Now the hounds are just a field away from us. Their blood up, hot on the scent. But they don’t know the land like the fox. They miss the holes in the fences and the gaps under gates and are bunching up, or jumping. They lose ground all the time finding the scent again. My heart is pumping out of my chest. The lead hound gallops up the field towards us and the ewes scatter away to the quiet end of the field. Other hounds jump the wall and follow. The rest of the pack can be seen making their way to us from fields back. The lead hound casts us a pleading look, and we sort of shrug, amused. He raises his nose to the air, trying to separate sheep and fox smells. The following hounds join in to circle us, confused. Then one of them catches the smell of the fox at the dyke where he’d exited the field. The hound song starts again, and they tumble through and over the fence, heading down into the bottoms.
They never did catch the fox. We stood and watched them try to navigate the confusing scents in the bog. We saw five foxes that morning heading in different directions from the valley bottom. The hounds seemed baffled. My granddad smiled, and said, “Them clever bloody foxes are running circles round them hounds.”
18
Two ewes have gone off their feet. Slavering at their mouths. Shaking. Unable to stand up, so hunched pathetically in a heap. I saw they were poorly when they were unable to run up to the feed when I fed their flock. One has its head on its side and looks to me like a case of listeria, a disease that affects the brain, strikes suddenly, and usually ends in death despite our treating them with antibiotics. I lost a good sheep a week ago to listeria and this looks like more of the same. I catch them and take them into the barn. I fill them with drugs and go for a coffee in a sulk. I leave my father standing silently watching them. I am in a foul mood, because these are three of my most well-bred females. Something doesn’t add up, but I can’t work out what. Listeria doesn’t usually drop sheep off their feet in quite the same way as this. Something about these feels related to the weather suddenly going colder. But I am too fed up to think straight. Half an hour later my father passes judgement.
“That’s not listeria. Them sheep has staggers. I’ve given them a shot of calcium and they’re a bit better already.”
He was right. There is always someone who knows more than you about sheep, usually someone older. Staggers is a condition caused by calcium deficiency. Sudden changes in the weather or growth of the grass can bring it on. It is more common in older sheep when the first flush of grass comes. But these young ewes have it. The cure is simple. You inject a large amount of diluted calcium fluid into them, under their skin, and then stand back. The prognosis is much better than for listeria. Sometimes they get up and go straight away. An hour later these two are still in a bad way, but you can tell that whatever was troubling them has eased. Good stockmen spend a lot of time looking, watching, and thinking. That’s what they are doing when they seem to be standing doing nothing looking over a gate as you pass them on the road.
19
My dad has been very cool about my double life. In fact he encourages it. We will be working in the sheep pens, as two equals, busy grafting away, and then he will suddenly stop, look at me, and say, “Isn’t there something you should be doing on your computer?… I can do this on my own.”
Don’t get me wrong, my dad and I are still all about the sheep. He knows sheep are my obsession, and that given half a chance I would do nothing else, but he also knows that you need to do other things here to make a living, and that this has always been true.
20
Though we have the chance to keep our farm and way of life going only because of the other things we do, it takes my father, my mother, my wife, my kids, and the wider family to make this farm what it is. The sensible thing is to use each of us to best effect. So if there is the faintest hint that I should be doing something else that would bring more money in, then I am banished as quickly as possible back to do it.
I used to hate these tensions, this being pulled in two ways at once. It went against the feeling I was brought up with that the farm should always come first. But I’ve grown used to it. Part of that is that I see many families like ours all finding ways to have one foot in the modern world and one in their living past. Many of my farming friends run campsites or B and Bs, their wives working off the farm to support it, or working off the farm themselves seasonally. This is how crofting families work in Scotland, or how families survive on their farms in places like Norway.
I have been to many places where the past traditions have disappeared and the people regret it. In the valleys of Norway they are trying to encourage people to farm again in some places because the character of those places alters without it. Farming is more than the effect on the landscape: it sustains the local food industry, supports tourism, and gives people an income in places that might otherwise be abandoned. In some remote areas of Norway it is difficult to manage forest fires without the remote farmsteads being there to watch and raise the alarm. But above all, when local traditional farming systems disappear, communities become more and more reliant upon industrial commodity food products being transported long distances to them, with all the environmental cost (and cultural disconnection from the land) that entails. They begin to lose the traditional skills that made those places habitable in the first place, making them vulnerable in a future that may not be the same as the present. No one who works in this landscape romanticizes wilderness.
21
Like much of the rest of my life, my marriage to Helen has followed a curiously old-fashioned pattern. She is from exactly the same background as me, a family farm in the Eden Valley. Her father kept a herd of dairy cattle and a flock of sheep. Long before I knew Helen, I sold sheep to her father and was on first-name terms with him. When I first appeared at his house in my best clothes to collect Helen for a date, we spent ten minutes discussing the price of sheep (much to Helen’s acute embarrassment and annoyance).
Her father is a friend of my father. My dad had been round there and got drunk after a sheep sale some years earlier, been sick in the bathroom when he was worse for wear, blotting our copybook with my future mother-in-law. She took a little convincing, apparently, that I was a suitable catch. Helen’s grandfather had bred some of the best Clydesdale horses in the country. Her grandfather had been a friend of my grandfather. For generations back it goes on like that. The same characters appear in their family stories as appear in mine. Our grandmothers were lifelong friends, so much so we speculated whether we had been set up. When I first met her grandmother Annie as Helen’s boyfriend, she told me she had ridden to a dance on the back of my (great) uncle Jack’s motorbike. She smiled at the memory, and I couldn’t resist asking if he was fast.… She giggled, recognizing my innuendo, and said, “Aye, in more ways than one.”
22
Uncle Jack, or “Peo” as he was universally known, was a famous character in our area. He’d been a farmer, racehorse trainer, egg dealer, and God only knows what else in his lifetime. When my father was young and fresh from passing his driving test, he would be sent to drive Jack somewhere. It would inevitably turn into a boozy session in some pub or farmhouse miles from home with my dad delivering them home to farmhouses round the county in the early hours. He always had rolls of egg money in his pockets, dealing in cash with local hotels (so the taxman never caught up with him). The thick wads of notes would flop out of his pockets like he was some Sicilian mobster, with him seeming to think it was the most natural thing in the world.
Once he was walking cattle to the auction with my father. An impatient young man, probably heading to work in the local town, was behind the bullocks on the road in his new Mini car. The man drove right behind the bullocks, stressing them, revving the engine, and providing a running commentary about how late he was being made. Jack told him to settle down, but he kept fretting and commenting on how slow things were going, while pushing too close to the cattle. Then one of the bullocks turned suddenly and belly flopped over his bonnet, leaving a cow-size
d dint in the bodywork. The young man jumped out, whining and complaining, and throwing his hands up in horror at what had happened to his beloved car. The men driving the cattle thought he had got what his pushing deserved, and kept walking. But Jack turned back, prodded the man to stop him talking, and asked him how much his car was worth to buy. The young man said the price. Then without so much as a haggle Jack peeled off the price in fresh £50 notes from his wad of egg money, stuffed it into the young man’s top pocket, told him to park what was now “his car” in the lay-by, and to “fuck off and stop pestering folk.”
When I knew him, he was an old man, and would sit at my grandmother’s table and suck on boiled sweets that she placed there for his weekly visits. He was famous, amongst other things, for arranging and being guest of honour at his own wake. They say he had invited hundreds of friends to the mother of all parties at a local hotel, long before he had any form of illness, let alone a sense of impending death, just because he reckoned his wake would be a lot of fun, and he didn’t want to miss it. A few years later, and still in rude health, he organized another and invited everyone again. On one occasion they say he was stopped by the police travelling home drunk the wrong way up the highway. You can say his name to just about anyone over fifty in Cumbria and they have their own Jack Pearson story.
23
It is the week before Christmas and my elder daughter is holding a sheepdog puppy. These two things should not be connected, but I fear they are about to be. If there were a prize for the world’s cutest puppy this one would walk it. It is a black-and-white bitch. We are standing in an old barn belonging to a good family friend called Paul. He breeds fine working sheepdogs and from time to time sells one or two that he can spare. A good sheepdog that has been trained is worth thousands of pounds, so the good families are held on to and getting a pup from one difficult. It has taken us a few years to get the chance of a puppy from him. He loves his dogs and clearly hates seeing them go to an owner that might waste them. That he’s letting us choose one is a bit of a privilege.
I know we will only get one chance. Make a mess of training this pup and we won’t be offered another one in the future. My daughter is inspecting my face for signs of weakness. Her look is searching for a yes. But we haven’t been told which one we are allowed to have yet, so she may be disappointed. But Paul knew what he was doing when he handed the puppy to her. He smiles and says that she is the last bitch that hasn’t been claimed. I am pleased, but my daughter looks like she wants to get in the car quickly before he changes his mind and withdraws the offer. I almost have to prize it off her when we get home. She wants to take it to bed, but I have to tell her that a sheepdog is not a pet.
It is easy to waste a sheepdog. I know because I did it when I was twelve years old. Dad allowed me to keep a fine-looking puppy called Laddie. I didn’t know how to train him properly and got frustrated when he couldn’t do what I wanted him to do. I’d raise my voice, and he would become confused or scared. It was a bad combination of a young dog that needed instruction and me not knowing enough to guide him. Fewer farmers than you might imagine know how to train a dog, or have the time to commit to doing it well, so many dogs can do the basics but little more. It is difficult to get a sheepdog working well, and understanding you. It required more wisdom, patience, and kindness than I had. It still tests me. Laddie was a useful dog on the farm for the next few years, and there were moments when he did good things and we understood each other—once we sorted two ewes that we needed for a show off a hundred others we didn’t need in a field and walked them home. But it was a rare moment, and I always knew he wasn’t as good as he should have been. Sometimes he’d run home when I lost my temper and shouted at him. He lost trust in me. I knew whose fault it was. Mine. I knew that I’d let him down. I look back and think he would have made a good dog if I had known a bit more. But a man’s life comes full circle; you can learn, and do better than your past. I am determined not to make the same mistakes again. We called the puppy Floss.
24
Floss learned fast. I tried to have two short training sessions a day with her, starting by teaching her to lie down, walk to heel, and come back to me when loose. Then I introduced her to sheep. She was unsure of them to start with, but when they raced away from her, she couldn’t help herself: something in her body took her whizzing past them and holding them back to me. We kept at it in little bursts, building up her confidence, until she could hold these half dozen sheep whichever way I let them run past me.
After little more than ten days she is working like a sheepdog. I build a round pen for the sheep, and let her run round the outside of them. I encourage her with commands so that when she goes clockwise I give the command “Come by,” and when she runs round anticlockwise I say, “Away.” Then we take this to the field and she gets it immediately. There is a thread of understanding between us, but it can break at any moment. When training a young dog, it breaks all the time. Snap. She is confused. Frustrated. Lost. The training is all about finding that thread of connection, finding that understanding, trust, and belief in each other.
Some shepherds are wizards at training dogs. I am an amateur, so I ring Paul and ask him questions and he patiently shares his knowledge. I start to think he has sold me a great dog. She is timid when not working; like many sheepdogs she doesn’t want to be a pet, she is all about the work. Floss makes me look good. You show her once how to do a thing and then she knows. She is getting faster. Stronger. Fitter. She listens intently. She wants to know what I want her to do before I need her to do it. She turns almost before the command syllables are uttered. This is about more than command and response. It is more like a shared understanding, a shared thought. She is an extension of my brain and my arms. But she is still green, and will do a thing that she thinks needs doing whether I want it done or not, like holding sheep from going through a gate I want them through. I just about stop myself raising my voice, and sounding mad. I call her back and show her what I meant. She almost smiles as she comes back to my feet. I feel blessed to have a dog that can work like this.
Months later, Paul comes to our farm and sees Floss work; he works her himself and seems pleased. He lets us have another puppy to train called Tan, and he too is special. He is a stronger boned dog, but fast and tough, and eager to please.
25
One day my sister and her husband went to help my father on the farm. They had made a schoolboy error and driven his quad bike up a field without realizing that the bags of sheep cake (a grain mix concentrate) in the rear had toppled over and were being spread over the fields, wasted. When they got back to him, oblivious to their mistake, he exploded (insert your own swear words). My brother-in-law, who is a mild mannered and kind man and slow to anger, was furious to be spoken to like that, and stormed off with my sister in tow. When they passed me down back at the house, as they got into their car, he turned to me and said, “Your dad is a fucking loose cannon.”
A day or two later this had, like most family rows, blown over, but the name Loose Cannon has stuck. It has become Dad’s nickname in the family. Even he smiles. Helping my dad has always been a risky business. You can quite easily end up falling out with him. Once when I was back for a weekend from university I got out of the car and he stormed past me, cursing and swearing, clearly not pleased to see me, and clearly fighting some other losing battle. I wasn’t in the mood after hours on the road. I just shouted after him, “Should I fuck off and leave you to it?”
And he replied “Yes, fuck off.”
I got straight back in the car and went elsewhere.
Some battles are better avoided.
26
Dad would disappear off to the local auction to buy us a turkey. The little rural auction markets are the clearinghouses in the days before Christmas for any table-ready birds that are not sold direct to people on the farms. Often there is a last-minute glut and bargains can be had. As he drove off, we would turn to each other and smirk, because Dad never just bu
ys a turkey. The bargains on offer are sometimes too much for him to refuse. He loves bidding for things, seeing that they make the “right price.” Sometimes he gets the turkey he was sent for, but usually he comes back with enough assorted poultry and fowl to put on a medieval banquet. It all depends on the trade (prices). If the trade is bad, he will not be able to help himself and he will fill the car up. He arrives back later that night, beaming at what he has done. My mother goes out to the car and comes back, shaking her head, asking what the hell she is meant to do with all those birds. She asks him what anyone is actually meant to do with six turkeys, three geese, and a partridge minus a pear tree. Dad shrugs like it isn’t his problem (he is confused why women are always so negative). It is good cheap meat, he says, half the price most folk had paid for their Christmas dinner. We can freeze it and have it in January. My mother groans, and reminds him that the freezer is still full from his “bargains” of last year. We all laugh, and everyone agrees that letting Dad go to a turkey sale is a bad idea. We tuck into cold turkey in July with some chips and tease him when he says it is “a bit dry.” We laugh and tell him next year we’ll stop him going to the turkey sales. But, of course, we never do.
27
My younger daughter’s eyes are so wide with excitement she looks like she might explode.
“Dad, wake up.… He’s been.”
“Eh? Who?”
“Father Christmas.”
“No way.”
“Yes way … Dad.
“I’ve got a stocking full of presents.”
The pattern of our Christmas is the same as when I was a child. It has always been the tradition that the children can open their stocking presents from Father Christmas when they wake up (as long as it isn’t too early). So they pile into our bed. Then, in a frenetic blur of ripping paper, Christmas begins. Soon the bed is littered with crumpled wrapping paper, sticky tape, and kids stuffing sugary sweets in their mouths. Once the stocking presents have been opened, I go outside to feed the sheep, Helen puts the turkey in the oven, and the children have to sit on their hands, enjoy what was in their stockings, and bide themselves until I get back in. They are not allowed to touch their main presents under the Christmas tree until the sheep are fed and I come back in and have had my breakfast. I’m not sure how long it has been like that in our family, but the lesson is a simple one. The farm and the livestock, and the men and women that work, come first.
The Shepherd's Life Page 18
