by Amanda Owen
One dismal, slate-grey, wet, back-end kind of a day, after coming home on the bus, humming as usual, I was walking through the centre of Huddersfield. As I trailed up the main street, being given a wide berth by shoppers, I passed a shop called Strawberry Fair, a three-storey china and gift shop on the corner of Byram Arcade. I had walked past this place on many occasions, on my way to the upper level of the arcade where there was a grunge-style ‘vintage’ shop run by two punk girls who would buy clothes from the many charity shops dotted around Huddersfield and then rework them. It was my favourite place to buy clothes during my Goth days, and next door was Dead Wax records, where many a wet afternoon was wasted flicking through dog-eared albums in plastic boxes. Strawberry Fair was a high-class shop not previously on my radar. There were polished silver and glass displays full of delicate ornaments in the window, and a glistening crystal chandelier in the sales foyer, with well-presented sales assistants gliding between the displays and customers. A sign hung on the door: SALES ASSISTANT WANTED. APPLY WITHIN.
A thought flashed through my mind: Should I have a go at doing something else? I think it was fuelled by a combination of the onset of winter, the relentless grind of the farm and, I suppose, a feeling that, after Father’s death, perhaps I should be more responsible and do something more conventional.
Before I’d even had a chance to fully formulate my thoughts, a woman poked her head out of the door and said, ‘Are you interested in the job? Because if you are, Philip, the boss, is in the stockroom at the moment and he could interview you now.’
Caught off guard, I let her usher me in, me pointing towards my muddy wellies. I was conscious of the beige thick-pile carpet, but all my offers to leave them in the doorway fell on deaf ears. Irene, the shop assistant, took me to the back of the sales area and downstairs. I felt like the proverbial bull in a china shop – I certainly smelt bovine as I picked my way between glass shelves loaded with Lladro ornaments and bone china tea services. Philip quizzed me and I told him quite honestly that I only wanted the job for a time and didn’t see it as a career. I think he thought I was a bit odd, but he seemed to pick up that I was a hard worker, and the bottom line was that he must have been desperate because he said, ‘If you want the job, it’s yours.’
The next day I broke it to the farmer that I wasn’t coming again. He wasn’t that bothered: there is a limitless supply of young folk wanting jobs and I was entirely expendable. I ceremonially burned the smelly jodhpurs and morphed into the epitome of refinement, in a pencil skirt, a crisp white shirt and the dreaded Barratts court shoes: they finally got me.
I actually liked the job. My new colleagues were a friendly but formidable bunch who stood for no nonsense, and I soon learned the patter and became a real expert in the art of selling to customers. I was constantly baffled by the goods I was selling. I was in the cookware department, and well-heeled gentry types would come in to discuss their wedding lists, agonizing about which design of cutlery, and which egg cups they wanted, and whether or not they needed a fish kettle or a fondue set. I’d be nodding in agreement while debating the merits of nine-inch plates over eleven-inch plates and thinking How bloody pointless is this?
I’d look at the prices: hundreds of pounds for the cast-iron cookware, thousands for some of the beautiful wooden presentation boxes filled with shining, polished cutlery. There were many variations of forks, spoons and knives, and I hadn’t a clue what you’d use some of them for. Apostle, salt and caddy spoons! I actually had a lesson in how to set up a formal table from one of the cutlery manufacturers, so that I could look like I was an expert. Ridiculous sums were paid for some of the vases and ornaments. I was mystified by it all but I did learn one thing that stood me in good stead. There was a huge, lidded, black cast-iron pot that sat in the corner of the cookware department; it weighed an absolute ton and was called a ‘goose pot’. I was pretty much resigned to the fact that I was going to dust it, occasionally stand on it to reach a pan stand, but never sell it. For once I was right: nobody seemed to want it. But then on Boxing Day we had a massive one-day sale, and a Jamaican lady came in and bought it at a greatly reduced price. She told me that she had a big family and could easily cook more than two chickens in it.
I’ve now bought one myself to use on the big open fire range at Ravenseat. I like to use the black range during the wintertime as it is economical, warming the house, drying the washing, heating the water and cooking the dinner. We also rely on it when the electricity is off. The only problem is that the smell of food pervades the whole house, whets the children’s appetites and makes them so hungry that they all eat far more than they normally would.
But back at Strawberry Fair, I was always honest about my intention to get back into farming. I enjoyed my brief stay in the normal, civilized world, and I was around for my mother and Katie after Father’s death, but farming was my true love. I bought the Farmers Guardian and Farmers Weekly and pored over the job ads. With spring approaching there were plenty of lambing-time jobs, some indoor, some outdoor. Most of the outdoor lambing jobs required a shepherd/ess and sheepdog. I didn’t have one of those so I was more limited, but eventually I found a job that fitted my criteria:
WANTED for immediate start. Enthusiastic young person required for shepherding and lambing on Salisbury Plain. No dog needed. Just a willingness to work and use initiative. Accommodation provided. Please ring.
I had by this time bought myself a car, a Mini Metro, with £900 that I’d carefully saved. So one Sunday I drove down to Wiltshire for an interview. I had never driven so far before. I left very early in the morning, straight down the motorway, negotiating Birmingham and Bristol, and eventually arriving at Warminster at lunchtime. I was feeling sick with nerves by now. This was the first time I had really broken free and left the safety of home, but I knew it was time to stand on my own two feet.
I drove up the long gravelled farm driveway to a large modern house, not the kind of farmhouse I had imagined. I was met by a man who I assumed to be the farmer, but it was difficult to tell, really. You can usually spot a farmer a mile off, but this guy was slick, certainly not what I’d expected. I introduced myself to him, took a deep breath and, trying to give off an air of confidence, spouted as many technical farming terms as I could think of, doing my best to impress with my outstanding knowledge of sheep and lambs (more practical theory from the vet books than actual hands-on, but he wasn’t to know that). Without more ado he showed me a small room at the rear of the house that would be mine and said I could have the job. I could have sworn he wasn’t really listening to anything I said, but it didn’t matter. I was ecstatic. Once again, it wasn’t exactly the farm I dreamed about, but it was sheep, and that was a good start.
When I gave my notice in at Strawberry Fair, Philip told me I could always have my job back if ever I wanted it, which was very reassuring, but I knew I wouldn’t be taking up the offer. They gave me a lovely leaving present. One of the expensive dinner services that we sold was decorated with sheep and shepherds, and the manufacturer supplied some small china sheep ornaments to go on display with the samples. I liked these twee little sheep and so did many of the customers, who asked if they were for sale, but they were for display only. I was presented with two of these, and I have them still, in a corner cupboard at Ravenseat, high up out of reach of little hands.
I loaded up my car with all that mattered to me and off I went, feeling more confident than I had done previously. When I arrived the farmer wasn’t there. I was told he’d gone on a water-skiing holiday in America. I instantly thought this was odd: I was counting on him showing me the ropes and telling me what was expected of me.
I found out later at the pub that the locals nicknamed the farm Waco, after the place in Texas where eighty cult members died in a siege the year before. They saw a procession of young workers coming and going from the farm and had decided they were all followers of a cult, and they also knew how badly the farm was run. I had no idea of any of this when I first ar
rived.
Living in the farmhouse with me were two other young workers who had been hired to look after the cows, and an older man who was supposed to oversee everything. Needless to say, he didn’t: he just watched the television or disappeared altogether. Nobody was in charge, it was left entirely up to us.
That first morning the cowman and cow-woman told me they were going to check on their beasts and they took me along so I could look at the sheep and sort out the electric fences. The land was all Ministry of Defence land and it was not divided up with walls or fences, but was one giant expanse of rough grazing, completely flat with occasional copses of trees. There were uninhabited villages used by the army for training and you had to be careful where you walked as there were dummy incendiaries and hidden pits in which tanks covered with camouflage netting would be concealed. While I was there some unfortunate person was riding out on the plain when their horse stepped on a dummy mine, which exploded with a loud bang and a puff of smoke. The rider was thrown, and the horse galloped off into the sunset, not to be seen for a whole week, other than the occasional sighting of it with its saddle under its belly and its reins still dangling. On the plus side, the aluminium mine tops made brilliant dog bowls, so there was some recompense for being ‘blown up’.
Another notable find was an army sweater decorated with the Bomb Disposal Team cipher. It was not in perfect condition but was very wearable (I still have it). I wondered if the previous owner had actually been blown up for real, and his jumper was all that remained . . . As you can imagine, it was a pretty surreal place to farm.
The way my absent boss made money was by wintering hoggs. That’s when farmers in tougher climes, up in the wilds (like the Yorkshire Dales and Lake District), send their young female breeding sheep (hoggs) to kinder climes for the winter. They usually send them away at the beginning of November and get them back at the beginning of April. We do it now at Ravenseat – it’s normal practice for hill farmers. The farm where the sheep are wintered gets paid so much per head, and this farm had hoggs wintering from several farms in the Lake District.
But although he had a lot of sheep, it was halfway through February and there had, I learned, been no shepherd there since Christmas. What I met with out on the plain was horrific. The sheep were all there, surrounded by electric fencing, but the ground was bare. They had not been moved to fresh grazing for some time and were literally starving to death. Some of the sheep had tried to escape and had become entangled in the electric wire. They may have been frightened, probably by the low-flying military helicopters or by deer, and some were hung up on the wires by their horns. Quite a few were dead, others I rescued, but they were very weak through lack of food and water. The ones that were not on the wires were all skin and bones. Nobody had been feeding them. My two fellow workers were shocked at the state of affairs, and had been oblivious to what had been going on. Cows were their responsibility and the cattle were elsewhere on the plains, and looked very well.
I didn’t know what to do. I knew the theories about shepherding but had limited hands-on experience. With the help of the other two workers and a YTS lad who came in every day, I took up the electric fence and moved the sheep that could still walk onto some fresh grazing. The weaker ones were trailered back to the farm and into a barn for some intensive nursing. The farmer had not left a contact phone number, but there was a number for his ex-wife. I rang and told her the situation, and she let the owners of the hoggs know, and also must have informed the authorities. Reading between the lines, it became apparent that he and his ex-wife had not parted on good terms, and it came as no surprise when the RSPCA and Trading Standards came knocking as a result of her intervention. (Farms, like all other businesses, are now inspected periodically by Trading Standards, just to make sure we’re doing what we say we’re doing.)
The owners of the sheep were clearly devastated by what had happened. They had been down to visit their sheep at Christmas to give them a wormer dose and everything had been fine then, but because they were so far away they had not been back since and had no idea about what had gone on. The sheep could not be taken on the long journey back to the Lake District, as a movement restriction order was issued, banning movement until an inspection visit assessed them as in better health and able to withstand the journey. I looked after them, moving them regularly to different pastures, checking on them every day. The sick ones had hay and cake and were eventually let out around the gardens.
It was an eye-opener to actually see behind the facade of the spotless new farm buildings. No expense had been spared. There was a brand-new indoor sheep-handling system with races, shedders, guillotine gates, every mod con to make life easy. Turn-over crates, weighers, even a super-size round dipping tub, filled with what I assume was old dip, complete with the floating corpses of two sheep. The only thing this farmer didn’t have was either the knowledge or inclination to do the work. The memory of this horrible breach of trust with the farmers, whose animals he had agreed to care for, means that we always visit our hoggs regularly when they go away for the winter, just to make sure everything is OK. It’s certainly not a case of out of sight, out of mind. Of course, over the years we have found good places to winter them, and we tend to stick to the same farms.
It took a few weeks for the sheep to recover and for Trading Standards to remove the movement restriction. They still weren’t in the greatest shape, and it had taken a lot of hard work to get them to that point. Moving the electric fence was a time-consuming job in itself. A contraption that attached to the wheel of a quad-bike trailer was supposed to make it a simple task by unwinding the tape, but it invariably ended up in a knot, and by the time you had jumped off and put another electric fence post in the ground it was easier to do it by hand. To my astonishment, it turned out there was another flock of sheep that actually belonged to the farmer, and they were away on a different farm being looked after by another farmer. Unbelievable! Even now, I look back and think: how could that happen? I never saw the farmer again, and the man who was supposed to be in charge disappeared completely. It was the ex-wife who paid me for my efforts: she said that she was very pleased with how things had worked out, and I had the feeling that it had been payback time as far as she was concerned.
For me personally, there was a new plan: I had talked to the Lake District farmers when they came down to collect their sheep on the lorry and one of them said to me, ‘You’re in the wrang spot. If thoo wants ta see how proper shepherding is done then yer need to be heading up into our country.’
They were relieved to be going home with at least some of their stock. It had been a nightmare for everyone involved and, obviously, I didn’t have a job any more. So there wasn’t much to consider really and when the sheep went, I followed them.
I loaded up my car again and set off in a northerly direction. I didn’t get very far. I had decided to take a more scenic route rather than the motorway, a decision which, in hindsight, probably saved my life. I was driving out of Bath when I spectacularly crashed the car. I wasn’t travelling at any great speed, but as I met a sharpish corner, I braked – and nothing happened. I pumped the brake pedal frantically, and the wheels locked up. I could hear the tyres screeching as the car careered on in a straight line towards a low wall. I hit it, then time seemed to stand still as the car flipped over it and tumbled twenty feet or so, landing on its roof in a field. I was still sitting in the driver’s seat but hanging upside down, held by my seat belt, a little dazed but quite unhurt. I had been wearing a Puffa jacket and the padding had cushioned me. Even more useful was the fact that I had my penknife in the pocket, as I had to cut the seat belt to free myself and then wriggle out through the car window. My beloved Metro was completely wrecked and all my belongings were scattered across the field. There were bras, knickers, books, CDs, everything, strewn about. I was mortified.
I scrambled my way up the steep bank back to the road. I had no mobile phone in those days, but someone must have either seen me become airb
orne, or noticed the skid marks followed by the gap in the wall, and had alerted the police. A police motorcyclist appeared and insisted (much to my embarrassment) on helping me gather up my possessions. It was while I was telling him what had happened that I realized, now my little car was belly up, that the wires in the tyres were sticking out and had clearly played a large part in my inability to slow down. The policeman gave me a ticking-off and then took me back into Bath to ring the AA. Eventually a tow truck came, loaded me and my wrecked car up, and took me all the way back to Huddersfield, dumping the car in a scrapyard en route.
I stayed with Mother for a week until I got myself organized, buying a second-hand VW Polo. The Lake District farmers had given me the telephone number of a man named Bob who ran a farming recruitment agency and was on the lookout for keen young people to lamb sheep. Just talking to him on the phone I knew that I was heading in the right direction. He told me that if I loved sheep, dog or no dog, he could fit me up with a job.
It was a lovely afternoon as I left the motorway at Shap. Away in the distance I could see the mountains of the Lake District with a mantle of snow still visible on the peaks. My spirits were high as I wound my way along the quiet roads, a weak spring sun shining down, and in the fields a few lambs taking their first tentative steps under the watchful eyes of their mothers. I had been given directions to a village called Crosby Ravensworth, where I was to be lambing for a farmer called John Wood. All I knew was that I was to get to the village, turn right and follow the road until I saw a sign for Crosby Lodge. This wasn’t a live-in job, because they had two sons and the farmhouse was already full to capacity, so I was to be living in a caravan in the farmyard. I was nervous, not knowing what to expect, but as I pulled into the yard I was greeted by a ruddy-faced, smiling man.
