A Year in the Life of the Yorkshire Shepherdess

by Amanda Owen

  ‘Di’n’t do me any ’arm,’ he said.

  ‘That’s a matter of opinion,’ said Clive, as the headteachers tried diplomatically to explain that this isn’t the way we do it today.

  Anyway, when Mrs Johnstone was due to come again, I decided to have everything just so. I primed Violet, who was not yet at school then but was due to start the following September, to show some of her writing and demonstrate her counting. I had blacked the range, cleaned the house (well, some of it – the visible bits anyway), baked fresh cakes. All would be well. For one day only I was going to be a Domestic Goddess with a Child Prodigy.

  But this is a farm, and things never go to plan.

  On the day of the visit we had an early start, as Clive went off to Carlisle auction with his friend Mark to sell cattle. I had a couple of lots of sheep to feed, and the usual bullocking up around the yard with Vi, Sidney and Annas helping me. We worked our way through the long list of jobs until there was only one remaining, and that was to muck out the stable of our veteran horse Meg. When I got to her stable I could immediately see she was ill. She was standing with her head bowed, facing the stable wall. There was a green, frothy mucus oozing from her nose, and every so often she’d give a deep, rumbling cough. Her illness had come on so quickly: only the previous evening she had been out until darkening while I filled the hay racks and nets, and there had been no sign she was unwell. My first thought was pneumonia, so I gave her a shot of penicillin and then rang the vet.

  ‘Hello, it’s Amanda at Ravenseat. I’m wonderin’ if there’s any chance of gettin’ a veterinary up ’ere?’

  I explained the symptoms: snot, coughing and gasping. As I reeled them off I began to question my initial diagnosis, because pneumonia does not normally strike quite so rapidly.

  ‘Actually I’m thinking it might be choke,’ I said.

  ‘Someone will be with you within the hour,’ the receptionist said.

  Next I rang Clive. He was at the auction and I spoke against the background noise and general melee. I wanted to know if there had been any problems the day before, whether the horses had got into the feed store or if anything else had happened that I didn’t know about. I got the standard reply: ‘Bloody ’osses, nowt but trouble.’

  An hour is a long time to wait for medical help. As everyone knows, googling takes you into a minefield of possibilities, so I resisted the temptation to go online and instead resorted to my standby book, Modern Practical Farriery (first published in 1875, but horses haven’t changed that much since then). The symptoms began to look more and more like choke, and according to the book there was a strong chance the blockage in her throat would dislodge itself. I really hoped so, because I’m in charge of soaking her sugar beet feed. Sugar beet pellets are an excellent food for some animals, like pigs, cows, sheep; but horses need to have them pre-soaked, otherwise they swell up inside the stomach and can kill.

  After what felt like forever, the vet arrived – a newly qualified lass who I hadn’t met before.

  I said: ‘I’m thinking it’s choke . . .’

  She said: ‘It could be pneumonia . . .’

  She checked Meg over, taking her temperature, palpating her neck and throat, listening to her stomach. She couldn’t be 100 per cent sure, but choke was now looking the most likely diagnosis.

  ‘I think we need to get a stomach tube down her,’ she said, ‘but I haven’t got one with me.’

  ‘I’ve got a calf tube,’ I said. ‘Mebbe it’ll let us see whether we’re reet.’

  The idea would be to stick it up Meg’s nose, down into her oesophagus and through to her stomach, and when it could go no further because of the blockage, pour warm water into the pipe in an attempt to soften the offending lump. Unfortunately the calf tube snapped as the vet tried to bend it in her hands (with calves and cows you can go over the back of the tongue and straight down the throat, but with horses it has to be up the nose, and the tube needs to be more pliable).

  She went to the phone and called for another, older, colleague to join her, bringing a specialist longer equine tube. Eventually we were all set: Meg was brought out into the yard and given a sedative to keep her quiet while we did the unpleasant job of getting the tube into her nasal canal. It is not a pretty sight: the tube scraped her mucous membranes causing a slight nosebleed. A funnel was put on the end of the tube, but we had to be sure it had gone down past her windpipe before we put water down: if water got into her lungs it would mean an instant, horrible death. It was very tense.

  The pipe was two-thirds of the way down when it refused to go any further, which meant it had hit the blockage. The funnel was held aloft, and jug after jug of warm water was tipped in. What came back up were little pieces of sugar beet and hay, stinking terribly from fermenting in Meg’s oesophagus. With each wash out she would shake her head and sneeze violently, distributing bloody snot and saliva on all around. It was difficult to keep the tube in place without getting completely covered.

  We now knew for certain what the problem was, but it wasn’t about to dislodge easily. Greedy old Meg must have carried on eating and eating, and the food just backed up with nowhere to go. It was clear she would need washing out more than once, and the vet would need to return. The risk was that Meg would be weakened by hunger as she could have no food, just sips of water, and there was a very real chance that she might not survive.

  In the midst of all this, I had forgotten about Mrs Johnstone until I heard a car pull up in the farmyard. Moments later she appeared from around the corner. I winced: instead of being clean and dressed to impress, I was covered in horse snot. The children, too, who were watching the procedure from a safe distance with great interest, were splattered with it. I stood still, holding Meg’s lead rope, as she snuffled and coughed. There was a pervasive stink from the food she had brought up. The vets were just packing up to go.

  ‘Oh, erm, Mrs Johnstone, how are you?’ I said. ‘We’ve ’ad a bad mornin’. Would ta be alreet to just give us a minute?’

  I needed to get Meg back into a stable, but I didn’t want to put her in her original one: I wanted her in a bigger one, closer to the house with a bigger door (for practical reasons. There have been times when an animal has died and we’ve been faced with dismantling a door frame or dismembering the corpse). Clive’s old tups were going to have to give up their home for her.

  We’re always playing musical animals in winter, moving things around, but with just the smaller children to help me it was going to be tricky: Clive was going to be pretty annoyed that I’d evicted his tups, and I didn’t want to compound it by letting them make a break for freedom. It was raining quite heavily, to make things worse.

  ‘Can you just hod t’oss for a minute, Mrs Johnstone?’ I asked, handing her the lead rope before she had a chance to answer. I admit I was a little preoccupied, my mind racing. Meg was still a bit rocky from the sedative, so it wasn’t safe to tie her up. I stood the children and Bill the sheepdog in strategic positions, then chased the tups out of their stable and into the garth, thinking Clive could sort them when he got home. Then I put some fresh straw down in the stable, and I was almost ready to talk to Mrs Johnstone.

  ‘Yer couldn’t just pop her in t’stable while I put mi dog away?’ I said.

  Back in the kitchen it was time to turn to the reason for this visit: the children’s progress at school. My Domestic Goddess plans had gone completely awry: the table was awash with hats, gloves and horse equipment.

  ‘Come through to t’living room, Mrs Johnstone, you’re looking a la’l bit cold and damp,’ I said. ‘We might as weel sit by t’fire an’ get warmed up.’

  Alas, there was no fire. Unattended, it had gone out long since.

  The children had done very well, and been very helpful, on a difficult morning. But by now they were getting twined (irritable) and hungry.

  ‘Violet ’ere is lookin’ forrad vary much to comin’ to t’school,’ I said.

  ‘Nah, I’m not,’ said Violet, petu
lantly. I ignored it.

  ‘Violet can count, backard and forrard,’ I said.

  ‘Errr, yan, twooo . . . errr.’ Then she started to pick at her nose.

  I gave up, and listened as Mrs Johnstone gave me a run-down on the academic progress of the older children. They were all performing well, were well behaved, and although some were more enthusiastic about school than others, there was nothing to worry about.

  I noticed that Mrs Johnstone was talking nasally, sniffing a bit now and then. She seemed to have a stinker of a cold. This was not good news for me: I have the constitution of an ox with an immune system that can withstand any farm bug, but literally every time I venture into a town or city I come home with a horrid cold which I then share round the family.

  ‘Is’ta badly?’ I asked. ‘Are yer comin’ down wi’ summat?’

  ‘No, I’ve got an allergy,’ she said, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. ‘I’m allergic to animals.’

  Oh God! I was mortified. I’d subjected the poor lady to something akin to her worst nightmare. Horses, sheepdogs, tups, and, even as we were talking, Pippen and Chalky were laid out on the rug in front of her.

  We talked about the children a little while longer, her eyes reddening and streaming. Happily she soon announced it was time for her to be off. I got the feeling that her trip to Ravenseat had been a memorable one and we’d made a lasting impression, but perhaps not the one I had hoped for.

  The vet came back the next day, and we got the tube down Meg a little further, with the same result: some horrible stuff came up, but there was clearly still a blockage. Meg was not distressed, but she still couldn’t eat and could take only small sips of water.

  The vet asked us to take her down to Sandwath farm, a five-minute drive from the surgery, so that they could attend to her more easily. But she hates travelling, and we knew she would be unhappy off her own patch. Our vet bill would be less, but we decided for her sake to keep her at Ravenseat, where she’d always been happy. We wanted her to stay here for the rest of her life, and not even leave for a few weeks. We had to keep giving her painkillers, but she was so well behaved throughout the whole terrible process.

  We didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, and she was going downhill fast. After the third day of washing out, I rugged her up in a vain attempt to hide her skinny frame from my own eyes. Her age meant she did not carry a lot of flesh, but now her guts had also sunk right in, her eyes were dull and she looked so tired. Clive and I talked seriously about Meg’s future and decided that the next day would be our final attempt, and the vet agreed. He would come to wash her out, but would also bring the humane killer with him.

  That morning, I got up even earlier than usual, having not been able to sleep, my mind running over the adventures Meg and I had shared over the years. Over the next couple of hours, a procession of children came to see her. The older ones understood the gravity of the situation. Reuben, as usual, was the pragmatist:

  ‘Does t’digger need its battery chargin’?’ he asked. Raven glared at him.

  Violet had the stethoscope out.

  ‘Are you checking for her vital signs?’ I asked. ‘Listen to her guts. If they’re still workin’ it’ll sound like a washing machine.’

  ‘Naw. Can’t hear owt,’ she said, crouching at Meg’s side as she sat amongst the straw and put the stethoscope under the rug.

  ‘Let’s go for the heartbeat, then,’ I said. Violet moved round to Meg’s chest and, after listening intently, shook her head.

  ‘Naw, can’t hear ’owt.’

  Meg turned her head wearily, and gave a snort.

  The vet came, Meg was roused and the tube went down again for the final time. We watched as bucket after bucket of warm water went down the funnel into her stomach, only to be regurgitated with the familiar smelly food debris. Reuben arrived with yet another bucket which was tipped down the tube and a hush fell as we could hear faint bubbling noises. Seven faces peeped over the stable door, smaller children being lifted by older ones. The vet pushed the tube a bit further in and suddenly a vortex of swirling water disappeared down the tube.

  ‘That’s it,’ said the vet. ‘The blockage has cleared.’

  I couldn’t believe it; I’d steeled myself for what I’d considered to be the inevitable conclusion of this sad episode.

  I can’t say that Meg looked relieved. She was still a very poorly horse, and it was going to be a long, drawn-out process nursing her back to health, but I certainly wasn’t short of volunteers for nursing duties.

  Immediately after scanning we take the yows back to their heafs, giving them their late breakfast. A couple of weeks later we bring them back down into the sheep pens for a bit of a sort-out. Anyone who read my first book, or who knows anything about hill farming, knows about heafs: the sheep, who appear to be wandering aimlessly about the moor when you see them from your car as you drive past, actually know their own territory, the area of the moor that belongs to our farm (and, more importantly, to them). There are no physical barriers to stop them wandering wherever they want, but they have an inbred instinct that keeps them on their own patch. One of our heafs is on common land, where a number of nearby farmers also have heafs and the right to graze sheep. By and large the sheep are bred to know their own heaf and do not stray far off their patch; the yows in turn bring up their lambs to know it, too. When you take on a hill farm, whether you buy it or take out a tenancy, the sheep come with it, and when you leave, they stay behind. We are really just temporary custodians of the flock.

  Knowing which sheep are carrying twins means we can feed them extra rations. The yows who are geld are kept separately. They are not neglected and are given a bite of hay every day, but we don’t give them any more than that. One or two of them may be in lamb: if they were only in very early pregnancy, it wouldn’t have shown on the scan, and they’ll lamb late, nearer clipping time when there will be plenty of grass about. The others will go back to the tup next year. As our old friend Jimmy would say: ‘A geld yow nivver broke naebody.’ They will be bigger and stronger for next year. If they don’t breed a lamb for two years running, that’s another story: they’re off to the auction mart.

  Depending on the ferocity of the weather, we may be feeding the flock twice a day, and we watch our hay dwindling, bale after bale going out to the fields, totting up whether we will have enough crop to see us through. It seems as if winter is never-ending, and even though the days are getting longer and we’re no longer working in the yard in the dark so much, spring seems a long way off.

  We use the hay that is stored in the big barn first, because we need to clear it for lambing in April. It’s the easiest barn to fill, a newer, more open building, and we can back the quad bike trailer right in to load it. When that barn is empty we make a start on the smaller, traditional barns: not as easy for loading but we think they are better for storing and preserving hay than the modern ones. They are darker, cooler, and have soil floors.

  We once decided that the answer to our winter feed worries was to have a go at growing turnips in one of our fields at Sandwath. Turnips are a good feed, the cows can eat the green stalky tops, and the sheep can eat the chopped-up root. They last well through the winter if you store them in straw, so it seemed a good idea to have a try at growing our own rather than buying them in, and paying a fortune for haulage up to Ravenseat.

  Clive’s turnip mentor was his friend James, who grows them, and everything else, very successfully on his farm in Crosby Ravensworth, where I lived before I met Clive. According to James, timing is everything, and when it came to planting them he lent us his turnip seed drill.

  ‘When do we do it?’ Clive asked.

  ‘June. The 9th is ower soon and the 11th is ower late.’ So the 10th it had to be. He told us what to expect from the crop: ‘They’ll either be t’size o’ cannonballs or cat’s knackers.’

  James had a state-of-the-art turnip-lifting machine to pull them from the ground: Clive had a wife and children. James invit
ed us to a pick-your-own event, lifting turnips from a strip of headland which he needed to clear to get his supersized machine into the field. Only a couple of idiots like us would jump at an offer like that. We managed to fill a whole trailer, and these turnips were definitely cannonballs: one weighed in at a massive 25 lbs.

  Another friend of ours found some antiquated, rusty turnip knives in a barn. They probably hadn’t been used for years, but with a bit of a rub on the sharpening stone they were soon usable. They had a small billhook on the end which you could use to pull the turnip from the ground, and a sickle-shaped blade to top and tail the turnip, which should have made the lifting easier. But even with the knives, our weekends were spent in the turnip field, bent almost double. And our turnips were, sadly, the cat’s knackers variety. The children found it a novelty at first, but that soon wore off. There’s an argument, which still goes on, about whether they were turnips or swedes, but the one thing I do know is that when I chopped them up to make chips for the family, they tasted bloody awful. We decided, after that, to revert to buying turnips in.

  We have been trying for a few years to establish trees as shelterbelts in a landscape that doesn’t afford many places for birds and wildlife to escape the weather. Planting trees has been a labour of love, involving a lot of digging and some manual dexterity planting them on the sides of dangerous ghylls, and fencing them off to protect them. I drew up shopping lists of them, looking through catalogues at all the fancy, exotic species, like monkey puzzles, and the ones with beautiful blossom, like cherries. Then common sense would prevail and we’d order the sensible ones that we knew had a chance of surviving up here: hawthorn, mountain ash and larch.

  Our most recent order, in February 2014, involved Clive picking the trees up from a nursery in Northumberland – an errand he really enjoys, as he takes with him his friend Colin, who is familiar with the roads and also with a certain pub along the route.