Adventures of the Yorkshire Shepherdess

by Amanda Owen

  ‘Cooosh lass,’ I said.

  She looked towards me, then took a few tentative steps down from the cliff. She seemed to have resigned herself to the idea that she needed help, as there was no more cavorting or snorts of disapproval as she quietly trudged towards the distant lights of home. Hobbling alongside, I squinted, trying to see whether there were any signs of the calf underneath her tail as it swung from side to side.

  Clive walked ahead, opening the gates and making clear the way, across the packhorse bridge and between the barns. Eartha never put a foot wrong and it grieved me to think of what lay ahead: an operation, a dead calf and then a long recuperation. I felt very responsible and vexed at making the wrong decision.

  It was 1.45 a.m. when Willy appeared in the yard. He’d had a busy night and had just dozed in the chair by the fire in between callouts.

  ‘Have yer had a pull?’ he enquired, as he scrubbed up.

  Clive and I explained the circumstances and that we had not attempted to calve her; the calf’s front hooves had been felt but with no sign of a nose, so we had left it well alone.

  ‘Good, good,’ Willy said.

  That was the first time I felt that I’d done anything right that evening.

  Raven, Reuben and Miles appeared, Willy’s car lights coming up into the farmyard having woken them up. Eartha was behaving impeccably, standing stock-still while Willy examined her.

  ‘Ach, it’s a big enough calf,’ he said as he rested his chin on Eartha’s flank and I held her tail aside to prevent him being whipped in the face with it. The children sat upon a straw bale in dressing gowns and wellies, watching intently.

  ‘I think that we need to do a section,’ he said, withdrawing his plastic-gloved hand.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘really?’

  I had, in the past, seen an unborn dead calf or lamb dissected internally and removed in pieces. An embryotomy was a horrible undertaking, but if the calf was already dead then it did save the poor mother from the added trauma of a caesarian.

  Raven, bless her, always blunt, asked what I was thinking: ‘Is t’calf dead?’ she said, her feet swinging, and her dressing-gown collar pulled up to beneath her chin, her long shiny red hair tumbling down to her waist.

  Miles and Reuben looked on wide-eyed.

  ‘Good God, no!’ Willy exclaimed. ‘I felt his hoof twitch just then.’

  ‘Let’s be gettin’ on then,’ said Clive.

  Eartha was haltered and prepared, shaved and daubed with antiseptic where the incision in her side was to be made, and given a local anaesthetic. A little time was needed for the anaesthetic to take effect and the area to become numb, during which time I scrubbed up. An assistant is helpful when it comes to delivering the calf and, afterwards, during suturing.

  Clive held the halter, as sometimes the cow would lie down and, if it was tied securely to a gate or tethering ring, there was a possibility that it could strangle itself. Eartha did indeed lie down, and Clive was able to push her the right way, so Willy could make the cut at the prepared site without hindrance. So far, so good. At one caesarian I’d attended, many years ago, the cow decided to lie down half way though the operation, which didn’t make for the most sterile of surgeries. As the cow collapsed onto its side into a bed of straw, a cloud of dust and detritus filled the air and gently fell all over the gaping wound as the vet sprawled over her side, trying to act as a human shield. It was a miracle that the cow didn’t get peritonitis or septicaemia.

  The whole procedure took an hour. Raven watched intently from the top of the straw bale, asking Willy the occasional question and eventually persuading him to give her a week’s work experience during the next school holidays. Reuben and Miles milled about chattering to each other; Clive and myself said little, just watched, waited and hoped.

  The arrival of the calf was met with stunned silence from the children. The operation, in the hands of an expert, seemed so simple but the miracle of life itself was there to see in front of their very eyes. Without ceremony, Willy pulled and lifted the calf from Eartha’s womb. The sheer strength required to both hold and guide the calf’s torso through the incision in the mother’s side was incredible.

  ‘You hold the back legs and keep it coming, Amanda,’ he panted as the calf emerged. ‘Clive and Raven, work on the calf, Dopram-V drops are on the side.’

  Clive grasped the calf by its front legs and dragged him out of the way.

  ‘Amanda, we need to stay clean and close,’ Willy said, seeing that I was now distracted by the motionless calf.

  Raven was unscrewing the small bottle of dopdrops. Sometimes, it could seem to take forever before a calf or lamb would breathe, particularly after a traumatic birth. A drop or two of this substance, which is a breathing stimulant, would often result in the animal taking its first, very sharp, intake of breath. Inside, I was willing Raven to hurry. The calf had been stuck for long enough that his head had swollen, his tongue also.

  Clive had cleared the mucus from the calf’s airways and was now slapping his wet chest with the flat of his hand. Those moments, which, in reality, were probably only seconds, seemed to go on forever, but eventually Clive held the calf’s mouth open whilst Raven dispensed far more drops than were recommended onto his tongue. The effect was instantaneous: the calf gasped, threw back his head and then brought it forward in an almighty sneeze. He then lay panting, almost hyperventilating.

  Willy turned around, looking over his shoulder towards the wheezing calf behind him, and he gasped too.

  ‘’Ow much did you give him, Raven?’

  ‘Erm,’ she mumbled, holding the bottle up towards the light. It looked empty.

  ‘Anyway, it looks like he’s a runner,’ Clive said, changing the subject.

  ‘Close run thing, though, mind,’ said Willy, who was now sewing Eartha back up. I held the suture knots taut with forceps whilst he stitched together layers of uterus, muscle and eventually skin. ‘I’d get some colostrum off her while she’s down.’

  That first feed of colostrum, full of antibodies, fat and nutrients, is essential for a newborn. It gives them warmth, energy and kickstarts their immune system. Eartha needed a few hours to recover from her ordeal, so we were temporarily tasked with feeding the calf from a bottle.

  We thanked Willy for his efforts as he swilled off, cleaned up and packed up his equipment. A better outcome we could not have wished for. I took one last look over the barn door; Eartha remained in a stupor, shellshocked, sitting with her head upright and staring blankly at the wall. Her calf, a beautiful roan bull, was lying near her, protected by a small wall of straw bales so she could see him but could not accidentally roll on him before morning.

  ‘We’ll leave the building light on til’t mornin’,’ said Clive. ‘Then if she ’asn’t risen we’ll ’ave a go at gettin’ her to her feet.’

  The children had returned to their beds to grab just a few hours’ sleep before school time, though, as the night sky did seem to have lost some of its inky blackness, I feared that dawn was not so far away. It had been an eventful night and the adrenalin coursing through my veins had taken my mind off my injured foot but now, as order was restored, unfortunately the pain returned. I sat down on the bench outside the kitchen door and looked at my wellies. They certainly needed to come off before I ventured into the house. The right one I kicked off without issue but the left one was going to prove problematic, feeling overly tight on my throbbing and seemingly swollen foot.

  ‘Want a pull?’ asked Clive.

  ‘I dunno, Clive.’ I winced, thinking about the force that was going to be required.

  ‘It’s gotta come off, Mand,’ he said.

  The possibility of cutting it off did flash through my mind, but it seemed like a waste of a good welly. Clive was thinking the same.

  ‘Should ’ave asked Willy to remove it wi’ t’scalpel,’ he said.

  I grimaced.

  ‘Mand, you’ve ’ad nine babies for Christ’s sake, one on yer own by t’fire. Yer a
s tough as old boots . . . haha . . . get it?’

  This was his standard response now to any kind of ailment or injury I suffered whilst going about my duties.

  I capitulated, and Clive pulled it off. The pain was excruciating; however angry my foot was before the welly came off, it was now multiplied by a thousand.

  ‘Better?’ asked Clive.

  I cannot recall my answer, but it was probably unladylike.

  I took off my socks and studied my left foot. It looked particularly ugly – red, blotchy, puffy and considerably bigger than my right one.

  ‘C’mon, Mand, let’s go to bed,’ he said. ‘We’ll ’ave a look at it in t’morning.’

  I reminded him that it was the morning, but it fell on deaf ears as he’d already left the room.

  I didn’t get a wink’s sleep, just the bedsheet touching my foot was enough to cause pain and, by the time I was giving the unwelcome wake-up call to the oldest three children, I had a foot that resembled a mottled red-and-purple rugby ball.

  ‘Do you think yer should go an’ ’ave it looked at?’ asked Clive.

  I shrugged; the mere logistics of organizing a trip to Accident and Emergency were unthinkable. Clive would have to drive as I couldn’t bear to use my foot on the clutch, Annas, Clemmie and Nancy would need to come with us, we’d need to find someone to be at home for when the rest of the children came home from school. Then there was the farmwork to contend with, not forgetting Eartha and her calf to see to. That was before even considering who was going to welcome the guests that had booked into the shepherd’s hut. Just thinking about it all brought me out in a cold sweat.

  ‘It’ll be fine, honestly,’ I said.

  ‘Twiddle your toes,’ said Clive, the classic test for broken bones.

  The unofficial diagnosis from various members of the family and friends was that it was just a badly bruised foot and that it would right itself eventually. I hobbled about the place wearing one welly and just a bare foot, using an unclaimed NHS crutch that someone had once left at the farm.

  The following day, I spent a fair bit of time sitting on a straw bale watching Eartha with her calf. Clive had got her up and she had pottered around the barn a little bit, no doubt still sore from the whole episode. She had bonded with her calf; he too had now found his feet and latterly the milk supply, her udder.

  Sometimes luck is on your side and, on this occasion, it certainly was. Only days later Eartha was back outside in the garth cropping the grass with her calf by her side. My foot trouble was minor in comparison with what might have happened that night; a miss is a miss, they say, there are so many ‘what ifs’ and ‘maybes’ in life. A minute or two later and the calf might have died, sooner and perhaps the caesarian could have been avoided and the calf born naturally with the vet’s assistance. There is no use speculating, you just take whatever life throws at you and deal with it however you see fit.

  It was whilst I was hobbling with the crutch that I was asked to go on live TV to talk about the issues of living rurally and, in particular, the lack of public transport in remoter regions of the country.

  ‘I’d love to do it,’ I said to the researcher on the phone, ‘but when?’

  ‘Short notice, I’m afraid,’ she replied. ‘Day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Where’s it at?’

  ‘Studio,’ she said. ‘Salford.’

  ‘Salford?’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Tell ’er you’ve got a gammy leg,’ piped up Clive who was studying a flock book but really earwigging.

  ‘I don’t think that I can make it, I’m afraid. I’s lame, I can’t drive at the moment,’ I said and then went on to explain the whole sorry story.

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ she said. ‘We’ll get you there.’

  All I had to do was await the arrival of a taxi to take me to the train station, then a car would pick me up off the train and get me to the studio. It was a perfect plan . . . apart from the bit where the taxi driver, who was booked from a rank thirty miles away, didn’t allow enough time to get to Ravenseat and then the train station. The opportunity to go and talk about the problems with rural transport was thwarted by rural transport itself. The irony.

  Clive found it very amusing.

  ‘So, you didn’t ga on telly to talk about the trouble wi’ transport ’cos yer missed the train. A lame excuse if you ask me.’

  7

  The Beast from the East

  ‘No, it’s not acceptable to mend yer motorbike in t’kitchen,’ I’d said to Reuben one evening after a visit to a friend’s farm where some kind of operation was being performed on a trials bike in the kitchen. Oily parts had been strewn across the newspaper-covered kitchen table.

  But it is around these kitchen tables that plans are made, gossip exchanged, and tales told. Every weekday at dinnertime, the postman, after a cursory knock, opens our door and tosses the day’s post onto the table. Everyone stops eating and drinking for a moment while we study the envelopes or parcels.

  ‘Lamb cheque,’ gripes Clive as he tears open the envelope and looks solemnly at the sheet. ‘Trade was nowt, lamb prices were back last week.’

  ‘Northern Farmer paper,’ says Reuben, unfurling it and skipping straight to the back section with the machinery sales.

  On one occasion, there was a horrified squeal as he caught sight of a picture of myself in there.

  ‘Gawd, I cannae get away frae yer,’ he muttered, ‘yer everywhere. What’s this, you’re epileptic? Aw din’t knaw that.’

  ‘Eclectic,’ I said.

  One mysterious, long rectangular package arrived at Christmas and, to the great amusement of the curious onlookers, was emblazoned with an amusing logo.

  ‘Horny Hobbies,’ read out Reuben slowly.

  ‘HORNBY,’ I corrected him quickly. ‘HORNBY hobbies, it’s a model train, for goodness’ sake!’

  I opened an unexpected parcel that arrived one lunchtime.

  ‘A gift,’ I said, after reading the label, ‘from someone who stayed in t’shepherd’s hut a few weeks back.’

  ‘I bet it’s a knitted sheep,’ said Clive wryly.

  ‘No,’ I said, smiling because I knew the reaction I was going to get. ‘It’s from a gentleman an’ it’s fishnets, actually!’

  ‘Whaaat? The cheeky so-and-so!’ retorted Clive.

  ‘Yes, apparently if I bait them up with a piece of sausage or bacon, I’ll catch forever of trout in t’beck.’

  No two days were ever the same at Ravenseat, and quite who would turn up nobody ever could predict but there was one thing for sure, there was never a quiet moment. It took a downfall of snow to keep the visitors at bay.

  When the children complained that it was a hassle to have to walk from the road end down to the farm when it snowed, and the school bus could not travel the last mile on the untreated road, I’d remind them that in the past nearly all journeys were undertaken on foot. On one such occasion, a blizzard hit and an unfortunate traveller, Henry Wastell, was lost. He was found dead three weeks later, standing bolt upright in a peat hagg at the top of Tailbrigg on the road to Cumbria. An observer at the time remarked that the frozen body was a thoroughly terrifying sight to behold.

  When the weather turns, it can do so with a vengeance, you only had to look at Muker’s parish records to find examples of people who had been going about their daily business only to succumb to the elements. Essabel Scaife ‘perished and dyed’ as a result of the tempestuousness of the weather on 23 November 1641. Drownings, too, seemed more commonplace, as folks took shortcuts on their way back from working in the mines or labouring in the fields, although on Friday 4 July 1824, John Harker lost his life whilst bathing in the River Swale.

  In Swaledale, a book written by Ella Pontefract and published in 1934, she writes about talking to two old men at Ravenseat about the hard winters they used to have up here. ‘We doa’t hev winters like them noo,’ they’d said. But only a few years later, in 1947, there was a terrible winter when the dale was completely
cut off, and men were digging their way out of the drifts that engulfed the cottages in Keld. There have been bad winters since, and the heavy snows in March 2018 were, as I was constantly told, reminiscent of the storms of those times past. A deadly combination of howling gales, biting cold and driving snow under which walls disappeared, rivers froze, and roads became impassable. Nicknamed ‘the beast from the east’ because it originated in Siberia, it was a storm of intense severity that wreaked havoc across the country. Schools were closed, power was lost, and, in some areas, helicopters were used to drop food supplies for humans and animals in stricken communities cut off by the snow.

  The problem for many farmers during the storm – ourselves included – was not having enough feed for the animals. Good quality forage, hay and silage, was in very short supply after the washout of a summer in 2017. Our saving grace was that this blast of wintery weather was exceptionally well forecast. In the frozen days before the storm hit, we filled the proven store with sheep cake, the barn with fodder beets, and the dairy with milk, cheese and other perishables. It didn’t matter what the weather did, we were prepared for anything. Getting a fifteen-ton load of fodder beets in had been pricey, but the peace of mind it gave us that we could feed all the hungry mouths, of which there were some eight hundred, was priceless. We’d weaned the sheep onto them over the past few years and now they ate them heartily. The cows were addicted to them and would bellow for them at breakfast time and tea time and then crunch their way through them noisily.

  The fodder beets were grown around the Scotch Corner area, some thirty miles away, so transporting them to Ravenseat by tractor and trailer was a costly and time-consuming business. After stopping off at a weigh bridge to calculate the weight of the load and thus the price, they would be brought up Swaledale, no doubt to the annoyance of any cars stuck behind the slow-moving rig.

  It always took a bit of careful manoeuvring to get the fodder beets unloaded into the protective straw compound which we had constructed to prevent them from getting frost-damaged. We would watch for Edward, our feed haulier’s, arrival and, as soon as we saw the flashing neon light approaching, would chase the children indoors to safety and start moving around all of the general detritus that lay in the farmyard in an effort to get the tractor and trailer backed in carefully.