A Year in the Life of the Yorkshire Shepherdess

by Amanda Owen

  There are days when we congratulate ourselves because we get through without putting any lambs into the pet lamb pen, and then the next day we’ll have a rush of them. Our pet lambs do well: we have an expensive automatic feeder which mixes warm milk for the pet lambs, allowing them to suckle when they want, in as close a way as possible to the real thing. This gives them the very best start in life, if rearing naturally on a yow isn’t possible. It is an expensive business though, buying the milk powder and feed. But it’s all part of lambing time.

  Easter usually falls in the middle of lambing, and for us the celebrations are a non-event. I do make sure I have Easter eggs on hand, hidden away for the children, and on Easter Sunday they find them in the henhouse, so the little ones believe that the hens have laid chocolate eggs. But apart from that, there’s no special celebration. It’s all hands on deck at lambing time, and their school Easter holidays are usually spent helping out among the flock. One year recently was unseasonably hot, but there was a breeze that took the edge off the heat, and fooled me into not noticing that the children were catching the sun. I was beside myself when I stripped them off for their showers and realized that the fairer-skinned ones had bright red ears and noses. Edith and Miles have olive skin, and over the summer slowly turn a lovely nut-brown colour. Sidney and Violet are not so lucky.

  ‘Oh my gawd,’ I shouted to Clive. ‘What am I gonna do? They’re bright red.’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’ll calm down . . . an’ you need to calm down an’ all.’

  There is nothing less likely to calm me down than being told, ‘Calm down.’

  ‘Are you kiddin’, Clive? They’ve gotta go back to school soon. Having a sunburnt kid is on a par with carrying a class A drug nowadays. Unforgivable. I’m gonna be vilified,’ I said, slapping on the skin cream.

  As it happened, the weirdly unpredictable British weather meant that before they went back to school we’d had blizzards to contend with, and I’d had to dig the balaclavas and gloves out of the back of the cupboard. A chill wind blew, snow fell thick, and the sunburn quickly faded.

  So April comes and goes in a wave of elation, sometimes disappointment, and worry. We are left emotionally and physically drained, an indescribable weariness demanding that we momentarily sit back, rest and take a little time to gather our thoughts before we gather the yows and lambs into the pens and begin marking up and turning away.

  5

  May

  It was in May that Keith the Beef showed his true colours, on the day we turned the cows out. Having spent the winter cooped up in the cow shed, we expected some high jinks from all of them when their hooves touched the grass; and sure enough, they set off at a fair pace up the field, their udders swinging from side to side and a few enthusiastic kicks and bucks thrown in for good measure. Keith ambled out: he never did anything at great speed, but he kept a close eye on his harem as they frolicked in the distance. They went out onto the moor bottom, with a round feeder filled with haylage for them. After a few hours of exuberant capering about, the herd settled round the feeder, with Keith taking on the role of babysitter, looking after the young calves. But he was soon bored, and that’s when he began his trail of destruction. He’d behaved well enough inside (the white bit of the domino), but we soon found out that there was another side to him (the black bit). He’d stroll along to the nearest drystone wall, reverse up to it and give his rump a good old scratch along it. No wall can stand a ton of muscled beef pushing against it, and it was not long before there was a loud crash as the wall tumbled.

  Neither were the few wire fences we had any match for him. He just leaned his great weight against them, his leathery hide untroubled by the barbed wire, and chomped away at the meadow grass on the other side. The fence posts leaned inwards, the wire was stretched to its limit, and before long the fence gave in to the pressure, twanged and sagged to the ground. Then he stepped over it into our precious hay meadows, leaving just a few tufts of red hair on the barbs – and was followed by the rest of the herd, who joined in the feast.

  It was only when Keith broke into our new tree plantation, smashing the saplings and their protective tubes, that Clive saw red. He set off after Keith. ‘I’ll warm ’is fat arse,’ he growled, striding off purposefully, wielding a pitchfork and following the trail of destruction.

  It was one of those comedy moments: Clive running at Keith, threatening him with all manner of things and swearing. A nonchalant, thoroughly unflustered Keith lumbered away towards Clive’s masterpiece of fencing, where he had actually re-routed the river to sink a huge strainer post into the solid stone river bed, concreting it in.

  ‘Rock solid, that’ll be forever,’ he’d said at the time, admiring his own engineering. ‘It’d tek a bulldozer to shift that.’

  Well, he’d reckoned without Keith, who ambled through the fence without pause, leaving the ‘rock solid’ upright straining post leaning at a lopsided angle, a bit like the Tower of Pisa.

  That was the final straw. He went back to his owner after that.

  For the calves, born during the winter months in the confines of the barn, turnout day is their first taste of freedom and the great outdoors. Last year our three Beef Shorthorn calves spent their first few days lying in the loose hay round the ring feeder, never going far, just waiting for their mothers to return from grazing the sweeter grass further up the valley.

  As they gained confidence in their new surroundings, they began to venture further and explore new territory. Every day we walked through the sheep pens, up the stone track to the stone stell (shelter) at the moor bottom, and carried out a head count to make sure they were all present and correct: four cows with three calves at foot, two heifers and one bull. Within days they were losing the winter-time accumulation of muck ‘buttons’ which hung from their bellies, and their red roan coats stood out from the green and brown moorland, making them easily visible at a distance.

  They had only been out for a couple of weeks when one morning we noticed that one of the calves, Gloria, was not with the others. Her mother Eve did not seem perturbed, and watched disinterestedly as we conducted a search of the nearby seave beds, the most likely place for a small calf to hide out. When we could not find her, we crossed the river to look at the back of the moor wall: and there we saw her, in the beck, on a rock covered with slippery algae, just below the first drop of the Jenny Whalley waterfall. Gloria was standing rooted to the spot, water lapping around her hocks and a look of terror in her eyes.

  ‘What the ’ell is she doin’ in there?’ Clive said.

  ‘Who knows?’ I said. ‘Mebbe she slipped on the green slime on the river bottom when crossin’ with ’er mother. I wouldn’t ’ave thought she’d ’ave voluntarily waded out into t’water an’ clambered down t’waterfall . . .’

  We struggled down the steep banking, waded carefully into the river so that we didn’t lose our footing, and edged slowly towards Gloria.

  ‘Mi wellies are fillin’ wi water,’ Clive complained.

  Gloria saw us approaching and decided she wasn’t going to hang around any longer. She shot forward, skidding on the algae, and leapt upwards, landing on her knees, and scrabbling away with her back hooves. Her head was being doused by the waterfall, but she finally managed to get a foothold on the bank and scramble up to firm ground. She stood for a moment, dripping wet, looking forlorn, then shook her head and galloped across to the feeder where the herd of cows was nonchalantly chomping away, unaware of the drama. As Clive and I squelched our way back to the farmhouse we looked across at Gloria, now happily suckling from her mother Eve.

  We worked for the rest of the day in the sheep pens, tagging and marking the lambs, getting them ready to be turned away to the moor. As the day wore on the weather turned, the wind picked up, the sky became leaden and we knew a storm was brewing. We didn’t worry about the well-being of the cattle: Beef Shorthorns are a hardy breed, and can cope with any weather Ravenseat throws at them. As long as their feeder was full of haylage an
d their bellies were filled, they would weather the storm.

  It was a bad night, the rain was beating against the windows, and in the morning when I peered out of the bedroom window there was a roaring flood. We don’t fear floods: although we are surrounded by water we are at the top of a hill, which means we, and the farm, stay safe. But floods cause us logistical problems. We can’t cross the river, but we can still use the packhorse bridge. Feeding the sheep can endanger them: they are so keen to get their heads into the feed bag that they will attempt to leap a raging beck, risking being swept downstream. Although sheep can swim, the weight of their own sodden fleece makes it difficult for them to stay afloat. On a really bad day the sensible option is sometimes to leave them be and wait for the water to subside before venturing out with food.

  That’s what we decided to do. Clive and I busied ourselves around the yard, while the children splashed in the puddles and played at filling buckets from the broken gutter on the barn.

  ‘C’mon,’ I said, ‘let’s ga an’ see what the coos are up to.’

  ‘I’m gonna tek the lal’ uns in and get t’kettle on,’ said Clive.

  The older children, Raven, Reuben and Miles, came with me up the stone track. My woolly hat was wringing wet, and I kept my hands thrust down into my pockets. Looking up at the skyline, I could see a plume of spray above the High Force waterfall: the usual trickle of water, barely visible at this distance, had become a torrent of white water, cascading and tumbling over the rocks, bubbling and foaming as it carved out a wider watercourse down the valley.

  The cows, although sodden, were lying in the shelter of the stell, chewing their cud placidly, glancing at us without interest as we counted. One short, again. And again it was Gloria.

  ‘C’mon, hup mi lasses,’ I shouted, hoping that Gloria was concealed amongst them. They reluctantly stood. No, I was definitely a calf short. I scouted round, looking in the clumps of seaves. No sign. Why would she be away from the herd on such a horrible day? I remembered the previous day’s events, with foreboding.

  ‘Stay here an’ play spot the calf,’ I said to the children as they stood dejectedly, looking this way and that for our missing calf. I walked down to the beck, where she had been marooned the previous day. But what a difference: where Clive and I had waded in, the roaring, turbulent waters now ran deep, brown and dangerous. My heart sank. If Gloria had gone back to the river, she would have been swept to her death.

  ‘You ga yam,’ I yelled to the children, ‘Tell thi father what I’s on with.’

  I didn’t dare risk crossing the river, so instead walked the riverbank back to the farmhouse. I knew that if she had been washed this far downstream then realistically she would be dead, and I was effectively looking for a corpse.

  When I arrived back at the farmhouse Clive was already getting coated up, and he set out to follow the river downstream to the boundary of our land. He found nothing. Gloria seemed to have vanished without trace, but the mystery was that Eve, her mother, was once again completely unperturbed. We discussed it and came to the conclusion that Eve might have hidden her calf, and possibly knew exactly where Gloria was. The answer was to put Eve under surveillance, and Raven willingly volunteered to do the undercover job. She stationed herself in the tractor, which was parked behind the sheep pen wall, with a pair of binoculars and a book to relieve the tedium. She didn’t stick it for long, and it soon fell to Miles to take her place.

  Miles is a thinker – quiet, content in his own company – and he was happy to keep Eve under observation. It was he who, after a few hours, spotted her leaving the others and setting off at a slow, determined pace up the moor. She wasn’t mooching or stopping to graze; she was on a mission, and it was Miles’s job to see where she was going. He stalked her, keeping a safe distance, and ducking out of sight when he thought the cow could see him. She didn’t cross the river, but travelled up the valley bottom to a point where the river forked. Several yards away stood a half-collapsed Nissen hut, where hay had been stored in years gone by. Eve quietly lowed, and a very dry, contented-looking Gloria emerged from the remains of the hut.

  Cows are wise, often more so than we give them credit for. After Gloria’s escapade in the river, Eve had been determined to keep her calf safe. We were all very pleased when Miles delivered the news back to the farmhouse.

  We use our cows as a barometer, to tell us when better weather is in store. Not by the old wives’ tale about cows lying down when it’s going to rain: they lie down to chew the cud. But if our cows leave the shelter of the lower slopes and make their way to the moor tops, then it is a reliable sign of settled, dry weather. There is nothing more pleasant on a lovely evening than seeing them quietly grazing the heights, amongst the heather, oblivious to the occasional haunting trill of the curlew and the staccato cackle of the grouse.

  At the very top of the moor is Red Mea Tarn, 1,800 feet above sea level. It is a bleak, lonely place. In winter its inky black waters, hemmed in by exposed peat haggs, ripple in the icy wind that drives across the desolate expanse of open moor until the temperature plummets and it freezes over. In late spring it wakes from its winter slumbers with the arrival of black-headed gulls, returning to one of their regular breeding colonies, where they lay their eggs on the shoreline.

  The children were always a little wary of the tarn, shivering at the thought of its unfathomable depths. After the initial thrill of being in this most inhospitable place, they’d soon be tugging at my sleeve and asking to go home. One unusually hot evening in May we decided to make a family trip up there. Determined we would challenge the long-held opinion that the tarn was bottomless, we’d go where no man had gone before: we were going to swim in it. We loaded the quad bike trailer with swimming costumes, towels, snorkels and – as a safety measure – a very long rope.

  We drove the bike, now fully laden with children, carefully negotiating the steep slopes and bogs, while the kids chattered nervously about what might be lurking under the tarn’s murky surface. I was beginning to share their apprehension, not helped by Clive, who said, ‘It’ll be a hell of a depth. Yer won’t be able to touch t’bottom, an’ if yer can then t’mud’ll suck thi down.’

  I’m used to wild swimming, often taking a dip in the cold waters of the plunge pool beneath the waterfall in Hoods Bottom Beck; I’d even once swum in Birkdale Tarn. The children, too, love outdoor swimming, and during the summer months, greasy from sheep clipping, we like to cool off in the river – me with a bar of soap to lather on to them, killing two birds with one stone.

  ‘. . . an’ then there’s the monster, one of them bottom-feeder pike-like things,’ Clive carried on, for the benefit of his wide-eyed and terrified offspring.

  By the time we arrived at the tarn their enthusiasm for swimming had waned, and they stubbornly refused to put on their swimming costumes. Keeping it up, Clive asserted that he wouldn’t go in that water at any price. They all agreed that anyone who ventured in was unlikely to emerge alive.

  ‘It looks like you’re gonna have to go in,’ Clive said, turning to me. The children seemed to agree that I was disposable, and chucked me my wetsuit. Clive started to make a safety line, tying the rope around my middle, the children all promising they would help pull me out when I got into trouble, as they were sure I would. Reuben cheekily added that we might need to tie the other end of the rope to the quad bike. Reluctantly, I walked to the water’s edge.

  ‘Who’s gonna look after us?’ one of the children murmured. There seemed to be a fair amount of concern about who would make breakfast the next morning.

  Tentatively I dipped my toe in the water. It wasn’t as cold as I’d thought it would be. I cautiously took another couple of steps. The bottom was soft, but firm. I felt my way along the edge, my feet sinking only slightly into the peaty bed. Clive was getting impatient.

  ‘Ga on,’ he shouted. ‘’Urry up.’

  I scowled at him, noting that he’d already lost interest in holding the other end of the rope. I steppe
d further out, but the water only reached the middle of my shins. I wondered whether I was going to stumble into a deep trench, but on I went, further and further into the tarn. It didn’t get any deeper. The whole mysterious, terrifying thing was only fourteen inches deep, no deeper than a paddling pool.

  ‘I allus said that thoo walked on watter,’ Clive observed.

  The children soon stripped off and were splashing around with me, stirring up all the sediment that had settled on the bottom and rolling happily in the mud. There was no more talk of monsters, but I soon had a whole family of creatures of the black lagoon.

  Our water has always come from a spring on the moor, and it is, in its natural state, slightly tinged with peat, but healthy and pure. Mains water has been installed as far as West Stonesdale; beyond that, all the farms and houses are on spring water. Ours used to go straight into a collection tank, then down a pipe to another tank, and then into our house. Occasionally a frog would find its way into the pipe and we’d spend a good half day trying to work out where the blockage was. But the system caused us no real problems, and we were adept at dealing with air locks and leaks.

  Unfortunately, our water supply didn’t satisfy the Public Health Inspectors. It wasn’t to their taste, you might say. Luckily the estate which owns our land, and from whom we rent the farm, footed the bill for a proper water treatment system, which has evolved over the years into something highly technical and beyond the grasp of a layman. It started simply enough with the addition of chlorine to the tank, which turned our bathtub blue and gave my hair a green tinge. It made me wonder what it was doing to our insides: we could certainly taste it. It was also a bit hit and miss: sometimes the tank seemed to get a double dose of chlorine, sometimes none at all. It still had bits of gravel in it.