The first lamb I touch feels stiff and cold. Just a faint touch of warmth on its bluing tongue. I lower it despondently into the trailer. The next two, on an older ewe that has tried to get them up and licked dry, have some life in them but are fading fast, their core temperature dropping. Desperate measures are needed. I do what I have never before done and decide to save the lambs quickly and worry about the ewes later. If I have to catch all the mothers, these lambs will be dead. I will lose too much time. Minutes later I have gathered up five lambs and am on the road home. Another ewe has lambed under a wall and had two, proper strong lambs with big bold heads and white ear tips visible even in the mud. With a full trailer I have to leave them to their mother’s attention, but she is an old experienced ewe and knows the game. I meet a friend coming the other way from his own flock. We exchange blasphemies about who has experienced the worse mess.
Minutes later I have the lambs tight under a heat lamp, hung so low it is burning off the slime, mud, and afterbirth. I haven’t much hope for any of them. The first one is stiffening like a corpse. There doesn’t seem much to lose so I stomach tube it with some warm artificial colostrum, figuring something warm inside might help. But I may kill the lambs, because the shock of the milk is sometimes too much for them, so I am gambling. I leave Helen drying them with towels from the bathroom. The children get themselves ready for school. Chaos. I go back for the mothers.
* * *
The fields are so sodden, I am on my backside more often than I am on my feet. Only the bravery of Floss lets me catch them. All are hellish to catch because with no lamb to hold their attention, they are free to gallop off. I fill the trailer with the required ewes (making a mental note which lambs they have each given birth to). Telling which ewes have lambed is made easier because they usually have a bit of blood or afterbirth on their tails, and they will usually hold to the place where they gave birth. Some of the ewes use their last bit of energy trying to evade being caught and look fairly weather-beaten and worn-out. I go back to the barn where Helen has managed to get some life into the lambs, and an hour later miraculously they are all sitting up and warm. Each of them is penned with its mother, bedded with clean straw, and with a heat lamp on them. The one that was in the beck is suckling its mother. By the time we have tended to them and had a bit of breakfast, and shoved the kids on the school bus, wearing the wrong clothes, it is time to get back to the first lambing field, to do the rounds again. The first time round in the morning is mostly about feeding the ewes, identifying any problems that can’t wait, and then getting to the next flock. An hour or so later we go round again and sort out the less urgent issues. But some days the troubles snowball, one damn thing after another into a furious blur of activity that makes a day feel like a week in normal time, with the stress mounting with each successive holdup.
It can take one of us all day to look after the problem cases in the barn. If it can go wrong, it will go wrong at lambing time (imagine a couple of adults looking after several hundred newborn babies and toddlers in a large park).
10
I see an old ewe hanging determinedly to a sheltered place behind a hillock. When I get close, she stands and her waters break. She is not paining and is in good health. So I know it is fairly safe to leave her for maybe an hour to lamb naturally, then I will return and check all is well. I am now juggling in my head a bunch of things that need doing, being pulled in different directions.
I have a mental map of the sheep lambing at different places, and when I need to check again on each of them. It is like having a series of egg timers in my brain for a number of ewes around the farm at different stages of giving birth. If this ewe hasn’t lambed in an hour’s time, I will catch her and see if there is a problem. I see another has had twins. I catch them and hold them up by their front legs so I can see how full their stomachs are. They are swollen full of milk, and warm. I don’t need to worry about these apart from a quick check later in the day. A few hundred yards away I see another younger ewe stand up and a lamb fall out of her. She turns and licks it, mothering well. I can leave her for an hour or so to get suckled naturally. Then I need to check it. The egg timers in my head are always trickling away reminding me of things I need to return to. Knowing when it is best to interfere and when it is not takes years of experience. My grandfather and father taught me that we have a range of options and the trick is to know which one to resort to depending on the situation. A wild or stressed-out ewe might be best left alone so that you don’t make things worse. You can do more harm than good, they’d say, unsettling the ewes. My grandfather had incredible patience with the lambing ewes, would leave them, and leave them, and leave them, as long as all seemed well. He’d stand and watch, leaning on his crook, and seemed to have a sixth sense about when it was better to act or when best to leave well alone. I’d stand with him, wondering if he was right, and whether we shouldn’t just catch the ewe and help it.
11
As I pass along the road between fields I see my neighbour Jean and she asks how the fell ewes I bought from her are doing. I call the flock I have bred for the last twelve years on our own land the “beauty queens,” and the new flock bought from her the “fell flock.”
I suspect I was on trial with Jean for a few years to see if I was “fit to look after her fell flock right.” She’d put thirty or more years into those sheep, and she’d be damned if she was going to pass them on to some clown who would waste them. She knows enough about me to know I’m not a clown, but I’m also not a born-and-bred fell shepherd either, so I’ve been on probation. We had spoken about this for two or three years, but then we needed to agree on a price and terms.
So I am in her kitchen, and the negotiations are to be done. Such haggling is part of the game, as long as it is respectful.
She opens up with a cup of tea, and some of her famous gingerbread. Then a sermon she has clearly been thinking about for some time. She tells me how few flocks there are to match hers. That when she bought them she had to pay over the odds to the previous owner, Arthur Weir, because he knew they were good. She reminds me that it was when I was “in nappies.” He had no doubt scrutinized her for years before doing that deal. She makes clear that these sheep are precious to her and this is more than simply a sale.
They are sheep that show the effort several generations of shepherds have put into them. Each autumn for centuries someone has added to their quality with the addition of new tups from other noted flocks. There is a depth of good blood in them. They are big strong ewes, with lots of bone, good thick bodies, and bold white heads and legs. They return from that fell each autumn with a fine crop of lambs that are a match for most other flocks in the Lake District. She tells me that she had to pay £20 a head more for their being hefted, a charge that is carried on to each successive shepherd (like a fee for the work done in keeping them well hefted, separate from the value of the sheep). I will have to pay that now. She lists the prices of good fell sheep sold at auctions in recent years by her and others, and tells me that they were drafts, not the stock ewes that remained on the fell. She tells me that she has sorted out the old ewes, and is only selling young sheep with long lives ahead of them. Her good stuff is still in the flock, and I will have to pay handsomely for it. That I am buying, youth and quality.
I know all this is true.
It is my move.
I tell her that what she is asking for them is too much, that I am young and not rich, that I have two jobs, three kids, and a mortgage. I already have a good flock of Herdwick sheep on our land that were once hers, but which have more than a decade of my breeding decisions in them. I can manage without hers. They are good, but no better than my own. I tell her the prices of most of the draft ewes in the auction the past autumn, which was about a third what she wants for these.
I tell her that no one else will pay the price she’s asking for.
I make it clear I respect her work and her sheep, but that the asked-for price is too high. She needs to co
me down.
She tells me that they are an investment. That they will look after me for many years to come, providing me with an income and producing good offspring and draft ewes to sell because of the quality of blood in them. I am paying for something a long time in the making that will in turn last me a long time. She tells me that when she started out with her husband, they were hard up too, had to stretch themselves, had to work hard, but that over time these things come good. She tells me that a few good tups sold from these ewes and I will have paid off much of their value. She softens a little on the asking price, but looks a bit wounded by the compromise.
The lower offer hangs in the air.
I decide to let it.
I sip my tea trying to look disinterested. It is maybe working because she seems a bit defensive. After a while I suggest an offer about thirty pounds per sheep lower than hers, tell her I can’t see them making more than that in an auction. But behind my mask I’m genuinely not sure; good stock ewes from respected flocks are rarely sold and can make good money. Still I’m not being mugged on this deal if I can help it.
She now sits in silence looking determined and tough.
No. No. No.
The price I suggest will never do. It is robbery.
I soften and tell her that I will come upwards a little. I still think they are overpriced, but we have reached an impasse and someone needs to move. And I know that the chance to get a flock of sheep like this on your doorstep in the Lake District is rare indeed. I won’t ever get another chance like this. This flock has to have a future as well as a past.
The afternoon goes by in a series of bids and counterbids interspersed with long broody silences. My teacup gets refilled from time to time, but as the price drops she stops refilling as if an extra cup of tea is adding further cost to these painful negotiations. In the end, we agree on a deal and shake on it. I’ve still no idea who came out on top, which is perhaps how it should be between folk who respect each other.
12
Of all the writers associated with the Lake District, Beatrix Potter (or Mrs. Heelis as she was known for most of her farming life here) is the one that I love the most. She had the utmost respect for the shepherds of the Lake District, and would have understood what took place between us in Jean’s kitchen, because she too negotiated with shepherds about buying flocks of sheep.
When she bought her first true fell farm, at Troutbeck Park, she wisely asked the respected elder Herdwick breeders who might be a suitable shepherd. The name that emerged from these conversations was Tom Storey.
She went to see him and asked if he’d come and be her shepherd. He said he would if the money was right. She offered to double his money. He accepted. Later she put him charge of her flock at Hill Top Farm, near Sawrey.
You might think that her being Beatrix Potter, the famous and wealthy children’s author and owner of property, would have intimidated Tom Storey, a young Lake District shepherd. That her notionally being of a higher class, and being much older, might mean she would be due a degree of deference. You’d be wrong.
Soon after he became her shepherd, Tom fell out with Beatrix because she had got some sheep into the pens and redded them for Keswick Show. She hadn’t listened to him when he said they weren’t good enough. He considered this to be somewhat ignorant meddling in his work. She protested that they had been show sheep in the past and tried to reason with him. He cut her off sharp. If she wanted to show those particular sheep, she better get her old shepherd back. He would not show them and would leave. They weren’t fit to show. As any shepherd knows—male or female—you’re either in charge of the sheep or you’re not.
She went back to the farmhouse and informed Tom’s wife that he was bad-tempered.
Beatrix Potter could have got rid of Tom Storey when he defied her on selecting the show sheep. But instead she worked with him, respected his knowledge and his beliefs, and learned a great deal.
In the years to come they transformed the flock, and they would go on to win many shows. She knew it was his judgement that made a lot of this possible. She was very proud of their successes, and she too became respected for her knowledge of sheep. One of her best was a fine ewe called Water Lily, which won many prizes. In the old photos she holds the prizes in the background whilst Tom Storey holds the ewe proudly in the foreground. I won that same prize this last autumn.
Traditionally, this is a most un-English of societies, home to social attitudes more northern in origin. There is still, amongst us, a rough northern form of egalitarianism not unlike that which exists in Scandinavia. In Sweden they call it Jantelagen (the unwritten rule that forbids anyone to feel or act superior to his or her neighbour). Usually this way of thinking is scorned as provincial small-mindedness, but I think it enforces a kind of modesty and equality, with the community and its traditions valued more highly than the individual. Shepherds consider themselves the equals of anyone. The social status, wealth, or fame of Mrs. Heelis counted for little with Tom. They were, for all practical purposes, equals, and he the superior party in many ways because of his specialist knowledge. When she worked on the farm (her property), she took orders from him for years.
13
Mrs. Beatrix Heelis died on December 22, 1943. Her death was reported in the Herdwick Sheep Breeder’s Association Flock Book in amongst the other respected members of the breed community who had passed away, a tradition that continues to this day. No more, and no less, important than the others. She would have asked for no more.
Her will is a remarkable document for someone who will always be known to most people for her children’s books. It is not about the books but is instead full of concern for her legacy of farms, the ongoing care and respect of her tenants, and the future of the fell farming way of life. She put her money where her mouth was, handing fifteen farms and four thousand acres to the National Trust. She stipulated that her fell farms should have fell-going flocks of the “pure Herdwick breed.”
14
A lamb has gone missing. Its mother is agitated. She runs up and down the fence. I left them, hours ago, safe and well, and well mothered, and now it is gone. There are no clues. I ride around the field, checking the other mothers haven’t stolen it or taken it by mistake. They haven’t. I check the becks in case it has fallen in and drowned. We try to keep ewes with young lambs away from the becks, but it isn’t always possible. I hate losing a healthy lamb. I check the neighbouring fields. No sign. Then I see that it has gotten itself stuck between the trunks of an old thorn tree, about a foot off the ground. It is fine, just squashed and tired. I lift it out and it runs off to suckle its mother.
You can lose hours looking for a lamb. Experience tells us that if you lose one lamb in a field it can be an accident, but if you lose two or more, then in all likelihood something is taking them. We have seen it and experienced it countless times. We have some fields that are well fenced and have no streams. If a lamb disappears, it has to have gone somewhere, and most lambs are too big for any bird to have taken. We live with foxes skulking around the lambing fields overnight and in the twilight. Usually they are after the easy meal of the afterbirth left by the ewes. But maybe every other year we get a fox that starts to take newborn lambs, or even those a day or two old. Two years ago we had a fox that was so bold it would be in the lambing fields in daylight when we were less than half a mile away. Sniffing nearer to the new lambs, and nipping in to grab the afterbirth or a lamb’s leg to snatch it away before the ewe could defend it. The older ewes are fierce, and stamp their feet and lower their heads like they will charge. But a younger ewe can be confused by the fox and can be fooled. Traditionally the farms here called the local hunt when they had a rogue fox, and the hunt would come and get the culprit (or any other fox unlucky enough to be abroad when they came). The hunts have often found lamb bones, skin, and remains near or in the fox den. Often the culprit is a bitch that has lost her mate, and has to become cunning to provide for herself or her cubs.
15
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My older daughter, Molly, is coming across the field with two ewes and their day-old lambs walking in front of her. She understands sheep, and cuts left or right behind them to keep them walking in the right direction. She knows when to pause and let them mother up again, because her grandmother has schooled her on this. I open the gate, and the ewes lead the lambs through to the fresh pasture. My daughter is clutching her crook and beaming. She loves moving the lambs.
The mothering instinct is sometimes so strong that ewes will start to steal other newborn lambs for a day or two before they give birth themselves. They will appear behind a birthing ewe and will lick the lamb as it comes out, and nuzzle it away from its increasingly distressed mother. Sometimes we have to catch and pen a repeat offender to stop the chaos. Once she has her own lambs, she will be fine. Sometimes twin lambs will head away from their mother in different directions, despite her best efforts to nudge them back together; after a while they can be at either end of the field, and she may not mother one when they are reunited. Sometimes several ewes give birth in the same place and then the lambs sliver and slide into each other and I will scratch my head, trying to work out which belongs to which.
The Shepherd's Life Page 21