by Amanda Owen
Every four years we have to have our cattle TB tested. We’re in a safe area, but we still have to be tested or there are movement restrictions on the cows. The vet lets us know when we are due for testing, which in our case happened last January – the depths of winter. The vet turned up and did the first round of tests, injecting them and snipping off samples of their hair. The second tests have to be done seventy-two hours later: not sixty or eighty, but exactly seventy-two. By that time, a blizzard was engulfing Ravenseat: snow was thick on the ground, and more was falling. We knew that if the vet didn’t get to us at the right time, we had problems, as the tests would be invalid and we would not be TB cleared. Luckily, Clive’s son Robert, who farms down at Kirkby Stephen, was able to pick up the vet on a tractor and get her up here. It must have been a long, slow journey, but at least we complied with the regulations, and we were declared TB free.
Robert used to run the farm, Sandwath, for us, but he’s now taken the tenancy on as his own. We’d wanted Sandwath as well as Ravenseat as it would give us access to more fertile land and a place to overwinter some of our sheep. We found that running two farms is great when everything is in the right place, but we seemed to spend too much time trundling stuff between the two locations. Of course, whenever there’s an emergency, or during particularly busy times, we help him out and he helps us out, too.
Our finest breeding yows live out their days at Ravenseat, kept together in a small flock we affectionately call ‘the crusties’. They are old dears who have done their absolute best for us over the years, but are now shadows of their former selves. When I looked over the stable door at them last winter it was like peering into an old folks’ home: there were a dozen of them, some missing a horn or two, all looking grizzled and ancient. One or two of them hadn’t even been put to the tup: I genuinely didn’t think they were up to carrying another lamb.
We let them live in the better fields, with the richer grass nearer the farm. They can’t go up on the moor any more, and in winter are housed in a barn or stable during the roughest weather. I took a picture of one of our old crusties sheltering with her back to a wall in a snowstorm, and posted it on Twitter. I’d put her and her friend, another oldie who has since died, in the garth by the shepherd’s hut. They were eating that much hay and cake I’m surprised they didn’t keel over: there’s a risk of killing with kindness. It was one of those days when the snow was squalling down, and she had her old grey face turned towards me. It was a nice shot, I liked it, it was atmospheric: very grey yow, grey wall, grey sky. A lady artist contacted me and asked if she could use my photo as a basis for a pen and ink drawing, and her picture ended up in a gallery and then on some Christmas cards.
Clive wasn’t impressed.
‘Aye, that’s right, tek pictures of t’worst sheep on t’farm, why don’t you?’
The artistic merit of my photos doesn’t come into it: he just wants me to show the sheep off at their best. When a television crew came up to interview us, they asked if there were any sheep inside that they could film.
Clive said, ‘No, they’re all in t’fields.’
He’d shut the top of the stable door to hide the crusties, and the poor old dears had to stand in the dark until the cameras had gone. I say to him, ‘Clive, other farmers an’ most people know that not every sheep in the flock is going to look perfect.’
Somehow the sheep with the limp will always end up at the front, holding up its dithering foot, and the one with the mucky arse will always be showing its back end to anyone looking on.
‘It’ll look fake if we only show t’best looking sheep in pictures,’ I say. But he’s having none of it.
We’ve got one yow with a completely sooty face, without the white ring round the eyes that a good Swaledale should have, and whenever anyone takes a picture up here she somehow gets into it. She’s like one of those minor celebrities always hanging around to get themselves in a paparazzi picture. Clive goes mad. ‘Get that sooty-faced bugger out of t’picture,’ he says. It’s no good telling him that only another Swaledale breeder would recognize her imperfections. I took a cracking picture of the sheepdogs working the sheep not long ago, but there she was, right at the front, and Clive was not happy. ‘I hate that sheep,’ he said.
Clive’s sheep are like top models: they can be as bad-tempered and as nasty as you like, but everything can be forgiven if they look good.
I was recently asked if I would be happy to pose (fully clothed, I must add) for a professional portrait photographer. As usual, what started out as a simple request became more complicated as it went on.
‘Can you sit on a hay bale?’ he said. ‘I’d like Bill, the sheepdog, in the shot,’ he continued as he fiddled with his camera. ‘And I’d like you to be surrounded by sheep.’
Not easy, when you have a sheepdog by your side.
‘They’ll come if I rattle a feed bag,’ I said, beginning to tire of the whole enterprise.
‘Good idea . . . mmm . . . but you’ll have to hide the feed bag, we can’t have product endorsements. Maybe you could sit on it?’
‘Wouldn’t that mek me look like I’ve got an incontinence problem, sitting on a plastic bag?’
Finally, after an age of him clicking away, the sheep and the dog getting more and more bored and me wishing I was somewhere else, the photographer was satisfied, and left promising to return a week later to let us see the results.
He duly arrived, and we spread the pictures across the kitchen table. Sure enough, there was the sooty yow peeping over my shoulder. That one was firmly rejected by Clive. He didn’t care how glamorous I looked, how perfect the backdrop was, or how proud and masterful Bill appeared: any picture with that yow on was consigned to the ‘out’ pile. He nodded happily at the photos of me looking uncomfortable, sitting at a contorted angle to hide the plastic bag, with a drip on the end of my nose. It was all about good-looking, classy sheep. Not a good-looking, classy wife. Which just confirmed where I stand in the natural order of things at Ravenseat.
2
February
‘I’m gonna get them two sneakin’ buggers back here if it’s t’last thing I do.’
Clive was eating his breakfast one chilly morning in February when he made this announcement. The problem had clearly been on his mind.
The weather is bitter up here in February, but however grim and cold it is, the exciting element of the month for the children – and for me and Clive, too – is the big day when Adrian, the ultrasound scanning man, comes to scan the sheep and tell us whether they are in lamb and how many lambs they are carrying. Naturally, we need to round them all up for scanning, which is normally not too difficult, as every day we visit them with hay and cake.
But last February we had a couple of shearlings (yows in their second year) who decided to live in Boggle Hole, the ghyll with sides so steep it is almost impossible to get into . . . unless you are a pair of stubborn sheep. They came out of the ravine every day and joined the rest of the flock for food, but always retreated back down there. They more or less went feral, and were very wary of us, disappearing the minute we appeared. We needed to bring them in for scanning, but all attempts to get them out had failed. However, Clive was on the case, and a plan was formulated. I would put out a small amount of hay near to the ghyll then move away. When the sheep were sure that the coast was clear and they turned their woolly backs to eat, Clive and his dog Bill would sneak around behind them, cutting off their retreat.
It started well: the pair of sheep fell for it, and were soon hoovering up their breakfast. But Bill, who is as fine a sheepdog as there ever was, diligent and faithful, has one small failing. Sheep aren’t the only thing he likes to chase. He loves rabbiting, and while Clive was stalking the two wayward sheep, Bill headed off in hot pursuit of Bugs Bunny.
Clive gave Bill his right-hand whistle, a sharp, piercing sound that should have sent him racing in an arc around the sheep to cut off their escape route. Hearing the whistle, the sheep raised their he
ads, twigged that a trap was being set, and, true to form, set off at breakneck speed back to their lair. It was only then that Clive realized Bill was missing.
‘Bloody hell,’ he shouted, waving his arms manically to try to turn the sheep, which were heading towards him at full speed. Hearing the commotion, Bill appeared on the rocks above. He’s a dog that can read a situation, and he immediately came to Clive’s aid. But the sheep had seen their chance and were stopping for nothing. One of them bowled right over the top of Bill, knocking him off his feet and sending him down the rocky scree and out of sight. All we could hear was the sound of rocks falling, then a yelp from Bill, then silence.
‘That’ll do, Bill,’ Clive shouted.
Nothing, just silence. Clambering down as far as he dared, Clive saw the dog laid out on a ledge, not moving. He looked dead. The sheep were forgotten: all that mattered was rescuing Bill. Fortunately, Clive had his stick with him, and by lying down and stretching out, he could hook it through Bill’s collar and haul him back up.
There was no mark on Bill, no blood, but his tongue lolled out of his mouth and his eyes were glazed. He was clearly concussed. He’s a big dog, and it took a bit of effort from both of us to lift him onto the quad bike and get him back home.
‘I’m gonna lie him by t’fire,’ Clive said. ‘He’s in shock. I thought ’e was a goner.’
Pippen and Chalky, the terriers, were evicted from their favourite place to make way for the patient. As he started to come round, I swear I saw a worried look on Bill’s face. The only time a sheepdog is brought in to lie on the fireside rug is when his days are numbered, and he’s on his way to gather the sheep from the Elysian Fields. Bill wasn’t having that: the next time we went to check on him he was up on his feet and considering cocking his leg on the fender. He was very happy to be leaving the house.
We did eventually catch up with the two wayward sheep, but only after a show of dog power when Clive enlisted help from his pal Alec and his dogs too.
Adrian, the expert scanner, is in great demand at certain times of the year, which means his days are planned like a military campaign. Not only does he scan sheep, he also contracts round bales, and farms in his own right. When it comes to multitasking and organizational skills, he is second to none. If your allotted time for scanning is three in the afternoon, then heaven help you if your sheep are not penned and the extension cable not at the ready, for efficiency is Adrian’s middle name. It is a good idea to have a supply of strong coffee at the ready, and should you want to know anything about any farmer within a hundred-mile radius then you’ll likely find out, as Adrian will have scanned their flock.
The whole success of Ravenseat revolves around breeding pedigree sheep. It can be a chaotic day: Adrian gets paid per sheep that he scans, and he doesn’t want to waste time hanging about while we sort out the yows. The day before he comes, we start to gather up the yows from the more remote heafs and bring them into the fields near the farm. We don’t feed them: full tummies obscure Adrian’s view of the unborn lambs.
Every yow will go through the race, a narrow channel that prevents the sheep from turning around, which leads them into the scanning crate. Then the children play ‘guess how many lambs’ games with one another. The sheep are marked according to their status: no mark means they are expecting one lamb, then there is a coloured mark in the middle of the back for those expecting twins (the colour changes from year to year) and a different coloured mark for triplets. Thankfully, we don’t get many triplets: we go for quality, not quantity. Then there is another mark, the dreaded red stripe, for the sheep that are geld: not pregnant.
Not so long ago, Adrian would study the screen as he rolled the scanner under each yow’s belly and call out ‘Two!’, ‘One!’, ‘None!’, and the older children would put the mark on the sheep with a spray can. Unfortunately for them, they no longer have this vital role to play, as Adrian has invented a foolproof system that does it automatically. I think he got fed up with mistakes being made, with Clive going ‘Eh?’ or the children not concentrating and putting on the wrong mark. He decided to remove the weakest link.
Incidentally, I get the same old joke every time: ‘Shall I put the scanner over you?’
Anyway, despite not having to spray the marks, the children still enjoy the process, watching for their particular sheep to be scanned. Raven kens a lot of the sheep by now, and there’s a couple she always watches for. One is known as Raven’s Listeria Lamb, or Roly. Roly’s mother, who was close to lambing, was really sick with listeria, and Raven was looking after her in the stable, feeding her cake and treacle and keeping her on her feet. As long as a poorly sheep can stay on their feet, there’s a chance of recovery. Being upright keeps their stomach and everything working: once they’re down they don’t last long. Each day Raven would feed her from a scoop and guide her to the water trough. Listeria affects the brain and balance, and the damage done is almost always irreversible, so we were not surprised when one morning Raven found her collapsed and couldn’t get her up. Between us we shuffled her into as comfortable a position as we could, propping her against a hay bale, but it was clear her days were numbered. She wasn’t in distress, so we left her there, quiet.
That night, when Rav went out to her again, she’d lambed. It was a beautiful gimmer (female) lamb, perfectly healthy. But her mother didn’t make it: she died giving Raven the present of a lovely lamb, a thank you for all her care. Now the lamb is a yow, and every year Raven wants to know what she is going to have.
Miles has his own flock of fourteen Texel/Swaledale cross sheep, Texdales. We often put out a Texel tup with our Swaledale yows at the end of tupping time, to ‘jack up’, tupping any yow who is not in lamb. A late-born Texel cross lamb is more valuable than a late-born Swaledale. We can sell a smaller Texdale lamb at the auction as a fat lamb and get a better price than a smaller Swaledale lamb ever would. We kept the gimmer lambs for Miles as he wanted something different from our main flock, that he could distinguish as his. They’re very hardy, good sheep, and they look great. He had to wait eighteen months until his little flock of gimmer lambs were big enough to be put to the tup. We bought him a Texel tup of his own for £200 at the Luke Fair sale in Kirkby Stephen. His face was an absolute picture when Clive came back with the tup in the pickup.
‘Giz a lift, Miley,’ Clive shouted. The tup weighed a ton, and wasn’t happy about being manhandled out of the pickup. ‘Watch out he don’t catch his ’nads on t’backdoor, he’s gonna be needing ’em.’
Farm children get to know how nature works from a very early age.
When scanning day arrived Miles, who is very quiet normally, was clearly excited. His yows were scanning for twins one after another, and even Adrian the scanner said to him, ‘Miles, if all fourteen scan for twins I’ll give you all the money I’ve made today.’
Fortunately for Adrian the final total was ten twins and four singles, so he didn’t have to part with any money, but I’m sure he would have calculated the odds very carefully before making such a wager. Miles didn’t mind: he had his lambs to look forward to.
Looking after sheep is a great training for a child: it teaches patience, because nothing happens quickly. There are no instant rewards, like there are in computer games: it’s the slow march of the seasons, just as it always has been.
Miles only has one aim: to be a farmer. As far as he’s concerned, school is a necessary evil he has to endure until the day he can be free to work full-time on the farm. He’s happy enough at school, has plenty of friends, but all he wants is to be here farming. At teatime when we’re all gathered round the table eating, I will ask what everyone has been doing at school.
‘Geography,’ says Raven, rolling her eyes. ‘I can’t stand geography.’
‘Maths,’ says Reuben. ‘Fractions.’
‘Reading,’ says Edith. ‘I’ve nearly finished my book.’
‘I think Aygill are scalin’ t’muck,’ says Miles, referring to a farm that he passes on the way t
o school. ‘An’ Ronnie was catchin’ moudies (moles) this morning. I see’d ’im outta t’window.’ He clearly spends a lot of time staring wistfully out of the classroom window.
Outside of sheep and chickens, his big love is fossils and dinosaurs. He goes off fossil-hunting along the river, sometimes with Reuben. Sidney can be found tagging along behind. Sidney loves his big brothers: all he wants in life is to be with them, doing whatever it is they are doing.
Edith is doing very well at school: it seems almost every other day she brings home a certificate for her class work, her behaviour, her spelling, something. ‘Edith, you are on fire!’ one of them says. She’s very proud of them – unlike Miles, who also gets certificates, usually cryptically worded: ‘Miles, for being reliable.’ He produces them, crumpled, from the bottom of his schoolbag, days later. Edith is very outgoing, very friendly, and has a permanent beaming smile on her face. Violet only started school this year, but she was very keen to go: she and Edith are the best of friends. Vi is a real tomboy: the best climber, kicker, jumper of the lot. She’s naturally athletic, always doing handstands, somersaults or wrestling with Sidney.
It was in February a year ago that the headmistress of the school came to see me at the farm. Getting to Parents’ Evening was a logistical nightmare for me: appointments were spread out, with long gaps between them, at the two different school sites. So the easiest solution was for Mrs Johnstone to visit me instead. I reasoned it would remind her how remote we are, and perhaps make the school more aware of the problems we have with the weather and the school run.
It was not her first visit here. When she took over the headship, the retiring headmaster brought her up here to meet us. It was an interesting occasion, because our old friend Alec was also paying us a visit: he drops in whenever he likes. He took it upon himself, as only Alec can, to treat these two teachers to his theories of what is wrong with young people today. His remedy seemed to involve acquiring a large cane and beating some sense into them.
