A Year in the Life of the Yorkshire Shepherdess

by Amanda Owen

  It was soon upgraded, and now we have a new, much better system, which uses UV filters and does not add any chemicals to the water. The water pressure is much better, which we appreciate when it comes to the shower; but the downside, as I’ve said, is that the whole system relies on electricity.

  Even though we have thousands of pounds’ worth of water purification equipment, we still have to be inspected, and the standards seem to be even more rigorous than before. I was busy in the farmyard one morning when the public health inspector turned up.

  ‘Mornin’. What can I do for yer?’ I said.

  ‘I’m here to test the water,’ she said. ‘You have a water tap near the woodshed where walkers and campers can fill their water bottles.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Well, because you are supplying the general public with water, it is a requirement that I test the water quality.’

  This annoyed me, because the only reason we installed the tap was to save ourselves the trouble of filling walkers’ flasks and bottles in the kitchen. I’d also seen them filling their containers with river water, which I figured was far more likely to cause stomach upsets.

  I politely showed her into the kitchen, where she filled her bottles with water samples; then more were filled at the outside tap. Then she set off up the moor to the water tanks and the spring. I decided I was better off staying out of the way, so set about my yard jobs with renewed vigour, muttering occasional expletives about officialdom.

  A week later, we got a letter. I’m amazed I actually read it, as I’d assumed it to be a foregone conclusion that it would pass. The letter was full of jargon and figures, but eventually I waded through to the analysis result: ‘Your private water supply has failed the quality test.’

  We couldn’t believe it. I read it again, more closely. It stated that the water that came from the taps was 100 per cent safe and clean, but that the water in the tank at the top of the moor – the one that caught the water as it emerged from the spring in the ground – was dirty.

  ‘Well, who’d ’ave thought it?’ I said sarcastically. ‘Fancy the water being dirty at source, but clean after it’s gone through our vastly expensive treatment plant.’

  ‘Bloody typical,’ said Clive. ‘What the ’ell is the point of spending a fortune on cleaning t’water if you’re gonna fail on it being dirty in t’first place?’

  Surely, the only water that matters is the water that comes out of our taps?

  ‘Ah’ll tell thi what we’re gonna do,’ he said, reaching for a red biro. ‘Absolutely nowt.’

  He circled the word ‘private’ in the heading, ‘Regarding your private water supply’. Then he put the letter back in the prepaid envelope and gave it to the postman the next day.

  We had a call from a neighbouring farmer one day to say that two walkers had been going past the Red Gulch Ghyll, and had seen a lamb trapped down there. Raven and I set out to have a look, walking along the other side of the ghyll and occasionally peering down into the bottom. Eventually we spotted a gimmer lamb, half hidden beneath a rocky overhang. She’d probably just reached out in search of some sweeter grass and had taken a tumble over the edge, landing some thirty feet below the pasture on a small ledge, with the beck running through the bottom of the ravine fifty feet below her. All around her the ground was paddled black, so she’d clearly been there for at least a couple of days.

  ‘I’ll go and see just how steep the other side is,’ said Raven. She went down as sure-footedly as a mountain goat, anchoring herself by grabbing the few clumps of vegetation that had taken root on the rocks. I lost sight of her, and shouted down:

  ‘Where y’at?’

  She’d been distracted.

  ‘Mam, yer knaw tha’ blue plastic rockin’ ’orse we all used to play on? I’ve found it. It’s down ’ere. It must’ve floated away when t’beck was up.’

  ‘Worrabout t’lamb?’

  ‘Oh, aye, it’s still stuck,’ she said.

  She couldn’t get to it, so we headed home and went back the next morning with Bill. This time we intended to get into the ghyll by walking along the beck that ran through the bottom of the valley. We figured that Bill barking from below might force the lamb to look even harder for a foothold to get back up and into the pasture above.

  Our rescue mission was in vain, because she was nowhere to be seen. We were sure she hadn’t fallen, because we’d have found the body. There was not enough water in the beck to have washed it away. We had to assume that she had scrambled back to safety of her own accord, and been reunited with her mother. We’re no longer surprised by the scrapes and ridiculous situations that our sheep can get themselves into, and very occasionally their resourcefulness in extricating themselves, too.

  Lambs aren’t the only livestock to occasionally go missing at Ravenseat. Our local builders, Steve and Dave, have worked on our barns and outbuildings for years, and they are often accompanied by a couple of terriers belonging to Steve and a dim-witted spaniel belonging to Dave. They were recently up here re-roofing a cow’as (cowhouse) in the middle of what we call Beck Stack, a steep pasture not too far from the farmyard, which we had cleared of sheep. Every day Steve drove up to the barn in his Land Rover, and after the ritual mug of tea, quick study of the Sun and much fiddling to get a signal on the battered long-wave radio, work started. Tess, his smooth-coated Jack Russell, and her six-month-old pup Gem, sniffed around, then lazed in the sunshine.

  One morning Steve and Dave arrived with a cargo of scaffolding poles to shore up the west wall of the building. Steve drove his Land Rover up the field and let the two dogs out. Then he dropped the side of the trailer and the metal poles rolled out onto the ground with a deafening crash.

  Tess took fright and bolted, her short tail tucked between her legs. Gem scarpered too, but nobody felt alarmed. Steve and Dave were sure the dogs would be back by the time they finished work. But when they drove back into our yard, Steve announced, ‘We’ve a dog wantin’.’

  Tess was back in the Land Rover, curled up on the front seat, but Gem had not been seen since the scaffolding pole incident.

  ‘Right, children,’ I shouted, summoning the troops. ‘We’ve a dog to find. A small white ’un, last seen in t’Beck Stack near t’cow’as.’

  We formed separate search parties, confident she couldn’t have gone far. There’s nothing that the children like more than a mission: the challenge was simple, find Gem. Steve walked along the beck edge, whistling for her. Dave headed upstream, looking across into the seaves along the bankside. The children went in all directions, walking, running, Reuben cycling up the shooting track. No luck.

  The next plan was for Steve to drive back home to Reeth, eighteen miles away, calling at our neighbouring farms in case she’d wandered further than we thought, and also dropping in at the campsite in Keld in case she’d been picked up by passing walkers.

  At darkening, Steve drove back into the yard.

  ‘Nae, I din’t see t’point in sittin’ in t’chair wonderin’ abaht it,’ he said. ‘Thought I’d ’ave a ride back up t’dale an’ ’ave another look.’

  ‘Could she ’ave gone down a rabbit hole?’ I said.

  ‘Mebbe gone down t’beck,’ said Clive. I scowled at him.

  ‘No idea where she’s at,’ said Steve. ‘Last time I see’d ’er she was wi’ Tess, just afore t’poles come off t’trailer.’

  He went home, empty-handed and heavy-hearted.

  Clive and I were in the yard early the next day, feeding the tup hoggs, when Steve rolled up. He wound his window down.

  ‘Yer early,’ I said. ‘Dave’s not ’ere yet.’

  ‘I thought that me an’ Tess would ’ave another look around for Gem,’ he said.

  ‘Come here an’ ’ave a look at this tup hogg,’ said Clive, catching one of the sheep by the horns. ‘I’m wonderin’ whether ’e’s a good ’un.’

  Steve switched off the engine and walked across to where Clive was wrestling with the hogg. ‘Let’s ’ave a l
ook at what ’e turns up like,’ said Steve.

  Clive rolled the tup over and sat him up, holding him steady so that we could see his tackle.

  ‘Grand, in’t ’e,’ said Clive.

  There was a moment of silence. Steve was deep in thought, and we waited with bated breath to hear his verdict on the tup. He frowned, then turned to me and gestured for me to be quiet. In the silence I, too, heard a faint whimpering noise.

  ‘What were that?’ said Steve, turning in the direction the sound came from, towards the Land Rover.

  ‘Yer what?’ said Clive, who was straining to hold the wriggling tup.

  The noise seemed to be coming from the vehicle. Peering through the windows, all we saw was Tess dozing on the front seat. Steve opened the door and fumbled under the dashboard to release the bonnet catch. As he lifted the bonnet, the whining noise became louder.

  ‘Bloody ’ell! Come and ’ave a look at this,’ Steve exclaimed.

  Peering upwards, eyes wide, was Gem, jammed in the chassis framework next to the engine block.

  ‘I can’t believe that! T’lal’ bugger ’as been in there all this time.’

  We watched as he extricated her. She was dirty and shivering with fear, but otherwise unscathed. It was nothing short of a miracle that she had escaped injury. She must have run under the Landie when she was frightened, and she’d been there ever since, making four trips totalling nearly eighty miles – not counting the messing about going to the other farms and the campsite. Plus she’d been there overnight. It’s amazing that she didn’t fall out, or get burned on the engine. She certainly was an extremely lucky dog.

  By the end of May, all our yows and single lambs have been returned to the moor. The yows with twins are still in the pastures and allotments. Sheep are now banned from the meadows, to give the grass a chance to grow, and Clive is on the lookout: any sheep that dares to sneak over the cattle grid or make its way under a water-rail will be skedaddled back pronto, and persistent offenders have been known to be delivered to Hawes auction mart the following Tuesday.

  ‘I’ll warm ’er arse, she’s a bloody flying machine,’ he says as he and Bill set off to remove another trespasser.

  We don’t use any chemicals or fertilizers on our meadows, and we let them reseed themselves naturally. The only thing we give them is a dose of muck. Hay is a vital crop for us: how much we manage to grow makes a huge difference to our feed bills in the winter.

  Walking the meadow walls is a pleasant but time-consuming job. We pick up any topstones that have been dislodged, keeping the boundary walls in order and also preventing mishaps with the mowing machines when we harvest the grass. An encounter with a big, heavy rock brings mowing to an abrupt halt.

  Occasionally at this time of year we are inspired to have a go at growing other things, apart from grass. We’ve tried potatoes, green beans, carrots and salad leaves. The children enjoy planting them and cultivating the plot, but the harvest is never worth the effort: we get a few misshapen veg if we are lucky. Reuben has a small vegetable and herb patch down by the graveyard, which he’s fenced off to keep out intruders like horses, rabbits, sheep and chickens. We suspect Reuben was motivated more by the chance of unearthing buried treasure or a Viking hoard than becoming the next Percy Thrower.

  During the war, when everyone was told to ‘dig for victory’, there were efforts to grow vegetables up Swaledale. But even in those desperate times they weren’t very successful, and all our attempts have more or less proved that this just isn’t the right terrain. We’re high, windy, bleak, cold; the soil is peaty, acidic and often sodden. We did manage to grow cucumbers, although maybe I shouldn’t use the plural, as we actually only got one and it was the furriest cucumber I have ever seen. It had clearly adapted to life at Ravenseat, and it made me laugh just looking at it. Not much can tolerate these conditions: grass, pignuts, microscopic bilberries – and rhubarb. Rhubarb thrives. We have a very productive rhubarb patch, and luckily rhubarb crumbles are very popular with Clive and the children.

  Our friend Alec, who had joined us for tea, expressed his long-held theory that rhubarb causes impotence.

  ‘Causes what?’ said Clive. ‘Din’t catch that. What’s ’e sayin’, Mand?’

  I didn’t bother repeating it, as I dished up rhubarb crumble to the seven children sitting round the table.

  We don’t live anywhere near the famous Rhubarb Triangle (around Wakefield in West Yorkshire), but it still grows in such abundance here that for a while I sold crates of it to a high-quality jam and preserve company. They were very impressed by the quality and quantity that we produced and asked if we used any special fertilizers. I didn’t mention that the area where it was harvested was above the septic tank, and in a field called the graveyard (an area behind the woodshed, which used to be an old chapel).

  Trade for store and breeding cattle can be good in May, with special sales held at the auction marts. It is a time when we normally sell some of our stirks, our young cattle; but recently Clive has been buying more young stock to graze in our allotments during the summer. He set off one morning with an empty trailer and the chequebook, to go to the auction in Carlisle to buy what was in his price range. I rang for an update, and he told me it was a buyer’s market, the cattle were good, the prices low, and he’d just kept on buying them . . .

  ‘’Ow many has ta getten?’

  ‘Thirteen,’ he said, sounding pleased with himself.

  ‘Crikey, thoo’ll nivver get ’em all in t’trailer.’

  ‘They were cheap, I just kept flappin’ mi ’and,’ he said.

  ‘Well, that’s grand. But I’s thinkin’ that yer should flap thi ’and yance more, thirteen being unlucky an’ all that,’ I said.

  ‘I nivver ’ad yer down as suspicious,’ he said.

  ‘Superstitious,’ I corrected.

  ‘Whatever. Anyways, I’m nit buying any more coos as I’m off to t’canteen. There’s a nice Polish lady there who allus gives me an extra dollop o’ mash on mi plate.’

  The phone rang when I was clearing up after teatime, with Clive’s meal in the bottom oven waiting for his return.

  ‘Hello, can I speak to Mr Clive Owen?’ said a man with a thick Scottish accent.

  ‘No, I’m sorry but he’s at the auction today. Can I help or give him a message?’

  ‘Yes, you can tell the wee laddie that he’s mebbe a coo short.’

  The man, a drover, was looking at a cow standing forlorn and alone in the lairage at the auction mart. The ear tags corresponded with paperwork in the office that said Clive had bought her earlier in the day.

  I rang Clive on his mobile and asked him the obvious questions. How many cows had he bought, and how many did he have in his trailer?

  ‘I bought thirteen, an’ I’ve got ’em all on board,’ he said.

  ‘Where are yer at?’

  ‘Kirkby Stephen. I’ll be ’ome soon,’ he said.

  Half an hour later, he pulled into the farmyard.

  ‘C’mon, let’s get ’em unloaded, they’ll be tight. We’ll run ’em into t’pens,’ he said as he pulled the trailer’s rear door down.

  It was by now dusk but even in the fading light there was no mistaking the fact that only twelve cows came out of that trailer. Clive was dumbfounded. The drovers had run the cattle down the alley and onto the loading docks for him, but somehow one must have found its way into another person’s pen and been left behind.

  ‘It looks like yer off back to Carlisle.’ I said. ‘Yer can tek yer tea with yer.’

  Doing the one-hundred-mile round trip twice in one day left a sour taste in Clive’s mouth, but it wasn’t enough to put him off Carlisle auction mart for good. A reduction sale of a renowned herd of pedigree Beef Shorthorns was too tempting to miss. He sent for the catalogue, and off he went again. This time I knew he wouldn’t be filling his trailer, as these cows would be expensive. Beef Shorthorns have become a fashionable breed and there would be plenty of buyers for them. By the time Clive and h
is farming friend Mark got there the sale had begun, and the ringside was packed three deep with buyers. Folks had travelled from as far away as Ireland just to be in with a chance of buying in some of this famous bloodline.

  Clive had set his heart on buying an in-calf heifer: two for the price of one, he reckoned. He was determined not to come home empty-handed. Ballyliney Lancaster Zabrina was the heifer who took his fancy, and he waited for her to come into the sale ring. The auctioneer set her off at a thousand pounds but she didn’t stay there for long; the bids kept coming, the price getting higher in ever increasing increments. After what seemed like an age, the hammer went down at £3,000, and she was ours. I rang Clive for an update.

  ‘I’ve getten a coo,’ he reported. ‘’An I’s off to t’canteen now, ’cos . . .’

  ‘I know, I know,’ I said. ‘Just mek sure that yer remember to put yer coo in t’trailer.’

  I got my first sight of Zabrina when the pickup pulled into the yard, her wild eyes peering back at me through the ventilation flaps. Ravenseat was now her home, and she joined our little herd of Beef Shorthorns. After the usual bit of argy-bargy among the cows, she was accepted into the herd. There’s always a bit of tussling when a new animal is introduced to a herd or flock. You sometimes get an almighty fight (or sometimes an orgy), but fortunately for Zabrina, in her delicate state, it was all very tame. Order was restored, and they were soon all grazing quietly together. A few weeks went by and her calving date was drawing near. Not wanting to risk her taking off onto the high ground to calve, and as it was her first calf, we decided to put her in a barn so that she could be monitored. Every day we’d both have a study of her.

  ‘Aye, she’s near her calf now,’ Clive would say.

  ‘Look at t’size of ’er. Any day now,’ I’d agree.

  This went on for days, Zabrina getting ever more round.

  ‘Crikey, she’s gonna have a big calf.’ I’d wince and rub my own bump in sympathy.

  Finally the day came. Zabrina’s tail was held high and she occasionally glanced backwards at her own distended belly; she’d panch – pacing to and fro, never settling. Clive panched too – he couldn’t settle any more than she could. It was 4.30 a.m. when he came into the bedroom and woke me up: she was calving and he needed another pair of hands.