The Shepherd's Life (29 page)

So I am in her kitchen, and the negotiations are to be done. Such haggling is part of the game, as long as it is respectful.

She opens up with a cup of tea, and some of her famous gingerbread. Then a sermon she has clearly been thinking about for some time. She tells me how few flocks there are to match hers. That when she bought them she had to pay over the odds to the previous owner, Arthur Weir, because he knew they were good. She reminds me that it was when I was “in nappies.” He had no doubt scrutinized her for years before doing that deal. She makes clear that these sheep are precious to her and this is more than simply a sale.

They are sheep that show the effort several generations of shepherds have put into them. Each autumn for centuries someone has added to their quality with the addition of new tups from other noted flocks. There is a depth of good blood in them. They are big strong ewes, with lots of bone, good thick bodies, and bold white heads and legs. They return from that fell each autumn with a fine crop of lambs that are a match for most other flocks in the Lake District. She tells me that she had to pay £20 a head more for their being hefted, a charge that is carried on to each successive shepherd (like a fee for the work done in keeping them well hefted, separate from the value of the sheep). I will have to pay that now. She lists the prices of good fell sheep sold at auctions in recent years by her and others, and tells me that they were drafts, not the stock ewes that remained on the fell. She tells me that she has sorted out the old ewes, and is only selling young sheep with long lives ahead of them. Her good stuff is still in the flock, and I will have to pay handsomely for it. That I am buying, youth and quality.

I know all this is true.

It is my move.

I tell her that what she is asking for them is too much, that I am young and not rich, that I have two jobs, three kids, and a mortgage. I already have a good flock of Herdwick sheep on our land that were once hers, but which have more than a decade of my breeding decisions in them. I can manage without hers. They are good, but no better than my own. I tell her the prices of most of the draft ewes in the auction the past autumn, which was about a third what she wants for these.

I tell her that no one else will pay the price she's asking for.

I make it clear I respect her work and her sheep, but that the asked-for price is too high. She needs to come down.

She tells me that they are an investment. That they will look after me for many years to come, providing me with an income and producing good offspring and draft ewes to sell because of the quality of blood in them. I am paying for something a long time in the making that will in turn last me a long time. She tells me that when she started out with her husband, they were hard up too, had to stretch themselves, had to work hard, but that over time these things come good. She tells me that a few good tups sold from these ewes and I will have paid off much of their value. She softens a little on the asking price, but looks a bit wounded by the compromise.

The lower offer hangs in the air.

I decide to let it.

I sip my tea trying to look disinterested. It is maybe working because she seems a bit defensive. After a while I suggest an offer about thirty pounds per sheep lower than hers, tell her I can't see them making more than that in an auction. But behind my mask I'm genuinely not sure; good stock ewes from respected flocks are rarely sold and can make good money. Still I'm not being mugged on this deal if I can help it.

She now sits in silence looking determined and tough.

No. No. No.

The price I suggest will never do. It is robbery.

I soften and tell her that I will come upwards a little. I still think they are overpriced, but we have reached an impasse and someone needs to move. And I know that the chance to get a flock of sheep like this on your doorstep in the Lake District is rare indeed. I won't ever get another chance like this. This flock has to have a future as well as a past.

The afternoon goes by in a series of bids and counterbids interspersed with long broody silences. My teacup gets refilled from time to time, but as the price drops she stops refilling as if an extra cup of tea is adding further cost to these painful negotiations. In the end, we agree on a deal and shake on it. I've still no idea who came out on top, which is perhaps how it should be between folk who respect each other.

 

12

Of all the writers associated with the Lake District, Beatrix Potter (or Mrs. Heelis as she was known for most of her farming life here) is the one that I love the most. She had the utmost respect for the shepherds of the Lake District, and would have understood what took place between us in Jean's kitchen, because she too negotiated with shepherds about buying flocks of sheep.

When she bought her first true fell farm, at Troutbeck Park, she wisely asked the respected elder Herdwick breeders who might be a suitable shepherd. The name that emerged from these conversations was Tom Storey.

She went to see him and asked if he'd come and be her shepherd. He said he would if the money was right. She offered to double his money. He accepted. Later she put him charge of her flock at Hill Top Farm, near Sawrey.

You might think that her being Beatrix Potter, the famous and wealthy children's author and owner of property, would have intimidated Tom Storey, a young Lake District shepherd. That her notionally being of a higher class, and being much older, might mean she would be due a degree of deference. You'd be wrong.

Soon after he became her shepherd, Tom fell out with Beatrix because she had got some sheep into the pens and redded them for Keswick Show. She hadn't listened to him when he said they weren't good enough. He considered this to be somewhat ignorant meddling in his work. She protested that they had been show sheep in the past and tried to reason with him. He cut her off sharp. If she wanted to show those particular sheep, she better get her old shepherd back. He would not show them and would leave. They weren't fit to show. As any shepherd knows—male or female—you're either in charge of the sheep or you're not.

She went back to the farmhouse and informed Tom's wife that he was bad-tempered.

Beatrix Potter could have got rid of Tom Storey when he defied her on selecting the show sheep. But instead she worked with him, respected his knowledge and his beliefs, and learned a great deal.

In the years to come they transformed the flock, and they would go on to win many shows. She knew it was his judgement that made a lot of this possible. She was very proud of their successes, and she too became respected for her knowledge of sheep. One of her best was a fine ewe called Water Lily, which won many prizes. In the old photos she holds the prizes in the background whilst Tom Storey holds the ewe proudly in the foreground. I won that same prize this last autumn.

Traditionally, this is a most un-English of societies, home to social attitudes more northern in origin. There is still, amongst us, a rough northern form of egalitarianism not unlike that which exists in Scandinavia. In Sweden they call it
Jantelagen
(the unwritten rule that forbids anyone to feel or act superior to his or her neighbour). Usually this way of thinking is scorned as provincial small-mindedness, but I think it enforces a kind of modesty and equality, with the community and its traditions valued more highly than the individual. Shepherds consider themselves the equals of anyone. The social status, wealth, or fame of Mrs. Heelis counted for little with Tom. They were, for all practical purposes, equals, and he the superior party in many ways because of his specialist knowledge. When she worked on the farm (her property), she took orders from him for years.

 

13

Mrs. Beatrix Heelis died on December 22, 1943. Her death was reported in the
Herdwick Sheep Breeder's Association Flock Book
in amongst the other respected members of the breed community who had passed away, a tradition that continues to this day. No more, and no less, important than the others. She would have asked for no more.

Her will is a remarkable document for someone who will always be known to most people for her children's books. It is not about the books but is instead full of concern for her legacy of farms, the ongoing care and respect of her tenants, and the future of the fell farming way of life. She put her money where her mouth was, handing fifteen farms and four thousand acres to the National Trust. She stipulated that her fell farms should have fell-going flocks of the “pure Herdwick breed.”

 

14

A lamb has gone missing. Its mother is agitated. She runs up and down the fence. I left them, hours ago, safe and well, and well mothered, and now it is gone. There are no clues. I ride around the field, checking the other mothers haven't stolen it or taken it by mistake. They haven't. I check the becks in case it has fallen in and drowned. We try to keep ewes with young lambs away from the becks, but it isn't always possible. I hate losing a healthy lamb. I check the neighbouring fields. No sign. Then I see that it has gotten itself stuck between the trunks of an old thorn tree, about a foot off the ground. It is fine, just squashed and tired. I lift it out and it runs off to suckle its mother.

You can lose hours looking for a lamb. Experience tells us that if you lose one lamb in a field it can be an accident, but if you lose two or more, then in all likelihood something is taking them. We have seen it and experienced it countless times. We have some fields that are well fenced and have no streams. If a lamb disappears, it has to have gone somewhere, and most lambs are too big for any bird to have taken. We live with foxes skulking around the lambing fields overnight and in the twilight. Usually they are after the easy meal of the afterbirth left by the ewes. But maybe every other year we get a fox that starts to take newborn lambs, or even those a day or two old. Two years ago we had a fox that was so bold it would be in the lambing fields in daylight when we were less than half a mile away. Sniffing nearer to the new lambs, and nipping in to grab the afterbirth or a lamb's leg to snatch it away before the ewe could defend it. The older ewes are fierce, and stamp their feet and lower their heads like they will charge. But a younger ewe can be confused by the fox and can be fooled. Traditionally the farms here called the local hunt when they had a rogue fox, and the hunt would come and get the culprit (or any other fox unlucky enough to be abroad when they came). The hunts have often found lamb bones, skin, and remains near or in the fox den. Often the culprit is a bitch that has lost her mate, and has to become cunning to provide for herself or her cubs.

 

15

My older daughter, Molly, is coming across the field with two ewes and their day-old lambs walking in front of her. She understands sheep, and cuts left or right behind them to keep them walking in the right direction. She knows when to pause and let them mother up again, because her grandmother has schooled her on this. I open the gate, and the ewes lead the lambs through to the fresh pasture. My daughter is clutching her crook and beaming. She loves moving the lambs.

The mothering instinct is sometimes so strong that ewes will start to steal other newborn lambs for a day or two before they give birth themselves. They will appear behind a birthing ewe and will lick the lamb as it comes out, and nuzzle it away from its increasingly distressed mother. Sometimes we have to catch and pen a repeat offender to stop the chaos. Once she has her own lambs, she will be fine. Sometimes twin lambs will head away from their mother in different directions, despite her best efforts to nudge them back together; after a while they can be at either end of the field, and she may not mother one when they are reunited. Sometimes several ewes give birth in the same place and then the lambs sliver and slide into each other and I will scratch my head, trying to work out which belongs to which.

The best way to prevent freshly lambed ewes getting muddled up, or trying to claim older ones that aren't theirs, is to clear the lambing fields of lambs each day. So we carefully move ewes with lambs to new fields with a bite of new grass grown for this purpose. It means that the ewes are given a boost of fresh grass when they start milking. The twins we often catch and load into the trailer behind the quad bike (ATV); singles can be walked away. Some ewes with strong maternal instincts will be caught easily. We exploit that mothering instinct to move them, with the ewe following us to a new field or dry patch of ground or to the trailer. Others are caught with the crook, or with the help of the sheepdogs (though only an experienced dog would be allowed anywhere near the lambing fields, as control is essential).

There is an invisible link between a ewe and her lambs; take liberties, or take your eye off the ewe for a second, and you can lose her, the link broken. Some ewes can abandon a lamb if they are stressed, so we are on a knife edge helping them, and occasionally have to deal with a ewe that abandons or turns on her own lambs. It becomes a blur of adrenaline and stress; and though it wrecks you, it also comes and goes with a strange kind of buzz.