by Amanda Owen
‘You must be Amanda, we’ve bin expecting you. Come in an’ get a cup of tea an’ then I’ll show yer around.’
We talked for a little while and then I was taken on a guided tour of the farm, ending at the door of a caravan in the corner of the yard.
It was an old van, probably dating back to the 1950s, and the overall impression of it was . . . brown. It was chocolate brown outside and caramel brown inside, with a decent-sized bed. There was a gas cooker, but as I didn’t feel confident with the gas-and-matches aspect, I only really used the electric kettle. There was no water supply, but the farm had an old dairy which was no longer in use, where there was a cold-water tap over a big plastic sink, so I could keep some basic standards of cleanliness.
The worst thing was that I couldn’t wash my hair. I tried to wash it in the dairy sink but it was unbelievably cold. I’ve always had long hair, and I really didn’t want to cut it off. Shortly after starting work at Crosby I discovered Kendal, the nearest town of any size. On a mad impulse I visited a tattoo parlour there, had my hair plaited into dreadlocks and, just to complete the look, had two studs put in my nose. Remember, I was only twenty. The nose studs lasted until clipping time, in July: I kept getting the wool caught in them. Once you’ve accidentally got your nose caught up in wool that is still attached to a sheep, you know you’ve made a mistake, and I decided to take them out before a sheep did it for me. The dreadlocks were a good solution to the hair-washing problem though, as they meant I didn’t need to wash it at all – I would just sprinkle some talcum powder over the roots when it got a bit rank.
In hindsight, I must have looked like Swampy, the eco-warrior, but this new look just washed over Johnny, the farmer. He was a grand fellow. He knew that although I was keen I was a bit green and he took time to show me round and explain how everything worked. He had Swaledale sheep, the horned black-faced sheep with the white noses and white around the eyes, and Cheviots, the ones with sticky-up ears and white faces and compact, round little bodies. The lambing was mainly done outside, in large undulating pastures with shelter afforded by a band of trees, perfect for the yows, with plenty of places for them to sneak off and lamb away from prying eyes. Any sheep having problems were brought back to the farm to be monitored. On one of the cold, clear nights I remember lying on a bed of straw in a Dutch barn and looking out at a starry sky, watching the shooting stars and feeling a contentment that I had never experienced before.
Everyone was friendly, it was a lovely family atmosphere. I am so glad I met them as my previous experiences had nearly been enough to put me off forever, to completely lose heart. So they came into my life at the right moment. I had lots of theories and ideas about sheep in my mind, and I was so enthusiastic about it; Johnny Wood, known to all as Woody, added the practical stuff and showed me how it was done right. It was a farm that operated on teamwork, with everyone pulling together. I absolutely loved it, and for the first time in my life I remember thinking: Thank goodness I’ve got to where I want to be.
Out of my caravan window I could see across a little valley and one morning, early, I watched two foxes playing in the sunshine. They weren’t doing anything wrong, just frolicking like little children. But it wasn’t an entirely idyllic scene: on a few occasions a lamb would be carried off by a fox. Worse still were the crows, who would pick the eyes out of a recumbent lamb or yow if given the chance. Nature can be cruel sometimes.
As the lambing slowed down, I was starting to feel a little anxious. I didn’t know where or what was to come next. One day while doing the rounds Johnny casually said, ‘It can’t be much fun living in that shed of a caravan.’
I think he and his wife were concerned about me, living in such a basic way, but they may also have wanted the unsightly caravan and the unsightly dreadlocked Swampy out of the farmyard.
‘I’ve gotten an empty cottage down in t’village, I wondered if yer were interested?’ he went on.
This was right out of the blue, but there was one major thing that concerned me.
‘How much will it cost?’ I asked.
‘Sixty quid,’ he said.
I was busy working out in my head that I wouldn’t be able to afford £60 a week, especially now that I was effectively jobless once again and not sure where my next work would come from. I shook my head.
‘I can’t afford that every week.’
‘No, yer daft beggar, it’s sixty pounds a month.’
Well, I couldn’t believe my luck. I reckoned I could manage that, if I was careful. I’d no idea how I was going to earn a crust but as I’d worked for him for six weeks without a break I had enough money put by to keep me going until something came up.
When I saw the cottage I was thrilled. There was a row of three whitewashed cottages, two of them normal sized, and a tiny one on the end which was to be mine. It was just one room downstairs with a minute annex kitchen, and one room upstairs with a bathroom. But it was a lot bigger than the caravan and, best of all, it had a lovely long garden with a kennel and a small outhouse. Immediately next door was a Methodist chapel. The village consisted of a line of houses on one side of the road; directly opposite ran the River Lyvennet and beyond that were fields of horses, cows and sheep. There was a school, church and a pub, the Butcher’s Arms, which was the centre of village life. It was idyllic and I could not have dreamed of anywhere better. People were friendly and I was made very welcome.
As far as work went, I had to broaden my horizons and take on any job I could get. Farming has its own calendar, and there are certain points of the year – lambing, clipping, dipping – when you know you will get work, but the rest of the time I had to do anything that came along. I worked on a saw bench, chopping logs and filling up pickups, cutting Christmas trees, house-sitting and even walking dogs. Anything to earn a few quid.
I had never clipped and I desperately wanted to learn so I decided to give Bob a ring to see whether he had any work. He had brought a shearing gang over from New Zealand, and he needed people to woolwrap, so I joined the gang wrapping the fleeces they’d sheared off. We went all over the place, all around the Lake District wherever there were sheep to be sheared. The New Zealand lads were a motley crew, heavily tattooed and hard drinking. They clipped all year round, moving from country to country. All the time I was clearing the trailer boards of wool I would watch them closely, study their techniques; they made it look so easy. Whenever they stopped for their dinner I got the chance to have a go. They would sit amongst the wool eating their sandwiches and drinking small bottles of beer, shouting words of encouragement – or otherwise, because I was very slow to start with.
They showed me how important it is to move the sheep around with your legs. You’d naturally think that the sheep should be kept immobile but they get more stressed and struggle if they are still, so learning to hold them and move them with your legs is as important as the actual clipping. You can’t do it without practice. If you are not careful you can cut the sheep, which happens if you go over a wrinkle in the skin or if the wool is being pulled away from the body and into the blades of the clipper. There’s a very fine line between the skin and the fleece, called the rise, and it is the new growth of wool through which the clippers run easily. Invariably you do end up with a few nicks which will heal very quickly after a squirt of antiseptic spray.
So I provided the lunchtime amusement, the lads teased me mercilessly and, of course, they didn’t give me great sheep to shear. The worst sheep is always the last, the one that limps, looks a bit decrepit, so they were happy to let me learn on that one. They told me that in New Zealand, where the sheep farms have many thousands of sheep, the last broken down one would be the one they would feed to the dogs. It sounds a bit harsh, but on those huge sheep stations, by the time you’ve done the muster and got all the sheep in, the last one is probably at death’s door anyway. Gradually, over time, I improved and clipping is now one of my favourite jobs.
Although sheep were my passion, I had another string t
o my bow: I could milk, which I did on a temporary basis when someone was ill, or to cover for holidays. In those days quite a few farms still had small herds of thirty or so cows to milk, while nowadays most milking has to be done on a much bigger scale to be economic. The worst thing about relief milking was that everyone’s milking parlour was different. I would just get the measure of one system then I’d be off to another farm with a completely different set-up.
I did quite a bit of relief milking, I enjoyed it. Clive tells me he never liked it, but I think that’s because at one time he was doing it twice a day, every day, whereas I didn’t do enough to get bored with the monotony. Clive says that women are good with cows, they’re gentle and have more patience. I would quite like to have a house cow to provide fresh milk for us every day at Ravenseat but Clive says it would be too tying, having to milk her twice a day. Mind you, his friend Bill, who had a house cow himself, would say, ‘It weren’t much of a cow that couldnae hold two days’ milk.’ So watch this space.
I never advertised my services. I wouldn’t have dared: I still felt I was bluffing, just learning. But I got jobs by word of mouth. A shepherd in the village retired, so I got a bit of work doing day-to-day shepherding, and it wasn’t long before other farmers were ringing me up. I had an answering-machine message that had the sound of a lamb bleating, the pre-recorded message being, ‘Say summat – or the lamb gets it.’
There were about five farms in the village, and sometimes I’d get someone hammering on my door and end up chasing sheep or cows up and down the street. I was willing to do anything. I worked chopping logs on the saw bench at a saw mill, where I spent all day pushing logs through the saw, and I was terrified of chopping my arm off. It didn’t instil me with confidence that one of the men in the yard had only one hand. I never asked him what had happened. I didn’t really want to know . . . When I wasn’t on the saw bench I was bagging dusty sawdust, substituting fear of amputation with an inability to breathe. I wore a face mask but it was so hot that it was difficult to catch your breath.
In Cumbria you are never short of work if you can repair drystone walls. Drystone walls differ from area to area depending upon the stone in that locality. A walling or gapping job in Eden could be relatively easy due to the lovely big red sandstone blocks that fitted together beautifully. At the other end of the scale I could end up with horribly misshapen crumbling limestone which took incredible patience to cobble together, like the walling I did on Orton Scar, where the stones were small and sharp, and it took ages to wall a gap. Even today, when I drive to Penrith, I see stretches of wall beside the road and think: ‘I did that.’
I recorded everything I did in my diary, with the number of hours I worked. Some weeks I did not earn very much, but I needed very little to live on. My average earnings would be about £100 a week, and if I had good weeks I’d put a bit aside, knowing that bad weeks could be round the corner. But even being careful, there were times of the year when I was much more flush than others. I knew I’d be flat out at lambing, clipping or dipping times, so at the end of the week I’d have a full pay packet. But other times I wouldn’t get more than ten to twenty hours work in a week. It was famine or feast, and I coped with the famine well enough.
I was very independent, so when I spoke on the phone to Mother I never let her know it was a struggle, but she must have realized I was up against it because occasionally parcels of pasta, rice and biscuits would arrive.
Some jobs I did just required strength and willingness, not too much skill. Sheep dipping is one of those. Every farmer needs to dip his sheep in autumn to protect them from sheep scab and lice, and some farms also dip in summer to protect them from flies (we don’t at Ravenseat because the high altitude makes us less susceptible to flies). Dipping is also done at sale time to give the sheep a lovely lustrous colour. I was in big demand at dipping time. The phone would ring and it would be: ‘Would ta give us a hand getting some sheep through t’tub?’
I did so much splashing about around dip, sniffing it up, that I actually ended up in hospital. Most farmers were using organophosphate dips, some of which have since been banned. The link with neurological damage is still unproven, but it certainly wasn’t great to inhale as much as I did.
I was hallucinating, talking a load of gibberish. For a few days I’d been seeing things, thinking there was a tractor in front of me on the road when there was nothing there. Then, in the end, I lost my balance, I couldn’t stand up, couldn’t focus my eyes. It was so bad that one of the other workers called an ambulance, and I spent a week in hospital.
I was shipped to a psychiatric hospital called Garlands, near Carlisle. It was one of those huge Victorian asylums, now knocked down and the site of a new housing development. The psychiatrists were very interested in the effects of organophosphates, and I had to wear a cap on my head, a bit like a shower cap with electrodes attached, so they could monitor my brain activity. Medical students came to look at me. Apparently there was a research project in Edinburgh that was looking for an antidote, but there still isn’t one. I just had to wait until the effects wore off, but in the meantime I was on a ward with a lot of depressed and troubled people. It was surreal, and I was very worried because they were threatening to take my driving licence away, which would have been a big problem: I wouldn’t have been able to work. I still do the dipping here at Ravenseat. It’s only once a year, and now it’s only our own flock, but I am well aware of the hidden dangers and skedaddle any child who ventures anywhere near.
That whole episode was the downside of contract work. But on the whole, almost everything else was great, and I never felt I’d made the wrong choice in life, not for a minute. Even when the snow was thick on the ground, and when I had very little money to live on, I never wanted to go back to Huddersfield and a ‘normal’ life.
3
One Woman and Her Dog
I loved my little cottage, really loved it. I didn’t have any furniture, but people helped me out with bits and pieces. The villagers accepted me: I wasn’t a typical townie, or ‘offcumden’ as they call them. They could see I was trying to fit in with their way of life. At the other side of the chapel lived a lovely old couple, Ruth and Keith Robinson, splendid people who took me under their wing. They lent me things, and gave me advice whenever I asked for it. One day when I was at work they planted up the whole of the front garden with flowers for me.
I never had a bed in all the time I was there. I did once make a valiant attempt at buying myself one with £30 that I had put aside. There was a second-hand furniture shop at Appleby and I spotted a bed in there. Unfortunately, when I looked around the shop I noticed a dusty, unkempt stuffed goat in the corner priced up at £30. I decided in my wisdom that chances to own stuffed goats were few and far between, so I bought it instead. There would be ample opportunities to buy a bed, and in the meantime I slept in front of the fire on a pile of cushions I’d brought from the caravan. There was no point going up to the bedroom to sleep when I’d got the living room warm and there was no heating upstairs, so I used what should have been the bedroom for storage.
There’s a second-hand electrical shop in Penrith where I bought a fridge, cooker and a washing machine. A friend gave me a vacuum cleaner, a vital piece of kit when you come in from work covered in straw and hay. I didn’t have a television.
I was clueless about cooking, so I lived on pasta and noodles. If I had a little bit more money, it would be mixed with a tin of condensed soup, the height of luxury living. Sometimes farmers feed their stock with turnips and mangolds, and some drop off the trailers and are left in the gutter at the side of the road. I’d pick them up and cook them long and slow. Roadkill also featured on the menu: there was a stretch of road nearby that bordered the woods and was famous for pheasants. I would simply cut the breast off and fry the meat. It’s amazing how you can feed yourself for very little if you set your mind to it.
There was a small tiled fireplace in the cottage and so I was constantly foraging f
or firewood. If there was any windy weather it meant rich pickings in fallen sticks and branches. For a short time I did some work foot trimming and bathing sheep on one of the farms at Greystoke Castle, a beautiful estate near Penrith. One evening as I left work and was driving away from the castle I noticed something at the side of road. I stopped to investigate and found some enormous pieces of coal – the coal man must have delivered some top-grade coal to the castle and lost a sack from the back of the wagon. This kept my home fire burning for a few days.
The wonderful thing about the fire was that it heated the hot water. There was an immersion heater, but I prided myself on never having to use it – I’m the same at Ravenseat now. After trying to keep clean at a cold-water tap in an old dairy, I could luxuriate in a lovely hot shower, and I could wash my hair. Removing the dreadlocks took a lot of time and patience, and a gallon of coconut oil. I worked away at the knots for literally a couple of weeks, and any matts that were too difficult I snipped off. I was surprised at how much straw and hay had accumulated in it, enough to feed a small calf for a week.
Despite the fact that I had very little money, and certainly wasn’t spending my days off window shopping, I still took a pride in my appearance. I might have dressed for farm work much of the time, but I liked to retain my femininity and I enjoyed getting dressed up when I had the chance. I didn’t buy new clothes: charity shops were where I did my shopping.
It was getting glammed up for a night out that cost me my back door – or half of it. It was really stupid. I had just put a giant unsplittable hunk of wood onto the fire when a friend rang asking me to go out for the evening. I had a shower, got myself ready, then realized that I couldn’t leave the giant log on the fire in case it fell out of the grate. I very carefully managed to manoeuvre it off the fire and onto a shovel, and then deposited it, blackened and glowing, in the back garden. When I got home in the wee small hours I had half a back door: some of the hot ashes must have dropped off as I was carrying it out, and they had fallen onto the stormtrapper, the rubber draught excluder at the bottom of the door. The draught had fanned the embers, and they had slowly smouldered through the varnished door from the bottom upwards, leaving me with only the top half and a pile of ashes underneath. It was like having half a stable door, and my farmer landlord, Woody, had to get it replaced. I had a lucky escape: the whole cottage could have gone up in flames. Woody never asked me too much about what happened and I didn’t volunteer the information. I think he suspected foul play because at the time I was being bothered by an unwanted suitor, a local idiot who wouldn’t take no for an answer, and Woody had previously chased him off when he’d been hanging around the cottage.
