A Year in the Life of the Yorkshire Shepherdess

by Amanda Owen

  One of our crusties, a really, really old yow, was in the garth next to the shepherd’s hut when she reached the end of her natural life, at the grand old age of nine. She was certainly a creaking gate and had been looking very frail for a long while. I was reluctant to move her from where she felt at home, so I’d warn our visitors: ‘Tek no notice of ’er. She’s a real veteran, an’ ’appy enough, she’s going to die a nice, peaceful, natural death any day now. She’s ’ad a good life.’

  Next morning, when Clive and I were taking the guests’ breakfast, we found her: she’d passed away in the night. Her bloated body was splayed right across the path next to the hut and she didn’t look a bit peaceful: her face was contorted like something out of a horror movie.

  ‘Ach, yer owd bugger,’ I muttered to her. ‘You’ve only done this to me because you know I’ve got people in the hut. After all we’ve done for you . . .’

  9

  September

  September means the return to school, with the usual panic as sandwich boxes are fished out of schoolbags that were abandoned several weeks ago. Invariably, one of them will have a mouldy yoghurt pot lurking inside. School uniforms are dug out of cupboards, and with luck everybody will just move up a size, so that the jumper that fitted Edith will now fit Violet and in turn the jumper that fitted Miles will now fit Edith. Screwed-up sheets of homework are found, and someone will hurriedly write their ‘what I did in the summer holidays’ essay. I have sleepless nights worrying about this regular project and all the things that we didn’t do. Didn’t go on holiday, didn’t go to the seaside, didn’t go to the shops. Last year I only realized at the end of the holiday that out of eight children, five of them hadn’t left the farm at all for the entire seven weeks. Helping Edith with her essay, I focused on the things they had done: digging in the sand on our ‘beach’ at the side of Whitsundale Beck, snorkelling in the dub below the Jenny Whalley waterfall, riding Little Joe and Josie bareback around the fields, hunting down our piggies when they went on the run after escaping from the graveyard. They slept in tents, cooked their own tea over an open fire and partied in a thunderstorm with a group of motorbike enthusiasts from Hull. I decided that they’d probably had a pretty good time.

  I soon rectified the ‘not leaving the farm’ issue by taking them to Muker Show – our local show, held on the first Wednesday of September. Sometimes term time will have officially begun, but we still all go. There’s a programme of events: a sheep show, sheepdog trials, tents full of produce and horticulture, a drystone walling demonstration, a vintage tractor and implements competitions, and quoits. There are lots of children’s competitions too, with handwriting, drawing and photography classes. Our children will bake cakes, do a few drawings and enter the young handler and stock-judging classes.

  Things are always frantic on the morning of the show. When the show schedules are sent out in early August it all sounds like it’s going to be such jolly good fun, baking loaves of bread, making gingerbread, shortbread, biscuits, curd tarts, cakes, the dreaded scones and a Battenberg . . . It’s only when we come to start the epic bake that I think properly about it all. A Battenberg? What made me tick that box? In my world, only Mr Kipling makes them, or anyone with a lot more time on their hands than me. Trying to load all these goodies into the Land Rover with eight children, plus their artwork and everything a family needs for a day out, is a nightmare. Butterfly buns get sat on, doilies are forgotten – and then there’s the sheep and tractors that also need to be transported.

  Miles and Reuben like to run in the junior fell race, training all summer without even knowing it by coming to the moor to gather the sheep, running through the heather, up and down the hills. To take part they need trainers, shorts and a T-shirt. I had enough to do: it’s time to delegate, I thought.

  ‘Reet, you two, I want yer to pack yer runnin’ gear, everything yer need for t’race,’ I said, leaving them to it. Later, when we were at the show, the announcement came out over the tannoy:

  ‘Entries now open for the junior fell race. All runners to assemble at the bottom tent.’

  Quick as a flash, Miles and Reuben rushed off to the Land Rover to get changed and then went to put their names down on the list. They returned minutes later.

  ‘We cannae run,’ said Reuben, his eyes filling.

  ‘We’re not allowed,’ added Miles, wiping tears from his cheeks.

  ‘Stop thi’ sobbin’ an’ tell mi why,’ I said, although it wasn’t hard to guess. Each boy had two pairs of trainers: a spanking new pair, bought specially for the start of the new school term, and a knackered pair that had been worn out over the previous school year. These were on the tight side, had seen better days and were due to go on the fire anytime soon. Typically, these were the trainers they’d brought with them. The old trainers were deemed unsafe for running the fells in. So much for delegating some responsibility to them: I now wished I’d overseen the packing of the running kit.

  All was not lost: there was still a chance. The seniors did not run until later in the day, and as the boys have big feet, we wondered if we could borrow a couple of pairs of trainers.

  ‘We’ll put a request out over the tannoy,’ said the show secretary.

  Not only was I going to have the ritual humiliation of losing in all the baking classes, it was now going to be broadcast over a loudspeaker that my children didn’t have a decent pair of shoes. We were lucky: a couple of lads from the team of local harriers were happy to lend their shoes to the boys.

  Borrowed shoes were no hindrance to Reuben, who won the race. He was ecstatic, waving his trophy aloft in front of the cheering crowd with a delighted Miles, who also finished well, at his side. The lad who lent Reuben the shoes was also delighted: ‘I’ve nivver won nowt, but at least mi shoes ’ave,’ he said.

  I love the show, with its unwavering traditions. The people may be different, the sheep may change, but year on year the show remains the same: the drystone walling demonstration, where the same gap in the wall is rebuilt every year, the chainsaw sculptor cutting out squirrels and mushrooms from logs, with Reuben pestering him until he hands over his offcuts for us to take home for our fire. Muker Silver Band plays the same tunes, while folk sit on the embankment eating ice creams and watching the dog trials taking place at the bottom of the field. One year I inadvertently sabotaged the dog running event with a half-eaten beefburger that one of the children couldn’t finish. Getting out of the Land Rover, I casually lobbed it over the wall. It went further than I expected, landing by the dog trialling gates.

  That’ll test ’em, I thought.

  The quoits competition takes place in the afternoon, when the sound of the band music is punctuated by the chink of the iron rings hitting one another. I enjoy teasing the players:

  ‘Playing hoopla again?’ I say.

  ‘We’re athletes, I’ll tell ya,’ one of them replies, indignantly, pint in one hand and quoit in the other.

  ‘Where’s Dave at anyway, is he not playing today?’ I ask.

  ‘Nah, off with a sporting injury, he’s ’avin physio. It’s a shame really ’cos we’ve qualified for the internationals . . .’

  I’m impressed, never having realized that quoits are played on a world stage. ‘Where do yer ’ave to go for that, then?’ I say. ‘A lang way?’

  ‘Aye, we’ve gotta bus gaan, we’re playin’ at Whitby.’

  ‘Crikey, that far,’ I say, trying not to laugh. ‘Who are yer up against anyway?’

  ‘North York Moors league.’

  There really is a truly international feel to it all.

  The sheep show is solely for the Swaledale sheep purist, there are no other breed classes. To be the champion at Muker is a tremendous accolade, as this is the heart of Swaledale country. Competition is fierce, with a lot of effort going into preparing the sheep. Days are spent tonsing, colouring and trimming. There are many classes, and filling in the entry form is a challenge in itself. For example, there are large breeder and small breeder
classes, district and open classes, gimmer lamb, gimmer shearling, gimmer shearling and gimmer lamb, best gimmer in the district, gimmer that’s been shown but hasn’t won a prize . . . and that’s just some of the classes for females. It’s in the tup classes that things get really complicated. We sometimes get our show entries wrong, embarrassing ourselves on the show field by taking our sheep out into the ring only to find that we haven’t entered that class.

  The whole sheep show takes all day to judge. Serious deliberations go on for hours, both judges and bystanders debating each sheep’s qualities amongst themselves. The judges eventually whittle down the sheep eligible to compete for the overall championship. The Swaledale enthusiasts spend the whole day in the sheep pens, only moving to perhaps go and buy a bacon sandwich, and then it’s straight back to where the action is. They discuss whose sheep are on form, who is looking well set to win and who is not showing that year, and why. Even after it’s all over, with the champion sheep declared, the arguments continue well into the night in the Farmer’s Arms pub.

  Classes in the produce tent are also hotly contested. I’m already psychologically on the back foot, having seen the other entries. I’m unnerved by the neatly regimented scones, my spirits sinking like the middle of my gingerbread. I’m a stickler for the rules, eyeing up a rival entry in the ‘two items from a Dales kitchen presented on a wooden board’ class, noting that she’s put a jar of home-made piccalilli alongside a fan of home-made digestive biscuits.

  ‘Whhhhhat!!!! She’s gonna get disqualified,’ I say to Raven. My Yorkshire curd tart and oatcake would have looked better if I, too, had arranged my triangular oatcakes into a pattern, but I thought that I could only put two things on the board.

  Returning after the judging, I see a little note on the other entry saying in big letters: ‘Disqualified . . . TWO items please.’

  Well, at least I can count – but I still don’t win. The judges’ decision is final, even if they don’t know a good sheep/cake/vintage tractor when they see one.

  My friend was sure she was going to be awarded first prize in her flower-arranging class, as nobody else had entered. Later on, she told me she’d been given a second, as her arrangement was not considered good enough to warrant a first. Firsts are only awarded at the judge’s discretion.

  The vintage tractor classes give us a logistical problem with getting them there. Reuben would dearly love to be at the wheel of his David Brown tractor but he’s too young to drive on the roads. The night before the show Clive and I take it and one of our other classic tractors, complete with muck spreader on the back. It’s about a five-mile journey from Ravenseat and at vintage tractor speed it’s very pleasant on a lovely late summer evening, with time to look over the walls at the views that remain much unchanged since the times when life moved at a slower pace. We chug our way down the dale in the open-topped tractors, with the setting sun casting a glorious warm light over Kisdon. After parking on the show field, we wait for my friend Rachel to pick us up and take us back home.

  One year our journey was rudely interrupted when an articulated lorry became wedged on the Usha Gap bridge. The supersized vehicle had tried to negotiate the small narrow bridge and was stuck, unable to move backwards or forwards. There was a tailback of other would-be exhibitors trying to get to the show field and there was no other route, not without doing at least a thirty-mile detour: not a practical solution for our elderly tractors. The driver couldn’t have timed it any worse. He sat on the parapet of the bridge, his head in his hands while a procession of people who had now abandoned their vehicles filed past his stationary lorry.

  ‘What was ’e thinkin’ of?’ they’d mutter, and then take pictures of the stricken lorry on their phones. We decided to leave our tractors in a nearby field overnight, and thankfully by the next morning the lorry had gone.

  It is a surprisingly common sight, outsized trucks and tankers trying to weave their way down the narrow Dales roads. We blame the growing reliance on satnavs. The bends are so tight that something has to give, and usually that something is a drystone wall or two.

  The second half of September usually brings a slowdown in our visitors. The number of coast-to-coast walkers dwindles and I revert to doing what I came to Ravenseat to do: shepherding the sheep. I live a life of two halves, a double life. During the summer I spend the mornings feeding the pigs, calves and the few other animals around the yard, and in the afternoons I provide refreshments for the visitors, fitting in whatever jobs need doing around the farm that day. If I’m working in the sheep pens or in the barn, I’ll nip back and forth between the picnic benches, kitchen and sheep pens. During the summer months the world comes to me, and then through the winter I get the quietness and seclusion of a remote hill farm: the best of both worlds, I think.

  ‘Have you ever walked the coast-to-coast?’ visitors ask.

  ‘Nah, but I reckon I walk the equivalent o’ t’192 miles of it just going backads and forrads carrying cups o’ tea.’ Plus I feel that I know the route very well, having had the same conversations for a good many years now.

  ‘Where are you going tomorrow?’ I ask, making polite conversation.

  ‘Reeth, I think,’ they say, flicking through the pages of the Wainwright’s Coast to Coast guide.

  ‘Really? And then to Richmond,’ I say.

  At the end of the summer I try to add up how many walkers I’ve taken pity on and shipped to Keld, those who called it a day when they got to Ravenseat, asking us to phone for a taxi for them, or wanting directions to the nearest bus stop. We give them a lift to Keld, but they may have to wait until it’s convenient. Occasionally, when they look as though they will expire from exhaustion, I drop everything and take them immediately. One rainy afternoon Raven took a tray of hot chocolates down to a small party of walkers who were sitting in the woodshed, and reported back that one of them was covered in blood.

  ‘What’s ’appened?’ I asked her.

  ‘Fell over summat,’ she said in an unworried way. But I was worried: ‘where there’s blame there’s a claim’ sprang to my mind again, as I thought of Reuben’s inventions littering the woodshed. I went to investigate.

  Sure enough, a young woman in a bloodstained cagoule was sitting dejectedly on the bench, her friends bombarding her with questions.

  ‘How do yer feel?’ they said. ‘Do you feel dizzy? Sick?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ll be OK,’ she said.

  Yer snout’s mebbe busted, I thought, but didn’t say. Her nose looked lopsided.

  ‘What did yer fall ower?’ I asked, looking nervously around the woodshed for likely obstacles.

  ‘She fell coming down the road,’ said one of the group. The young woman nodded.

  ‘Yer stick was tucked behind yer arms,’ said another. She nodded again.

  This meant she couldn’t stretch her arms out to save herself.

  ‘An’ yer bootlaces was undone,’ volunteered another. She nodded yet again, miserably.

  ‘Was there a banana skin, too?’ I said, then remembered that it wasn’t funny.

  I took the whole group to Keld, to the B & B where they were staying.

  I was reminded of Jimmy, our old friend and neighbouring farmer. Jimmy was driving along the road in his large blue tractor, towing a stock trailer on one wet and blustery afternoon. He was flagged down by a group of bedraggled, weatherbeaten hikers who begged a lift. Jimmy, being the kind and generous person that he was, agreed that they could get into the trailer and he’d take them the three miles or so to Keld, which is where he was heading. After shutting the jockey door on the trailer he climbed back into the tractor driving seat and set off again, homeward bound. Like most farmers, he was planning in his head the next job that needed doing, which distracted him, and he completely forgot that he had passengers. He took a detour, off the road, down a track and into the Greendale, a steepish field in which his draught yows were grazing. He saw one was hotchen, quite lame. Having no dog with him, he put the tractor into
a higher gear, put his welly on the accelerator and gave it some gas across the field, the trailer rocking from side to side behind. The sheep flew to the bottom of the field, with the tractor tearing after them. Only when he had them corralled in the makeshift hurdle pen did he switch the tractor engine off.

  Loud groans and gasps were coming from the trailer. He thought for a moment, then it all came flooding back. He’d picked up a group of walkers, hadn’t he? He remembered offering them a lift to Keld in the trailer.

  Apologetically he opened the trailer door, and the ramblers tumbled out.

  ‘I’s proper sorry aboot that,’ he said in the broadest of Yorkshire accents. ‘I’d forgetten that thoo was in t’back.’

  Dusting himself down, the leader of the walk muttered something, gave an almost imperceptible nod, then said, ‘Yer know what, I think we’ll walk from ’ere.’

  As anyone who has ever travelled in a trailer knows, it’s unpleasant at the best of times – not to mention illegal. There have been times when I’ve been crouched in a trailer, holding a tup’s horn with the explicit instruction from Clive, ‘Don’t let the beggar rub on owt.’ The aluminium insides of a trailer can sometimes stain and spoil the hair on a tup’s face, giving it a greenishgrey tinge. This is unforgivable at the tup sales. When we get there, Clive’s tup exits the trailer with his hair intact, but Clive’s wife looks a little green about the gills after a rough ride across the Buttertubs.

  Back in the days when I was a contract shepherdess, I would often drive around in vehicles that weren’t mine. On one occasion I was asked to pick up some fence posts and wire from the agricultural suppliers. I borrowed the farmer’s beat-up Astra van, taking it home with me, having arranged to return with the stuff the next morning. I was secretly pleased about this arrangement, as it had a full tank of diesel (probably red, but we won’t dwell on that).

  My ancient pickup truck was a thirsty old thing and I was always counting coppers to raise the money for the minimum delivery of diesel at the petrol pumps, so the Astra van was a real treat. For one night only, I could go places!