1. Of all the writers associated with the Lake District, Beatrix Potter (or Mrs Heelis, as she was known for 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 to buy 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 in charge of her flock at Hill Top Farm, near Sawrey.
2. 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 being notionally of a higher class and much older meant 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 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 had 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.
3. 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. 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 a classic old photo, Beatrix holds the prize in the background whilst Tom Storey holds the ewe proudly in the foreground. I won that same prize this last autumn.
4. Traditionally, this is the most un-English of societies. 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). 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 was 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.
5. Mrs Heelis hired an extra shepherd for lambing time each year to help Tom Storey. His name was Joseph Moscrop. He first went to help in 1926 and must have made a good impression because he was invited back every year for the next seventeen years. They wrote each other letters full of affection and friendship and mutual respect, the last one sent to him just nine days before her death in 1943.
6. I love these letters. Ostensibly they were written in order to agree the wage for Joseph’s work, about which the haggling goes on for a long time each year, but because they are letters between friends, Beatrix also writes to him of the day-to-day, week-to-week happenings of a fell farm. Sheepdogs being too rough, waging war on the flies that make sheep suffer, the price of fat lambs, how the pet lambs are doing, whether the cattle are ‘good doers’, the merits or flaws of other sheep men, or whether Joseph knows of a good sheepdog for sale. She writes of sheep caught behind walls by snowdrifts, the falling price of wool, maggots on the sheep, shepherds being called up to fight in the war, and the state of the potato crop.
7. Lots of the names mentioned in those letters are those of the grandfathers of the men I know now.
Mrs Beatrix Heelis died on 22 December 1943. Her death was reported in the Herdwick Sheep Breeders’ 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.
8. Her will is a remarkable document for someone who will always be known for her children’s books. It is not really 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 4,000 acres to the National Trust. She stipulated that her fell farms should have fell-going flocks of the ‘pure Herdwick breed’.
9. Soon after her death, her husband, William Heelis, the local land agent, sent a letter to Joseph Moscrop, asking him to come for the lambing. Joseph replied as he always had, demanding a higher wage, and Mr Heelis, who didn’t know about the friendly haggling game between friends that Beatrix and Joseph had played through these letters for years (and being a little more formal in his social attitudes), replied to say that the suggested wages were impossible and that they should break the ‘old connection’. So neither Beatrix nor Joseph saw lambing time at Troutbeck Park again.
10. The first year my new flock of fell ewes came down to the lower ground of our farm, they sulked all winter. They knew this wasn’t their home. They’d stand in the corner of the field nearest to their old home as if in silent protest. They held to that corner even when there was better grass away across the field. They even held to that corner when the snow came, and their stubbornness and clinging made fools of them because they were in the most exposed area of the farm. I had to walk them down from their place of protest to somewhere more sheltered. At lambing time, any that I had to bring into the barns with my own sheep were cross, and jumped out of pens, and hung to each other.
11. A lamb has gone missing. Its mother is agitated. She runs up and down the fence. I left them, hours ago, safe and the lamb 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 got 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.
12. 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.
13. 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 new-born 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 as if to 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 it 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.
14. My elder 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.
15. The mothering instinct is sometimes so strong that ewes will start to steal other new-born 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.
16. 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; 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).
17. 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 adrenalin and stress, and though it wrecks you, it also comes and goes with a strange kind of buzz.
18. My daughter has gone for another ewe down the field. She lifts the lambs to their feet because they were sunbathing and sleepy. The ewe is a proud mother and stands over them, giving mouth. She is so defiant a mother that she nudges at my daughter with her head, pushing her away from her lambs. Molly is having none of it and waves her away determinedly. She then walks the ewe, with lambs in train, up the field to me and I let them through the gate. My daughter laughs at the bossy ewe that was not remotely scared of her.
19. As lambs are born and straighten out in the first few days, we see the future of our flock, and little clues in their appearance tell us whether these will be good sheep. When I was fortunate enough to breed my best tup, Darwin, I knew soon after his birth that he was special. He was just brighter, stood better, and showed off more than the other lambs. He stood up with great legs, a big well-bred head and nice white lugs coming off his head at just the right angle. When I see one like that, I start dreaming about its future. I’m still waiting for another like him.
20. Lambing time often feels like it starts in the depths of winter and ends in summer. About halfway through, the spring comes and everything becomes easier. The seasonal transition is dramatic. The days are lengthening. The sun grows in warmth, hanging higher in the sky each day. The sheep have started to thrive again and put on flesh. The land is drying out. I can hear water seeping imperceptibly away. As the fields warm in the sunlight each morning, the valley is bottomed with mist and the fields are rimed wet with dew. The fell sides catch the warmth sometimes as it rises from the colder valley floor. This sun-warmed air catches my face as I rise up the fell sides to feed the ewes.
21. This morning I noticed something missing. The winter-vagrant fieldfares are gone from the hedgerows, back to the far North. I don’t always notice straight away, and then I know I haven’t seen them for a while. And you feel a little sadness, like the valley is emptier, quieter, less colourful and chatty. The fieldfares have headed away over the seas and other lands to breed. The fields are littered with fresh mole heaps, a rich black loamy soil of fields not ploughed for decades, if ever. The few moles we catch, we hang on the barbed-wire fences, making but a small dent in their number.
22. Then, as we work, we see the summer migrants return. Stonechats suddenly reappear from Africa, bobbing eagerly up and down on our walls, and on the bare ground where the ewes have been fed through the winter. Oystercatchers strut around the pastures and stand atop the gate stoops or posts. Curlews rise and fall on their own song. Geese circle past the fell side before falling slowly on muscular wings to the freshening pastures below. The trees host a little orchestra of whistle and chatter from the starlings. But the snow still clings on the high fells; Dodd Scar holds the snow sometimes right into May. The snow-speckled fell looks more and more like the side of a piebald pony. The buzzards start to find thermals and get back their majesty after a winter of sulking in the ash trees and scratching worms out of the molehills. Everything in the natural world around me changes and I am outside to feel and see it. Our spirits rise again.
23. I take off my waterproof leggings and wellington boots and throw them in a corner. I lace up my walking boots. I am back on top of the ground instead of wading through it. New grass means we stop feeding hay, or buying supplementary feed. Grass means our workload eases, or changes at least, to less life-critical tasks. Longer days mean we can start to do other jobs outside that have been on hold through the dark months. There is a time each spring when I know it can’t go back, we are through it. I notice the oak buds fattening slightly. The catkins appear on the willow by the edge of the becks. And as we are lambing, the rooks begin their courtships and build their nests, journeying here and there with sticks, or tugging wool from the backs of our ewes to line their nests, leaving little circles where the robberies have taken place. They glide down from the wooded fell sides to where we feed without a single beat of their fingered wings, wheeling above us, seemingly motionless and within touching distance.
24. There is a kind of light-headedness that comes with spring. The whole valley echoes to the sound of ewes calling their lambs, and the older lambs start racing each other across the hillsides. Our work shifts from supervising lambing to looking after hundreds of young lambs and keeping them alive and out of trouble. Some days it all goes like a dream. Ewes give birth by themselves, get their lambs sucked, and then tuck them sheltered behind some rushes. Older lambs follow their mothers obediently and safely. Sometimes a lamb makes me laugh by chasing or trying to head-butt one of the crows that struts about amongst them, shining purple, bronze and jet black in the sunshine. I see frogspawn in the wet bits of land where I pass each morning. The heron folds down the wind heading downstream.
25. In the middle of April I take my geld hoggs (ewe lambs from the previous year that do not lamb) back to the fell. They have been away wintering in the lowlands on my friend’s dairy farm. They are fat and bouncing around the fields in rude health. For a month, they have become increasingly restless and terrorize his walls and fences. They are bored teenagers and just when I least need the hassle (because I am lambing the ewes), I start getting phone calls to say they have escaped into a garden or someone else’s fields. It should be a ten-minute job to gather them into the yard to give them their vaccinations before going to the fell, but it takes me half a day because they have managed to disperse themselves across the parish where he farms. They gallop about at 100 mph and test the dogs to the limits. Two of them are lame and decide to sulk and lie down in a bog. I carry them out on my shoulders. It is a great relief to lead them home in the trailer and shove them back up the fell where they can do no harm and be as wild as they like.