The Yorkshire Shepherdess

by Amanda Owen

  He told me to go into the changing room and put on the clothes that were in there, a truly awful 1980s dress in lemon complete with shoulder pads, teamed with a particularly dated matching cardigan. I reasoned that it would have been more worrying if he’d wanted me in a bikini or underwear, so I was lulled into a false sense of security. All I had to do was sit on one of those huge wicker peacock chairs that you found in conservatories in those days, and pretend to be on the telephone.

  He took pictures to see ‘if the camera loved me’, then said he would put together a portfolio and that he’d be back in touch.

  We didn’t hear anything until a few weeks later when his picture was in the local newspaper. Apparently it was all an elaborate con: he had a camera hidden in the changing room and he was filming girls as they got undressed. I discovered that lots of girls from my school had been to have their pictures taken to see if they too had model potential . . . That was the beginning and end of my modelling career, and thankfully Mother never mentioned it again.

  I’ve always loved books. From early on, I consumed books avidly, much preferring factual ones to fiction. I had a bookcase in my bedroom, and I’d spend my pocket money on second-hand books from the dusty old shops in the town, where pennies could buy battered, well-thumbed tomes. I loved anything about vets, farming or animals. I’d been glued to the television every Saturday evening watching All Creatures Great and Small, and this had somehow fired my imagination, although watching them on the television screen was as near as I ever got to sheep and cows. I found a roll of old Anaglypta wallpaper, and drew a picture of a cow, a sheep and a horse, using an out-of-date copy of Black’s Veterinary Dictionary to label them with all their possible ailments. My Madonna, Bros and A-Ha posters came off the bedroom wall to make room for them. I dreamed of being a vet. Not one of the clean, sterile variety that I would meet when Fiona had something wrong with her; I had no wish to be gelding cats all day. What I wanted was to be a farm vet just like James Herriot.

  When I was sixteen and about to take my GCSEs I had the standard interview with the careers teacher at school. What was I planning to do with my life? One of my friends was already pregnant, another had a job lined up in a factory making bed headboards. Mother was keen that I should go to work at Marks and Spencer, but at that age wearing a striped blouse and selling clothes all day didn’t appeal.

  I didn’t even dare to mention the vet dream: it all seemed such a far cry from Newsome High. I was handed a careers guidance booklet which told you what grades you needed to follow your chosen career path and I was very intimidated by it. I would have to put in some serious academic work to become the new James Herriot. But I did well enough in my exams to qualify for a place at college to do my A levels, which bought me a bit more time to decide the direction my life was going. I always had to work hard to pass exams, and I wasn’t sure I could dedicate so many years to struggling with an enormous amount of studying at veterinary college.

  In the end I opted to do A levels at Greenhead College, taking English Language, Biology, Geography and General Studies. Again, like at school, I was coasting, not putting in 100 per cent effort, with no clear idea where it was leading. The college staff were keen that as many of us as possible should go to university, and I vaguely considered doing a business degree, but not with any enthusiasm.

  It was at college that I met my first proper boyfriend, Jason. He was doing a computer course. We really had nothing in common other than our dress sense and our shared love of black eyeliner. We were both Goths, although maybe not as committed as some were: I didn’t dye my hair black, and neither did he. We did wear black from head to foot and sported sunglasses at all times, whatever the weather. We would trawl record shops looking for anything by The Mission, me wearing paratrooper boots, ripped tights, net petticoats and a blanket with knots in it, Jason in the same leather trousers and ripped T-shirt he always wore. I suppose it was a form of rebellion, and Mother was not very happy about it, but she got nowhere telling me what she thought. In fairness to her, she wasn’t heavy about it, but when I look back I can see it must have been a blow for this elegant woman to have a daughter wandering around looking like that!

  Whatever we thought at the time, Jason and I weren’t really that alternative: we got engaged! How conventional is that? He bought me a ring with a microscopic diamond from H. Samuel which cost him £90. I was very impressed, it was such a lot of money to me at that time. I flashed it around college, thinking it was wonderful. It seems funny now but I can’t even remember why we split up. However, I do remember that I threw the ring back at him. We were never really that serious, and never for one moment did I think, even then, that we would get married. I’ve no idea what happened to Jason. I never saw him again after we left college. In a big town you can stay quite anonymous and keep yourself to yourself even though you are in a crowd. Lots of people like to keep in touch with friends from their past, but I never have, mainly because I’ve moved on and away.

  As part of my Biology course I could opt to do different modules, and there was one in Dairy Microbiology, which was run by the University of Liverpool. The majority of the work was written and done in college, but a site visit to a working dairy got me thinking about farms and cows and the possibilities of working with them. I realized there were other ways of working with farm animals which didn’t involve qualifying as a vet, and that perhaps my dream was not over . . .

  I started thinking that maybe I could work in farming.

  So I got on my bike, literally – it was the same mountain bike I’d had since I was about twelve – and I cycled round the farms near the edge of the town, offering my services free to anyone who could use me. Now, there’s nothing a farmer likes more than free labour, especially from someone who is prepared to work their guts out and doesn’t mind getting stuck in and mucky. I think one or two were a bit cynical about me when I showed up, as they were definitely more used to lads than lasses. But I showed willing, worked hard and, most important, I was free.

  After A levels (I didn’t do great . . .) I still didn’t see how I was ever going to get the kind of job I wanted. I was used basically for shovelling the proverbial; there was never any talk of payment or even a job. I needed to find a way in, so I headed for the technical college in Huddersfield and enrolled on an NVQ course in veterinary nursing. It felt like a backwards step going from A levels to an NVQ, but I figured it could help me get work on farms if I had some basic practical qualifications.

  It was at this time I discovered a book that played such an important role in my life. I was always in and out of Huddersfield Library, borrowing books about animals and farming, when on one visit I found Hill Shepherd, by John and Eliza Forder. You can usually tell pretty quickly whether a book is going to ‘grab you’ and this one certainly did. Even at first glance, flicking through the pages, it captivated me: beautiful, evocative photographs of shepherds and their flocks, and a narrative that told of the seasons of their lives. I borrowed it three times in succession, then received a letter from the library informing me that I couldn’t keep renewing it any longer, and I would be fined if I didn’t return it. I couldn’t afford to buy it back then, so reluctantly I took it back. I loved every detail of it: the photo of a farmer skinning a dead lamb; the flock of sheep being walked on the road, closely followed by a couple of sheepdogs; a shepherd gathering the sheep down from the fells of the Lake District, the sheep trickling down through the bracken, making for home. (Another example of how my life comes full circle: recently I bought a second-hand copy of this wonderful book, and in one of the photographs, of a sheep sale at Hawes auction, there is Clive, who is now my husband. Little did I know . . .)

  As part of my college work experience I landed a fortnight’s lambing work on a farm. It was a baptism of fire. If I hadn’t have been as enthusiastic as I was, then this job would almost certainly have sent me scurrying to Marks and Spencer for an application form. It was just me and another girl, who was a vet student,
and an awfully large modern shed packed to the rafters with heavily expectant yows. Although we were both full of theory, we had no practical experience whatsoever. We made it up as we went along. It was an incredibly steep learning curve.

  This was a commercial flock and all the lambing was inside, not, as I had imagined, out in the fields. It was very hard work, and we were left to get on with it. My companion was a good workmate, and we pulled together well. The farmer, however, was foul-tempered and incredibly miserly. He did not have any of the equipment required at lambing time, no dried colostrum, the vital fluid that new mothers produce before their milk comes in, and which babies of all species need. We did the best we could, pinching a bit here and there from sheep who had plenty for the ones who didn’t. But his attitude was that small lambs should simply be put down. Worse, he didn’t put them down humanely. He hit them over the head and concussed them, then flung them into a big, blue forty-five-gallon drum. I felt sick when he whacked them, and even more sick when I looked over the top and saw some of them still moving. Nowadays I like to think that I would hit him over the head but back then I was very young and less sure of myself.

  It was bad farming. One thing I learned, very early on, is that there are good farmers and bad farmers; just, I suppose, like every other walk of life. Working for bad farmers may not have been a great experience, but it shaped me, taught me how things should not be done, and gave me a clearer idea of the sort of farming I wanted to do. I certainly didn’t have any romantic notions about the job. After my fortnight the farmer was supposed to pay me £20 and, true to form, he didn’t turn up that day.

  I did more casual work in a livery yard which involved lots of grooming and mucking out. Much as I loved the horses, I knew I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life working exclusively with them. Another job taught me how to run a small milking parlour, and there was an enjoyable spell on a small farm which had cows, sheep, horses and pigs. By the time my NVQ course was over I had sorted it out in my head: shepherding was what I wanted to do.

  I got a lucky break. My course was in veterinary nursing, but there was an agricultural element, learning how to assist vets who worked with farm animals. One of my tutors had some farming contacts, and he happened to know someone who was looking for a farmhand – or, possibly, just a mug . . .

  2

  Wild Oats and Wool Sacks

  My first full-time farming job was milking cows on a family farm at Wakefield, and I soon realized I had to navigate a difficult path between two bosses who had different ideas about what I should be doing. There were actually two farms, and on one the old father ruled, and on the other his son, freshly back from agricultural college, was in charge. Or that was the theory: the old farmer would turn up and tell me to do things completely differently from the way his son had, only minutes before, told me to do them. The old fella wanted everything done the traditional way, like it always had been, and the young lad had lots of new ideas, which his father thought were plain daft. They disagreed over the simplest things.

  For example: there were 130 cows to milk and usually about 25 calves to feed, and the son wanted me to wash the buckets, sterilize them and stand them in a line as he reckoned there was a danger that dirt could be transferred from one to another if they were stacked. Then the old chap would appear and ask what on earth I was doing with all the buckets spread out as they would get dirty, and were in the way and they should be stacked together. I was forever being lambasted by one of them because of something the other had told me to do. You could never do things right: one of them was always on your case. There were two YTS (the government’s Youth Training Scheme) lads working there as well, and we were all permanently in the doghouse with one of our bosses. There was another old farmhand who had been there since the dawn of time, and it was a bit of a blokes’ paradise: they’d never had a girl working there.

  When I got the job I was told, ‘Make sure thi brings thi bait box.’

  I thought, Bait? What’s fishing got to do with it?

  I soon found out it meant ‘lunch box’. We’d sit outside to eat if it was fine, but if it was raining – and it usually was – we’d sit inside a shed on plastic milk crates and tea chests. The tea chests were full of porn magazines. It was a bit off-putting trying to eat your sandwich with three chaps studying Playboy, but it never really bothered me. If you want to work in a world that has for centuries been traditionally male, you can’t be indignant and feminist when you get a bit of banter or hear some crude talk.

  It was hard work. I left home on my bike at 6 a.m. every morning to be there by 7 a.m., an hour’s ride up and down hills. If I didn’t take the bike, I had to travel on two buses, which took much longer. There was one thing for sure after I’d been on the farm all day: I could literally clear the bus, I smelt so bad, usually of silage – a smell that really sticks in your throat.

  The job was seven days a week, but every third weekend I got what the farmer called my ‘weekend off’. This was the worst time of all: I was still expected to do the morning and evening milking, so the only time I got off was a few hours in the middle. And it meant doing the journey twice a day, instead of once. I seemed to be on that bicycle saddle pedalling all day. No wonder I had no time for socializing with friends or going out on dates. By this time my school and college friends had gone their different ways. One was at Oxford, studying hard, and another was a trainee cashier at Lloyds Bank; others, too, had sensible, normal jobs. I didn’t feel that I wasn’t as good as them, but I was still a bit confused about everything. I liked the farm work, but the hours were crucifying, and I felt I hadn’t quite got my life right yet.

  The farm was part arable, which was something completely new to me. I spent hours shovelling grain into silos and grain lofts, then filling sacks with barley. I also had a combine harvester to grease up, 130 grease nipples to do every morning during the harvest. It was the old fellow’s pride and joy, an ancient belt-driven piece of machinery, and he’d do spot checks to see that I’d greased it properly.

  I was sent out with a hessian sack tied across my back to carefully pick the wild oats that were growing amongst the barley, and told to take my bait with me. Looking across the fields of golden, ripening barley, I could see the wild oats, their green panicles standing head and shoulders above the barley ears. At first glance it seemed there was only a handful of the weeds, but when I was crouching down in the field I could see the extent of their spread. No wonder he told me to take my bait. The upside of these long days in the fields was that I developed a golden tan like nothing you can buy in a tanning salon. The downside: it stopped at my welly tops.

  Harvest time was very intensive: when the moisture meter registered the required grain dryness it was all hands on deck. Floodlights were rigged up in the fields and nobody stopped until all was safely gathered in. Although it was very hard work I felt that at least I was getting good practical experience. I learned how to set up an umbilical spreader, which is a long pipe to spread slurry on the fields using a tractor or a metal pulley contraption; how to use a power harrow to break up clods of soil to prepare the ground for planting; how to dehorn a calf and how to drive a tractor. I already knew how to drive a car, because Father had patiently taken me out to show me the ropes. Then I had one lesson with an instructor, just to refine the bits you need for the test, and I passed first time.

  I think Mother and Father did wonder ‘What on earth is she doing?’, especially when I came home filthy and stinking. The truth is, I was right at the bottom of the food chain, the dogsbody who was expected to do anything, but I was happy to be working, and I was learning all the time. You had to start somewhere and, besides, there were other things going on at home that were more important than my career.

  It was at this time, when I was eighteen, that my father died. For years he thought he had a stomach ulcer, and he’d been prescribed Gaviscon, an antacid used for indigestion. Eventually, when the pain got worse, his doctor sent him for tests and they discov
ered he had stomach cancer. He was quite ill by this stage and had to give up work. Eventually, he could no longer even tinker with his beloved motorbikes. That was the worst bit for him. It was heartbreaking to see him clearing out all the bikes and cataloguing the parts and spares that filled the garage, cellar and loft. I might have known my crankshafts from my con rods but there was a whole lot more stuff that he had accumulated over the years, and he was adamant that after he died we should not be hoodwinked by any unscrupulous buyers. Other than making us promise to never sell his compressor, he made every effort to get as much of his collection as possible sold to enthusiasts before he died. Mother had been working as a school dinner lady, and she had to give up work to look after him. Katie was twelve at the time, so it was a difficult period for all of us.

  I was with Father when he died. He was at home and had been on a morphine drip for days. I am still haunted by it. It was such a strange experience, it felt like it wasn’t really happening to me: dealing with the practicalities involved, ringing a doctor and a funeral director and, worst of all, having to go to Grandma’s house and tell her that her son had died. I didn’t want to go to the funeral, but Mother insisted. I had another argument with her:

  ‘You’re not going dressed as a Goth.’

  ‘He wouldn’t know me any other way. Anyway, the theme is black, I can’t see your problem.’

  I’ve hated funerals ever since, and I rarely go to them.

  As far as my job went, I was just trying not to upset the apple cart, keeping any worries about my future to myself because Mother had enough on her plate.

  I realized that if I was to stay in farming I needed to leave Huddersfield. I didn’t want to work on such commercial, industrial-type farms. I can sum it up by saying I wanted more fields and fewer sheds. You might say that I had a romantic view of where I wanted to be, but I was sure there still existed places where dog and stick were the name of the game, instead of plate meters and dry-matter levels. But it wasn’t the right time to leave home, so soon after Father’s death.