

  At the surgery I was watching through the window, fidgeting nervously as I saw the snow gently settling on the rooftops. The children played happily with the toys in reception, while other patients cooed over baby Sidney. The midwife was worried about him as he hadn’t gained any weight since his last appointment, so she rang the hospital for advice. They decided that Sidney needed to be bottle-fed a milk supplement, but there wasn’t any at the surgery so I needed to take the prescription to the chemist in the town. Off we went, accompanied by the midwife. Time was ticking, the snow was getting heavier, I was starting to get a bit nervous and it didn’t help when folks kept saying, ‘What’s thoo doin’ over ’ere? You’ve nivver come over t’Tubs, ’ave yer?’

  Finally we had everything, and I could set off back, promising the midwife that I’d speak to her the next day about the feeding.

  As we followed the road up and out of Hawes, the snow began to get deeper, and as I climbed on to Stags Fell it became difficult to see where I was going. There were no signs of any other vehicle tracks and the snow was drifting quite badly. I was crawling along, with visibility so poor that my nose was pressed up to the windscreen in an effort to see where the road was. The snow was at least a foot deep. We were travelling all right, except that I couldn’t see the road. I wasn’t looking forward to the descent into Swaledale, with its precipitous drop of hundreds of feet from the road edge and only a wire rope barrier between us and oblivion. I saw in my mirror another Land Rover approaching from behind so I decided I would pull over and let it take the lead. It pulled alongside me and stopped: it was a local lad attempting to get over to Reeth.

  ‘I’m gonna go an’ tek a look, you follow me.’

  I was happy with that. The snow was getting deeper and deeper and as he reached the summit I saw his brake lights come on. I stopped and he reversed back alongside me.

  ‘I’s not goin’ down there, I’s turnin’ round,’ he said.

  I sat there for a little while, wondering what to do. There’s no phone signal in these parts, and there was no alternative route home for me. I was just weighing up my options when, in my rear-view mirror, I saw the flashing lights of a snowplough, closely followed by a digger and a police four-by-four. They told me I had nowt to worry about and that they’d have me back home in no time, and for me to just sit quiet while they dug a road through. We listened to Greatest Hits of the 80s twice through, ate a whole family pack of crisps, and were just about to start on our supply of chocolate when we were waved through. The convoy continued down into Swaledale and we had a police escort to Keld, then finally, hours late, we got back to Ravenseat. I was sure Clive would be beside himself with worry as we were so late back but he’d been so busy with his sheep that he’d lost track of time. I like to think that he would have noticed if I’d still been missing at teatime.

  Taking care of a big family isn’t difficult, it’s mainly a question of routine and preparation. The children help out a lot, and they learn to be independent very quickly. They’re all different, not at all like peas in a pod, and we certainly don’t have favourites. Clive says, ‘I reckon to favour t’one that needs it most at that time. If one is lacking in confidence, or ’avin’ a crisis ’bout school or summat, I try to favour that particular child until it’s better. There’s usually one that’s poorly or summat, one that needs a lal’ bit more care.’

  Raven is a very confident young lady. One minute she will be taking charge, cooking and helping out with the little ones, and the next minute she will be playing with toys. I liken her to Saffy from Absolutely Fabulous: she’s the sensible one in this family. She’s very organized. If I say to her, ‘’Ave yer done yer homework, Rav?’ she shoots me a look and says, ‘Of course, I did it in my break time.’ And she’s telling the truth, she did! She works hard at school and gets good grades. She has it in her mind that she’d like to be a vet – she has certainly had plenty of practical hands-on experience. All of the children help out at lambing time but I particularly remember Raven helping me with a yow that was having difficulties. The yow was just a shearling and had been scanned for a single lamb. She had been on lambing for a while and so I had a feel to see what was going on. She didn’t seem to have opened up enough to get the lamb out. I decided I would give her a bit more time. I made myself a cup of tea and then went back for a look at her. She was laid out and straining away but there was still no room for me to get my hand in to help her out. Raven appeared.

  ‘I’s gaan to get the pickup and tek her to t’vet,’ I said.

  ‘Can I ’ave a go?’ she asked.

  ‘If yer want.’

  Within half an hour, Raven had lambed her. Gently and quietly, she had lain against her, her eyes screwed tightly shut, while she worked away. She felt the unborn lamb and slowly managed to get it into position: her smaller hands and her patience saved the day. That kind of job is not for the faint-hearted, and sometimes a life can depend on whether you are prepared to get your hands dirty. She’ll never get experience like that from textbooks.

  Reuben’s the mechanic, the engineer in the family. He loves machines, and at bedtime spends hours drawing up detailed plans of new inventions, which he will try to realize in the workshop the next day. We’re usually quite impressed with whatever wacky device he creates, whether it’s a snowplough for the quad bike made from an old table, or a slurry tanker made from hay-rack wheels and a forty-five-gallon drum. But our admiration soon turns into frustration when we find he has used all our screws, nails and electrical tape for his contraption. There is also the contentious issue of the number of punctures acquired by vehicles at Ravenseat: a flat tyre on the quad bike due to a roofing nail from his home-made trailer; a flat tyre on the wheelbarrow caused by a screw off his handcrafted snowplough; and, worst of all, two flat tyres on the school taxi. I did wonder whether this was a case of deliberate sabotage: I wouldn’t put it past him to have made a stinger in the hope of getting a day off school.

  Clive took Reuben to a machinery sale at Carlisle, along with Clive’s pal Alec. Apparently they were ‘just going for a look’, but I know that if they take the trailer they are plotting something, and I was right, as Reubs bought himself a ‘spares or repair’ ride-on lawnmower. He had been saving his pocket money from helping out with the cream teas and when added to some birthday money he had a total of £70. The children are all very good at saving their pocket money as they don’t go anywhere to spend it. We go to the shops in town usually once a year, during the summer holidays, to get new school uniforms, but everything else can be bought locally or ordered over the Internet. The grand sum of £58 was paid for the lawnmower and it was brought back to Ravenseat in the trailer.

  They got home late afternoon, and all that evening Reubs tried to get it going, charging the battery, fiddling about doing other bits and pieces. He is pretty much on his own when it comes to anything mechanical, as Clive is useless at that sort of thing. I had to drag him away from it and he went to bed very disappointed. I was away early the next morning to pick up some shopping and when I got back to the farm Reubs was brimming with excitement. He’d found and cleaned a corroded lead from the battery, and now the lawnmower was running. He was ecstatic, but if I’d ever had a notion that Ravenseat was going to have finely manicured lawns, I was sadly mistaken. The mower is used for haymaking on a miniature scale, with Reubs mowing round the field edges and wall backs, anywhere that the tractor can’t get, and M
iles strawing it out and getting it to dry with a device Reubs made and mounted on the back of a go-kart. Edith then rakes it into piles and finally ties it into small bales to put into the barn for winter.

  The funny thing was that no sooner had Clive and Reubs left for the sale where they bought the mower than some scrap lads appeared in the yard.

  ‘Is Clive about?’

  ‘Nope, but I’ve got some scrap for yer,’ I said, secretly pleased that he wasn’t around. Both Clive and Reuben have an aversion to parting with anything so I took advantage of their absence to get rid of all the broken gear they had bought the previous year at the sale.

  Reubs is the scruffiest little beggar you’ve ever met, which is a great contrast with Miles, who is incredibly tidy and fanatical about cleanliness. He folds his school uniform neatly when he gets home from school and I never have to nag him to clean his teeth or have a shower. He is definitely a farmer at heart; he loves helping out around the farm, feeding the animals and digging. He hates school, partly because prior to school he went everywhere with Clive, never saying a right lot, just watching and helping when needed: that’s what he likes. One bitterly cold day when there was snow on the ground we went up to Black Howe, as a gap had come down in the wall adjoining our neighbour’s land. Miles was really poorly that day, so I suggested we stay at home and keep warm by the fire (maybe because I fancied this) but Miles was having none of it. I dressed him up warmly, an all-in-one waterproof suit over a fleecy onesie, and off we went. He sat for a little while, watching intently, then curled up into a ball and fell asleep at the back of the wall, the snow gently settling on him. I don’t think he would have fallen asleep if he’d been cold and unhappy, although I admit I felt his cheek once or twice to make sure he was OK.

  Miles is very keen on sheep and has already got his own small flock, some Texdale (Swaledale crossed with Texel) gimmer lambs that were late born. They go up to the moor with the other sheep, and they go away for the winter. He will breed off them in future years. While they were in the Close Hills, Miles was shepherding them and helping us out with their everyday care. There’s one that appears to be blind in one eye, and he reckons she really likes him, because she lets him grab hold of her without a struggle.

  ‘Look, she’s standin’, waitin’ for mi,’ he says.

  ‘No, Miles, it’s because she can’t see you . . .’

  He’s very good with the sheep, and I have high hopes that he will become a good stockman. That’s what shepherding is about, knowing your animals and having an empathy with them.

  Edith’s a feisty little thing, a tomboy who has no fear of mucking in with the bigger ones. Her tumbling curls and doe eyes mean that she can flutter her eyelashes and get people fawning over her.

  Violet can be a bit more delicate than the others, not as tough. She has a tendency to ail and I suspect her thumb-sucking has something to do with it: not a good combination, farming and thumb-sucking. She will grow out of it in time, but we’re a bit more protective of her, particularly Clive.

  She has a striking likeness to Raven in her younger days, and also takes after Rav in her love of horses. Her potty training involved bribery: for every poop she did in the toilet she would get a ride on a horse. She soon got wise to it, and was managing at least three trips to the loo every day. I had to have the horse on standby in the garth, ready to saddle up every time the eagle landed.

  Sidney loves being outside, getting dirty, and being involved in everything that’s going on. He will turn out whatever the weather. He has a fixation on a different toy each day, and the anointed favourite has to go everywhere with him. It’s stressful when it gets lost, especially as there are so many places it could have been dropped: on the moor when feeding sheep, up the cow-house when forking hay across for them, any number of places. Every night the special toy goes to bed with Sidney, which is OK if it’s a small model cow, but a different matter when it was a mini wheelbarrow which had been pushed around the farmyard all day filled with horse dumps. It needed a thorough clean before it was allowed in the house.

  The children have all learned to dress themselves very quickly. It’s first up, best dressed, as they used to say. The sooner you can learn to put wellies on round here, the better. We’ve got at least fifteen pairs, all different sizes and colours, and it’s a miracle if the kids have matching pairs, and even more amazing if they are on the right feet. I recently bought Edith a new pair from the agricultural suppliers near the auction mart. When she got home she replaced her one leaking welly with one of the new ones and put the other new one back in the box for when it’s needed. I get a lot of our clothes from charity shops, but it’s amazing how much stuff is given to us. Neighbours and friends give us the things their children have outgrown, and we have a couple of ladies who make it their mission in life to knit for us: they obviously spent a whole winter knitting away, because they produced a huge bag of eleven jumpers and cardigans for the children. We don’t mind what garish colours they are: when it’s cold they get worn. The children, including the boys, wear tights, long johns, balaclavas, whatever it takes to keep frostbite and chilblains at bay.

  People can get quite proprietorial about us: one woman turned up and said she hadn’t seen me on TV in the cardigan she had knitted for me. And here’s me yearning for Louboutins and Jimmy Choos, not woollies and wellies! But it’s very kind of people, and we get some lovely things. As Clive says, ‘We must somehow look like needy cases, that’s why people give us tons of stuff.’

  One reason we may look like we got dressed in the dark is that I more or less let the children choose what they want to wear when we are at home. We have been given frilly dresses for the little girls, real princess-style party clothes. My attitude is that if that’s what they want to wear, let them get on with it. I could put it all away in drawers, but that would mean it would never be worn. If Edith wants to wear a spangly, diamanté-studded Lycra dress, and Vi wants to look like a meringue, why not? All worn, of course, with the de rigueur wellies. If the weather is grim, we simply pull on the waterproofs over the top. But if the sun is shining, and they are playing around the farmyard all day, why not wear tutus and frilly skirts?

  I’ve got pictures of Raven when she was just a dot feeding the cows while dressed as a fairy, complete with wings. I don’t bother about clothes getting dirty or even the children getting dirty: it all washes off. On a bad day I can change their clothes three times before the day is out. When Sidney was learning to walk he was magnetically drawn to the puddle of black ooze that forms around the bottom of the midden. He would totter towards it and happily sit in it. I would change him into fresh clothes, then he would do it again . . .

  In the summer, on really hot days, they can plunge into the river and get the worst of the muck off, and have a good time doing it. I have sometimes resorted to washing the muck-plastered clothes in the river in an attempt to not break the washing machine again. I have a troubled relationship with the washing-machine repair man who, on various occasions, has extracted penknives, screws, nails and even once a dead moudie (mole) from the internal workings of my washer. I remember clearly his disdain as he dangled the disgusting, wet, grey furball from his fingers while I identified the corpse. Moles are tactile and the children sometimes put a dead one in their pocket just so they can stroke the beautifully soft, velvety coat.

  There is one item of clothing that has never seen the inside of the washing machine and that is my favourite lambing coat, specially adapted, with one sleeve removed. I have had it for years, since long before I came to Ravenseat. It’s made from felt and has a number of patches and darns holding it together. Clive hates this coat and has threatened on more than one occasion to throw it on the fire. It reached a point where it smelt so fusty that I decided it needed a freshen-up and, after emptying the pockets of baler twine, a penknife and a dog whistle, I put it in the river, weighted down with some rocks, and left it for a couple of days. When I retrieved it I was surprised to find that it had bee
n chewed by something. The other arm was quite raggedy now and the bottom of it had been half eaten. Clive was pleased.

  ‘It’ll ’ave to go now,’ he said smugly.

  I wasn’t going to be parted from it that easily. A few repairs and I still have it. Other coats come and go, but that one has outlived them all. Clive still hates it.

  All our clothes get spoilt because of the work we do and the outdoor life we lead. The pet lambs chewed a hole in my dress while I was teaching the little ones to suckle. It takes only one encounter with a barbed-wire fence and that’s the backside of your leggings gone. Zips don’t work long when there is mud embedded in them, and hats and gloves have a tendency to be thrown down in the fields, only to be found months later when we accidentally mow them or bale them. Nothing ever goes back to the charity shop: once we’ve finished with it then it truly is wrecked.

  I have some nice things, but eventually I decided that, like the children’s clothes, there was no point in keeping them for best. Unless they are totally unsuitable, I may as well wear them around the farm. There are many days during the winter months when I see no one apart from the family, and I don’t suppose it matters whether I brush my hair or put on lipstick. But it’s not about looking good for other people, it’s about self-confidence. I am determined not to go to seed just yet.

  I even got us some brand-new waterproofs when I won a competition in the Farmers Guardian. Well, I didn’t actually win it, sadly, although that’s what the girl said when she phoned me. I was so excited: first prize was a tractor . . . Then she broke the news that I’d won the second prize, which was a hundred pounds’ worth of waterproofs. We did get an all-expenses trip to a farm equipment show at Earls Court in London, where we were presented with our prize. I stood there clutching the green Flexothane clothes, trying not to look too obviously envious of the chap beaming as he sat on his brand spanking new tractor. Once the presentation of the waterproofs was over we sloped off and enjoyed a day out in London.