A Year in the Life of the Yorkshire Shepherdess

by Amanda Owen

  It had been an eventful twelve hours: I’d missed a whole night’s sleep and I was beginning to flag, but I was looking forward to showing the children the new baby. They had all slept through the events of the night, including the arrival of an ambulance in the early hours. Clive told them all the news at breakfast. Everyone was overjoyed apart from Sidney, who cried because he wanted a boy baby.

  The midwife visited Ravenseat every day, weighing the baby – who now had a name, Clementine, or Clemmy for short. Unfortunately, due to her early appearance, Clemmy went yellow with jaundice and lost marginally more than the acceptable 10 per cent of her body weight. So it was back to the hospital at Middlesbrough, where she lay under a blue light for a couple of days.

  It was just sheer luck that poor Parsley didn’t get to spend a couple of days at the hospital too. Unbeknown to me, she had jumped into the pickup whilst I was going back and forth loading everything to take to the hospital, and had curled up behind the front seat. Clive turfed her out when he went to retrieve his coat just before I left.

  When we returned from the hospital for the second time, Sidney was over his disappointment at Clemmy being a she-baby and was so thrilled with the new member of the family that he managed to trip over his own wellies and cut his chin quite badly.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ I wept as I rang the doctor’s surgery. ‘Please tell me that yer can sort ’im out, I can’t face having to turn around and go back to Middlesbrough.’

  Fortunately, armed with a plentiful supply of steristrips, our doctor patched Sidney up, and another trip to the hospital was narrowly averted.

  And now the disclaimer.

  I feel very privileged to have had what I consider to be a perfect birth. It may not be everybody’s idea of the right way, but for Clemmy, me (and Clive) it was wonderful. I accept that I was lucky, and I don’t go around promoting the concept of free-birthing. I simply believe that in my circumstances, it was the right option.

  7

  July

  It was the weekend of the Tour de France in 2014. All the roads into Swaledale, where the route was going, were closed off. There was a sense of great anticipation, as thousands of people were expected to descend upon Swaledale to see the peloton as it passed through. Clive and I are not particularly cycling fans, but the fanfare and build-up to this once-in-a-lifetime experience meant that some of the excitement had rubbed off on us. We planned to take the quad bike across the moor towards Shunner Fell and then out onto the Stags Fell, avoiding the closed-off roads by travelling cross-country, and ending up in a prime location at the very top of the Buttertubs pass. From there we would be able to see the riders tackle one of the fastest, most dangerous stretches of the race.

  The day before the big race I suggested to Clive that we should go for a walk after tea, a quiet moment for us as the children were playing together happily in the garden. We couldn’t decide which direction to go, but finally chose the moor. Hand in hand we walked through the gate and followed the track up to the first hillock, and from there we could see Josie, standing alone at the moor bottom. It was a peculiar stance, almost as if she was standing to attention, square, upright, with her ears pricked. I frowned. There was something not quite right.

  It was only when we ventured closer that we could see she was standing guard over Queenie, who had collapsed. Distraught, I ran to her side, screaming, ‘Clive, we’ve gotta get ’er up!’

  ‘I’m goin’ for t’loader tractor,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll bring some straps wi’ me.’ He hurried off back to the farmyard.

  She’d gone down in a wettish spot and her white coat was now plastered with mud where she’d floundered.

  ‘What the hell are yer doin’ here? What are yer thinkin’ of? You stupid, stupid ’orse.’ I felt almost angry with her.

  Clive reappeared on the horizon, smoke billowing from the exhaust of the tractor.

  ‘We’re gonna get you up and out of ’ere,’ I told Queenie determinedly. Her ears flickered, but in her eyes I saw consummate tiredness.

  Clive pulled up close, stopped the engine and threw two ratchet straps to the ground. ‘We need these under ’er belly an’ out t’other side,’ he said.

  Dropping to my knees, I threaded the first strap under her brisket and out the other side whilst Clive pushed the other strap further under her abdomen.

  ‘Reet, I’m gonna lower t’front end loader down, an’ you’re gonna loop these straps around the spikes,’ he said. I nodded. ‘Yer gonna ’ave to be careful that she don’t fall on yer, but yer gonna ’ave to try an’ encourage ’er to support ’er own weight, too.’

  We tried three times but we just couldn’t get Queenie up. It started to rain, and soon both Clive and I were caked in mud.

  ‘Mand, it’s naw good, she’s nivver gonna stand.’

  ‘Please, please . . . just one more go,’ I begged, although in my heart of hearts I knew we were fighting a losing battle.

  ‘Yance more,’ he shouted. ‘Yance more an’ that’s it.’

  We failed. She was just too weak to try any more, and as the rain now came down harder we were both sitting there sopping, wet to the skin. Queenie’s mane that I’d patiently combed and conditioned was now knotted and tangled and stuck to her neck with mud. We could see it was futile.

  ‘We need the vet out,’ said Clive softly.

  ‘I’m gonna ga an’ get ’er rug,’ I said, speaking quietly and smiling down at her. I was biting my lip to stop myself from crying. Josie was standing close, watching.

  I went back to Queenie’s stable while Clive called the vet. When he came out of the house he was frowning. The vet was on a callout at the other side of Appleby, was about to perform a caesarean on a cow, and the road into Swaledale was closed because of the Tour de France. She suspected that the sudden collapse might have been due to a blood clot after the traumatic labour and stillbirth, but whatever the cause, it was clearly the end of the road for poor Queenie.

  ‘There’s only one thing you can do,’ she said.

  Taking the children into the house, I put on music and turned it up, not wanting them to hear the shot ring out. Clive went to the gun cabinet while I picked up a halter and walked slowly back to Queenie. So many thoughts ran through my head: had I explored every avenue? Was there anything else to be done? Worst of all, was it my fault?

  I covered Queenie with the rug, and straightened out her tail so it lay neatly across her tucked-up legs. I looked her in the eye. The same watery blue eyes that had been filled with sadness, vulnerability and fear when she first came to Ravenseat now looked quietly content. I ran my fingers through her forelock tenderly, and then gently tucked it behind her ear. Then I walked away, never looking back. I slipped the halter onto Josie, who quietly walked behind me back to the farmyard. Halfway down the track I met a pale-faced Clive, his gun over his shoulder. We passed each other, but nothing was said; only the clip-clopping sound of Josie’s hooves cut through the silence.

  Queenie was buried where she fell, which was exactly the place that, unbeknown to me at the time, Clive had buried her foal. It made we wonder whether Queenie knew that her foal was there and had chosen this to be the place where she died, so they could be together again. That might just be sentimentality and imagination on my part. But as a mark of the high esteem we held her in, Reuben made a headstone for Queenie, with her name on it.

  I was bereft after her death, on the verge of tears much of the time. I talked to my friend Rachel about what had happened and how it was perhaps a modern concept to grieve so much for a horse. Maybe nowadays horses are more cosseted than they were in the days when they worked on farms, when folk were maybe less sentimental about them. She said that there was possibly some truth in this, but she had something she felt would interest me. Sure enough, a few days later, the postman brought me an envelope from her.

  Inside, on a scrap of paper, was a poem about a funeral held at Birkdale, which is just at the end of our road. It is dated 1st October 1910, and is
called ‘The Interment of Daisy’.

  Old horse, old horse, how came’st thou here?

  Thou has roamed the fells for many a year

  Until by one unwary slip

  Into the Swale thou got a dip.

  And being old and not quite slim

  Thou accidentally broke a limb.

  Thus it fell to thy sorry lot

  To end thy days by being shot.

  Thou’st ne’er had blows or sore abuse

  Or been salted down for sailors’ use.

  To eat thy flesh and pick thy bones

  And send the rest to Davy Jones.

  So ends at last this sorry tale

  Thou’ll rest in peace beside the Swale

  And when the last great trump shall sound

  Thou wilt spring to earth at one great bound

  To show that thou art fit and smart

  In a future life to take a part.

  A lady graced the funeral scene

  And kept her boys at peace

  Who gambolled on the turf and green

  She bid their antics cease.

  The day was fair as fair could be

  As we walked sadly o’er the lea.

  Gentles and simples, saints and sinners

  All trooped off to a jolly good dinner.

  —Wrong Fellow

  I loved the notion of this – another horse, over a century earlier, being held in such high regard that she warranted a proper funeral.

  There are two major jobs in the summer months of July and August, clipping and haytiming, and which we do first depends on the weather. Mowing the meadows can’t start before mid-July, as the environmental schemes we take part in are designed to give the wild flowers time to set their seeds.

  We usually start by clipping the hoggs, who are now about fifteen months old. As this is their first clip, they are carrying the greatest weight of fleece, with plenty of new growth of wool, which we call ‘the rise’. The yows have put all their energy into milk production to feed their lambs, and will not have grown any new wool yet, so they are clipped later.

  If it looks like we’re in for a good spell of weather, we’ll do the hay, but we really need to get the clipping done by the end of July. I love clipping, but Clive is not as enthusiastic: he says it’s a young person’s game, which is why I enjoy it. I’m not sure if I’m getting faster at clipping or whether he’s slowing down, but either way, we get the job done. Clipping the hoggs is a tough way to start – not just because they are very woolly, but, being new to it, they struggle and wriggle. A well-behaved hogg can have its wool removed in a couple of minutes, but a naughty one can take twice as long. The number of times that I’ve heard Clive muttering, sweat dripping from his brow, ‘I coulda done yer, yer daft beggar, will yer sit thi’sel’ still . . .’

  It takes strength and skill to keep a hogg in place, and their sharp horns can do your legs some damage in the process. I tell myself that clipping equates to a pretty intense workout and that by the time we’ve done near on a thousand sheep I should have a fit, toned body. Not that I can show it off: however hot it is, minidresses are out of the question, as shins, calves and thighs will be black and purple with bruises. Clipping a pen of a hundred hoggs is a daunting prospect, not least because of Clive’s dodgy counting.

  ‘Just a hundred for today, Mand,’ he says.

  ‘That’s seventy done now,’ I say, looking at the still suspiciously full pen of woolled sheep waiting their turn. ‘Are you sure there’s just a hundred?’

  ‘Thereabouts,’ he says.

  I suppose it is better for morale to underestimate.

  ‘They’re only to clip yance,’ he says.

  Of course, before we clip we have to round them up. This means a very early start. Gathering on the moor requires dog power, and if the weather is hot then the dogs soon tire. Avoiding the heat of the day works better: the sheep sense if the dogs are flagging, and take advantage by breaking for freedom. The sheep know their own heafs, and all the dodges. It is very frustrating to have a good gather and be homeward bound, only for some to break away and head back to the hills while we are powerless to stop them because the dogs are totally exhausted.

  We have a system for gathering from the common, where others run their sheep. We don’t cast our net too wide, in order not to bring in too many yows belonging to our neighbours. We work closely with the other commoners, but invariably end up with a few strays. They, too, will end up with some of our sheep. At certain times of the year there is much toing and froing to the outlying sheep pens dotted around the moors, where the strays are left until their rightful owners come for them. Everyone will gather on the moors at roughly the same time because we all have the same jobs to do: clipping, speaning, tupping and lambing are the four big dates in the sheep diary.

  We try to clip the sheep as soon as possible after gathering them, as they don’t settle so well in the fields around the house, and they soon eat all of the grass available to them. A hungry sheep is an unhappy sheep, and clipping hungry sheep makes for an unhappy clipper. A full sheep is round and fat and you can easily run the clippers over her curves. A thin sheep is more angular, with wrinkles and bony bits making the job far more difficult. Putting the sheep overnight in the barn guarantees they will be dry the next day, but the downside is that they will also be likely to have straw stuck in their fleeces and muck clagged up in their hooves. The less contamination of the wool, the better.

  Once upon a time, wool was an incredibly valuable commodity and the wool cheque would pay the tenanted farm’s rent, so great care was taken over the wrapping and packing of the fleeces. Not any more: the poorer-quality, coarser wool from the hill breeds is no longer in demand, and in return for the 2,000 kilos of wool that we send to the wool depot we can expect a payment in the region of £400 – in a good year. One year, our wool cheque was for the princely sum of £65. Some farmers have resorted to burning their wool clip; the natural oils in it mean that it will burn when freshly shorn. Somehow that doesn’t sit right with us: it seems so wasteful.

  Weather conditions throughout the year influence the amount and quality of the wool produced. A bad spring, when the yows haven’t been as fit as they normally are, means that they will cast their fleeces when they begin to thrive again. The same goes for a sheep that has been sickening: when she begins to recover, she will throw her wool off. One sheep in a field losing its fleece makes a terrible mess. In the old days, this wool was never wasted, being collected and used by the farmers’ wives to spin into yarn. Even within living memory, wool was prized, and Clive remembers being sent to clip a dead yow.

  Clipping time at Ravenseat can be finished in a week if the weather is good, and it really is a family affair. The smaller children bounce in the wool sheets to pack the wool down tightly, while the bigger children help us catch the sheep. A catcher makes the whole job of clipping a lot easier, as they bring the next woolly customer right to you. This means you don’t have to turn off the clipping machine, don’t have to hang up the handpiece and don’t even have to straighten your back. A supply of sweeties is a necessity in order to curry favour with the catchers, for they select your next sheep, with the bare-necked and bare-bellied ones going down a treat, while any with mucky tails or fleeces full of grit and soil do not.

  In a hot summer the sheep will become itchy in the heat and take shelter from the sun under the overhangs of the peat haggs, where they have a good old scratch. The soil and grit finds its way deep into the fleece, and makes the combs and cutters very blunt very quickly. A rainy summer makes for cleaner fleeces, as the rain rinses the muck away. My latest baby usually sits in a pram watching the clipping, or is lulled to sleep by the constant hum of the machines.

  Raven is learning to clip. It’s not all about strength but technique too: keeping the sheep moving so that it doesn’t feel the urge to struggle, and being able to hold the sheep with your legs. Clive and I both clip the old-fashioned way, from the back of the head and down the sho
ulder. The modern way of clipping, from the bottom leg upwards, is quicker, but it’s impossible for me and Clive to change now. Our dilemma is whether to teach Raven to clip our way, or whether she should go on a shearing course and learn the newer method.

  While we are clipping the yows, the lambs are held in a separate pen and then reunited with their mothers afterwards. When they’ve been clipped we give them time to mother them up with their lambs again, as without their fleeces the yows look and smell quite different. If we turned them straight back out to the moor then we would inevitably end up with some lambs being unable to find their mothers and being speaned at three or four months old. They can survive without their mothers’ milk, but will not do as well living only on the rough moorland grass. It’s far better to take great pains with them and make sure that all the yows have found their lambs.

  One thing that keeps me going during this physically tough job is the thought of a swim in my own personal hydrotherapy spa. The dirt and sweat, and the aches and pains from the toils of the day, will be gently washed and massaged away by taking a dip in the dub, the river pool at the back of the farmhouse. Fully clothed, I swim a few lengths and then plunge under the waterfall. I emerge feeling cold, fresh and very much alive, and then hang my jeans and vest on the washing line ready for another day.

  We keep a tally of how many sheep we have clipped, and usually we find that we are a few short. Invariably they will turn in late, perhaps on the next gather for speaning in September, or occasionally even later at tupping time. Very occasionally one misses getting clipped altogether and ends up with two years’ growth of wool, but this is bad for the sheep as they get weighed down with snow during the winter, then blown over and rigged (stuck on their backs upside down) because of it. If a woolled yow turns up in September we go back to the old, traditional way, clipping with the hand shears on a clipping stool. Using the hand shears means that we can leave her with more wool for warmth, whereas with the electric clippers it’s either all or nothing.