A Year in the Life of the Yorkshire Shepherdess Read online

  ‘I’ve ordered six hundred saplings, six hundred stakes and six hundred tree tubes,’ I said. ‘You’re gonna need to take the little trailer to get it all in.’

  ‘Nah, we’re goin’ in t’pickup, we’ll get it all in,’ Clive said, confidently.

  They were away a while, far longer than expected, and then finally I saw them driving very slowly and carefully down our road. The pickup was well loaded – or, to be accurate, overloaded. The tree tubes come in bundles, and having run out of room in the back of the pickup the tubes had been tied on to the roof with baler twine. The trees on the back seat were sticking out of the windows, and others were poking out of the tailgate. The vehicle looked like a camouflaged missile-launcher.

  We can’t simply decide to plant trees wherever we want: we also have to clear it with an ecologist and an archaeologist. When we wanted to dig a few shallow ponds to encourage wading birds like redshanks, we had to consult them both, and an archaeological survey had to be done on the proposed site. There have been folk living at Ravenseat for nearly a thousand years, but there’s little remaining evidence of them, other than old field boundaries and quarry workings. Even so, this is enough to hold up tree-planting and pond-digging. The archaeologist said, ‘There’s evidence of peat cutting in field NY8603 2501, where were you wanting to put the ponds?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, our predecessors were diggin’ there too . . . and that’s exactly what we’re goin’ to be doin’ . . .’

  He ignored me. ‘I suggest you build your ponds one hundred metres to the north of the proposed site,’ he said, pointing at the map with his pencil.

  ‘Yer want us to build t’ponds on t’steepest part o’ t’hill?’

  That’s what we had to do. It’s unlikely that we’ll live to see the full reward for our tree-planting labours, but we hope the next generation who farm Ravenseat will appreciate them. We are already a haven for wild birds but anything that we can do to encourage them to nest here and rear their chicks must be a worthwhile undertaking. Only recently we saw a newcomer, a bright green bird which, after consulting the bird book, we now know is a siskin. Clive’s passion for birds (the feathered variety) has over the years rubbed off on me. I saw an advert placed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in a farming journal a few years ago, asking for farmers to allow volunteers to do surveys of the birds on their land. All of the birds would be recorded, and the farmer would get a map of the farm with all the species that had been found, and where. The walkers who pass through here ask me all sorts of questions, from the sublime to the ridiculous, but I’ve always felt I would like to be more knowledgeable about the birds. A map pinned up in the woodshed for people to refer to would be interesting and informative. So I rang the number, gave them our details, and all was going well until I told the RSPB the size of Ravenseat.

  ‘Ahh, now I’m afraid we can’t do an area of that size,’ she said. ‘And it’s not just the size, it’s the rough terrain.’

  Understandably, most volunteer bird watchers want a stroll through a few pastures and meadows, not an endless hike across bleak moors. It was going to be a major undertaking to map Ravenseat, and for that reason she said that they couldn’t do it.

  I forgot about it until a few months later, when we were called by Chris, the Conservation Adviser for Northern England for the RSPB. He still didn’t have any volunteers, but he said he’d like to do it himself in his spare time. It took him months to complete the map, coming up for a couple of days at a time. He was extremely thorough, and in a way I felt envious of the time he spent quietly sitting and watching what was going on. It is hard sometimes to stop and appreciate the views. If I sit back, I soon notice something untoward, a gap in a wall, a yow limping, or sometimes even an animal’s body.

  Maintenance of the barns and drystone walls at Ravenseat is an ongoing, never-ending project. Slates blow off during the winter storms, wooden spars and loft floors rot and the weight of snow causes walls to fall and foundations to shift. We can keep up with running repairs but sometimes a barn will need scaffolding and more specialist equipment. That is when we will get the experts in: builders who specialize in the restoration of traditional buildings. The children love these places, dreaming and spinning stories of the people whose names are scratched into the lintels and beams. In summer they plead with me to let them take a pop-up tent and sleeping bags, for a camping expedition inside a barn. But when they hear faint scratches and the scampering of tiny feet, or rain trickles through the fractured slates in the roof, they are back in the farmhouse before the sun rises.

  When I first admired the precision stonework and the water-shod outer walls of the traditional barns built centuries ago by those who lived and worked at Ravenseat, it occurred to me that they were skilled craftsmen who built things to last. Perfectionists in their art, maybe rather more like Alec than Clive.

  It’s interesting to discover how much history of the area is actually recorded. It’s a question of talking to the right people, and perhaps also a little bit of luck. My friend Rachel was fortunate enough to be given a whole cache of old documents about the area and I spent a fascinating evening sifting through photographs and papers going back as far as the 1820s. I’ve always loved trying to put faces and histories to the names of people who have left their mark on the place that I call home. Obviously, the further back in history you go the more difficult it becomes.

  One afternoon we’d been to pick up a stray yow that had been gathered in by one of our neighbours and left in a fold a way up Sledale. As it was a decent day and the pens were only accessible on foot or by quad bike, I’d loaded the children into the trailer and packed us all a picnic so that we could do a bit of sightseeing and exploring. The children were excited, as we were heading off our heaf and straying into foreign territory ourselves, rather like the yow we were going to retrieve. We decided to investigate the Stone House bridge, an unusual edifice that has always intrigued me. Spanning the river Swale near its source, away from the prying eyes of visitors on the Swaledale road, the bridge is solid, well built, but only connects two fields without even a track leading to it.

  I had been told a tale that a father and son from a local farming family had built the bridge to showcase their skills. They competed against each other, building from opposite sides to see who could get to the middle and do the better job. When you look closely at the bridge you can see differences in the walling styles, one side having tighter joints and using smaller stones while the other was walled a fraction more crudely. The children were in their element, running back and forth, from side to side and hopping from stone to stone in the river beneath.

  But stories can and do become distorted over time, and it was when I was talking to Rachel that evening that I learned the real story of the bridge. It was not a father and son who’d built it, but two brothers, and they’d erected it in the place where their father had drowned trying to cross the river at night, at a time of year when it was in spate. Indeed their father’s body had been pulled out of the river Swale some eleven miles downstream, such was the force of the torrent. Together they built the bridge, a fitting memorial to him, even if it’s only used by sheep. One of the brothers, when young, fathered an illegitimate son with the housekeeper, who refused to marry him. The boy left the Dales for London and found himself in great demand as he too was a skilled stonemason and made his fortune, reputedly, building the Holborn Viaduct.

  I was also surprised to discover that back in the eighteenth century Ravenseat had its own public house. I knew that our woodshed had previously been a chapel but it seems that as well as the God-fearing inhabitants who refreshed their spirits in the tiny ling (heather)-thatched chapel, there were others who preferred a different type of refreshment. It’s hard to believe that this isolated, remote farmstead at the top of the dale was once so busy that a pub thrived here, selling ale to the men from the lead and coal mines, the quarrymen, the packhorse men, as well as the shepherds, labourers and drovers. There was a
coal depot at Ravenseat, where the coal from the mines at Tan Hill and the other pits (some of which were working as early as the thirteenth century) would be stored then collected and moved on by packhorse, the same horses that brought supplies of meal and potatoes back to the hamlet on the return journey. In the year 1670, 150 loads of coal came through here: it was a busy place. Nowadays, with the constant stream of coast-to-coast walkers and visitors to the shepherd’s hut, I like to appreciate that Ravenseat has gone full circle and is again as bustling with people and life as it was back then.

  ‘Thar ye are,’ I said to Clive as I told him these tales of the history of our home. ‘Sex, tragedy, all them folks comin’ an going: ’twas all ’appening back then just t’same as it is now . . . some things nivver change.’

  3

  March

  Sharp frosts in the early mornings mean that we are still wrapped up in layers of fleeces and waterproofs in March, but there’s a vague hint of spring in the air, and later in the day we get occasional shafts of bright sunlight to remind us of the glorious beauty to come.

  Old Jimmy was one of our neighbours, a typical Dales farmer of wild and weatherbeaten appearance, his outwardly unkempt attire belying the fact that he was learned and well read and had forgotten more than many people ever knew about the history, sheep and people of this area. Born here in the Upper Dale, he spent much of his life on the moors, and revered a small plant known as mosscrop. He would pick a tiny sprig, put it in the top pocket of his tweed jacket and present his wife Elenor with it, as the first flower of spring. Its emergence in March was for him symbolic: a sign that heralded better weather, and a good crop of lambs. I too look at this tiny unassuming plant with great fondness. For not only does it tell me that spring is just around the corner but it also reminds me of this most enigmatic Dalesman who I was fortunate enough to be able to call my friend.

  Our Raven is fourteen now, and a very handy lass to have around. She’s clever, quite academic, very practical and – dare I say it – sensible. From driving the Land Rover or tractor round the fields at hay time, to riding horses, to serving cream teas: she can turn her hand to anything around the farm. She keeps an eye on the reservation book for the shepherd’s hut, watching for a vacant weekend when her friends can take it over. The shepherd’s hut is a perfect place for a teenage party, they can play music, toast marshmallows on the fire, and talk all night without any interference from me. There’s a bonus for us, too: when they stay at Easter they’re happy to take a turn at the night-time shift in the lambing shed.

  The mother of one of Raven’s friends was worried about ‘putting on’ us.

  ‘Y’know, I don’t want to cause you extra work, you’ve got enough people to feed . . .’ she said.

  ‘Don’t worry ’bout it. Honestly, if I’m cookin’ tea for nine then yan or two more isn’t gonna make a happorth o’ difference,’ I said.

  I’m very happy to buy Raven the clothes, shoes and things she wants: I think she’s reached an age where these things are more important when she’s in the company of her school friends. Back on the farm she doesn’t care, and like me she goes for a mix of mismatched garments, mostly charity-shop finds. One morning I was rummaging through the wardrobe looking for something a little tidier to wear when she said, ‘When yer die, mother, can I ’ave yer clothes?’

  I suppose I could have been upset that she was thinking about my death, but in fact I was quite flattered that my teenage daughter likes my eclectic taste.

  Clothes shopping is definitely not one of my pleasures. The little ones don’t really care what they wear, as long as it’s warm and keeps the rain out. But as soon as it matters to them, I’m happy to get them what they want within reason. I’m not so old I can’t remember the agonies of being a teenager . . .

  In March, the older sheep that have been sent away for the winter come back to Ravenseat. Sometimes we hire a haulage contractor to bring them all back in one go, or make a series of trips with our trailer if they’re not too far away. We need them back in good time so that they acclimatize to life in the hills, and settle down before lambing. We have to check all their ear tags and record their movement. We must stick to the rules and regulations issued by DEFRA and record all details about animal births, deaths and movements, and there is a lot of bureaucracy around it. I can see there have to be controls: nobody would like a repeat of the foot and mouth epidemic of 2001, but at times it seems to be an unnecessary burden. It is easy to unwittingly land yourself in trouble. For example, we once took some heifers to some summer grazing on another farmer’s land near Appleby. He doesn’t keep cows, and it suited us both for ours to graze his fields; I duly registered on the computer that they had moved off Ravenseat. But then one of them calved, earlier than we expected. She was a fine calf, the heifer an attentive mother. All that I needed to do was register the calf’s birth and apply for a passport for her. I gave the mother’s ear-tag number, the breed and the date of birth.

  Then I had a phone call:

  ‘You’ve tried to apply for a passport for a calf, but the mother is not on your holding, according to our records.’

  My heart sank. I told the truth and explained what had happened: it would have been easier if I’d lied and said we’d brought the mother back here before the calf was born, and claimed I’d simply forgotten to register the movement. I tried to explain that nature doesn’t always observe the jurisdiction of the Cattle Tracing System.

  ‘The owner of the land where the calf was born is the keeper of the cattle, and he has to register the birth and apply for a tag and a passport . . .’

  ‘But he doesn’t keep cows. He’s never had to register one, and it’s an enormous amount of work if you’ve never done it before. Isn’t there a way round this?’

  ‘Yes, there is an alternative: put the calf down.’

  I was incredulous. It was born in the wrong field, that’s all. I had to help the other farmer through all the hoops of registering as the owner of the calf and getting a passport for it, then passing it back to me. I sometimes daydream about the days when cows went by their pet names, and Buttercup was moved from field to field and lived to a ripe old age . . .

  Before we changed to Beef Shorthorns we used to breed Belgian Blues, a fashionable breed at the time. One year we bred a wonder bull calf, an amazing creature. He had great length, was nicely marked, stood correctly and had that most desirable feature, one that all breeders aspire to: an unbelievably enormous backside. Everything about him looked good, and we just knew that one day he’d be a show winner.

  We decided to use a creep feeder, a hopper with a trough that you can fill with their feed ration of barley and pellet mixture, but designed so that only calves can fit through the graduated bars, not their mothers. They could go back and forth in and out of the feeder without the bigger animals taking any. The calves loved the feed, and the greediest of all was our showstopper.

  ‘I’ll tell yer summat. That calf in’t ’alf rattlin’ them bars when ’e goes into t’feeder,’ Clive said.

  ‘Aye, it’s that big old arse,’ I said.

  With hindsight, we should have altered the bars then, but we didn’t. The next day, when we went to refill the feeder, the calf was dead: jammed in the feeder. He had become wedged, panicked and had a heart attack from fright. It felt like we’d bred it to have an enormous behind, then this, in turn, had killed it. We had to prise him out of the feeder and cart him across the bridge for the knacker man to take away.

  When you have a flock of sheep or herd of cattle you know that some will die, and you learn not to get too upset by a dead animal. If I’ve tried my hardest, then I have to accept it. We have our old crusties that die of old age, but there will always be the odd, unexplained death. The downside of a flock that roams the hills is that sometimes a sheep will become ill and die before the shepherd finds it. From time to time one of us comes across a sodden pile of wool in a bog, a plastic ear tag floating on the watery grave. There are times when we fi
nd a dead newborn lamb that has suffocated because the birth sac covered his face, and it is maddening to think that if only we’d have been there minutes sooner then we could have saved him. But there is no point dwelling on the ‘what ifs’.

  A good friend of ours had what he thought was the best tup lamb ever, but unfortunately it died. He still took it to the pub to show everybody what a cracking lamb it had been.

  Another friend, a small-time sheep breeder, told us how he had overheard a couple of old boys talking at the bar in the local pub. They were describing the best tup they’d ever clapped eyes on.

  ‘What a heeead ’e ’ad,’ said one.

  ‘Aye, couldn’t be matched for hair, I’ll tell thi,’ said the other.

  They talked on all night, until our friend tapped one of them on the shoulder and asked where he could see this amazing sheep.

  ‘Nay, t’hell, ’ee’s deeead,’ said one of them.

  ‘Deeead in t’summer o’ 79,’ said his mate, chipping in.

  Gone, but clearly not forgotten.

  We’re not allowed to bury dead animals on the farm: we have to have them taken away to the knacker’s yard. Considering the line of his work, our knacker man Geoff is surprisingly jovial, going about his business with a smile and taking it all in his stride. He is charming, charismatic and a larger-than-life character. Whenever we see him when he’s not on his official duties, he has a pretty girlfriend on his arm. None of his ladies appear to have been put off by his unsavoury job or even the faint but pervasive scent of the knacker van.

  His lorry holds a gruesome fascination for the children, who always want to have a peek at the carcasses inside it.

  Dealing with dead animals all day hasn’t put Geoff off live ones, and he has a menagerie of waifs and strays. He has a passion for peafowl, and when our resident couple, Mr Peacock and Mrs Peahen, finally managed to rear a couple of chicks, we gave them to him. Peahens are not the best mothers: Mrs Peahen would lay a clutch of eggs, sit on them until the first egg hatched and then give up on the rest. She would then trail her lone chick all over the farm until it died of exhaustion, unless I intervened. With her chick dead or removed by me, she spent the rest of the summer harassing the chickens and trying to steal their chicks.