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Authors: James Rebanks
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sight of their farm in its summer mode of abundance. The ewes and lambs grazed contentedly below. The fells shimmered in the dusk, red, orange, and blue. The hayfields below like patches of purple with their flowered grasses headed up. I could almost taste the sweet hay smell, the pollen in the air. The valley echoed always to the sound of ewes calling their lambs.
There is a rusting metal gate halfway up that lane where they would stop and look over their home. The setting sun would bathe the valley, the fields a golden haze of insects, thistles, and flowering grasses. Iâd listen to them talk, and feel their love of, and pride in, this place.
Some summers, we walked our cattle up into an isolated little valley called Dowthwaite Head, to graze land belonging to a farmer my grandfather knew called Mayson Weir. Once we got there, the cattle would graze away across the fields, flies and dust rising around their feet, their tails swishing in the sunshine. Theyâd be âfat as butterâ when we went back for them in the autumn. The movement upwards of sheep and cattle enabled the best land below to be protected from grazing to make hay.
Mayson was a character. You could get lost up there in his whitewashed farmhouse having a whisky. âGo on, youâll have another.â Then it was too late to argue. My grandfatherâs glass would be three fingers deep with whisky. Iâd sit listening to them joking and swapping stories and gossip. Iâd munch custard creams or gingerbread. I remember them telling of a shepherd who had died when a bunch of them had gone to a pool to cool down on a hot summer day. He had dived in and not come back up. Sometimes Mayson would disappear and come back with some home-cured bacon from his back kitchen. It would be covered in the fuzz that grows on it. Heâd cut some off and produce a fry-up. Today, thirty years later, I am friends with Mayson. Families like ours roll on beside each other, through the ages, with the bonds enduring. Individuals live and die, but the farms, the flocks, and the old families go on.
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25
When my grandfather bought our farm in the fells he took us into the landscape of another breed, the Herdwick. Herdwicks are born black with white ear tips but change colour as they age, until they have a white, hoar-frosted head and legs, and a blue-grey fleece. They are arguably the toughest mountain sheep in Britain. Snow. Rain. Hail. Sleet. Wind. Weeks of dour wet weather. No problem. At one day old with a good mother they are almost indestructible, regardless of the weather, with a thick leathery skin and a carpetlike black fleece that keeps them dry and warm. They can live on less than any other sheep in these conditions and come off the fells with a lamb of value in the autumn. Recent scientific research has shown that Herdwicks are genetically rather specialâthey have in them a primitive genome that few other British sheep carry. Their nearest relatives are sheep in Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and the northern islands of Orkney. It is believed that they go back to ancestors that lived on the islands of the Wadden Sea, or further north in Scandinavia. Local myth has always said they came with the Vikings on their boats, and the science now suggests this is true. Since they arrived, they have been selectively bred for more than a thousand years to suit this landscape.
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The first time I saw Herdwicks on our farm was as a child. They have more character than more modern sheep. The six-month-old lambs stood there, watching me knowingly. Dark-brown fleeced, with sturdy white legs, a touch of the teddy bear about them in their early winter coats. My grandfather had bought a hundred from a neighbouring farmer to fatten them. He was rather startled by them, as (unlike our other breeds) they seemed to think his modest farm was paradise and got fat quickly, and he was able to sell them for a profit. They had probably lived
There is a rusting metal gate halfway up that lane where they would stop and look over their home. The setting sun would bathe the valley, the fields a golden haze of insects, thistles, and flowering grasses. Iâd listen to them talk, and feel their love of, and pride in, this place.
Some summers, we walked our cattle up into an isolated little valley called Dowthwaite Head, to graze land belonging to a farmer my grandfather knew called Mayson Weir. Once we got there, the cattle would graze away across the fields, flies and dust rising around their feet, their tails swishing in the sunshine. Theyâd be âfat as butterâ when we went back for them in the autumn. The movement upwards of sheep and cattle enabled the best land below to be protected from grazing to make hay.
Mayson was a character. You could get lost up there in his whitewashed farmhouse having a whisky. âGo on, youâll have another.â Then it was too late to argue. My grandfatherâs glass would be three fingers deep with whisky. Iâd sit listening to them joking and swapping stories and gossip. Iâd munch custard creams or gingerbread. I remember them telling of a shepherd who had died when a bunch of them had gone to a pool to cool down on a hot summer day. He had dived in and not come back up. Sometimes Mayson would disappear and come back with some home-cured bacon from his back kitchen. It would be covered in the fuzz that grows on it. Heâd cut some off and produce a fry-up. Today, thirty years later, I am friends with Mayson. Families like ours roll on beside each other, through the ages, with the bonds enduring. Individuals live and die, but the farms, the flocks, and the old families go on.
Â
25
When my grandfather bought our farm in the fells he took us into the landscape of another breed, the Herdwick. Herdwicks are born black with white ear tips but change colour as they age, until they have a white, hoar-frosted head and legs, and a blue-grey fleece. They are arguably the toughest mountain sheep in Britain. Snow. Rain. Hail. Sleet. Wind. Weeks of dour wet weather. No problem. At one day old with a good mother they are almost indestructible, regardless of the weather, with a thick leathery skin and a carpetlike black fleece that keeps them dry and warm. They can live on less than any other sheep in these conditions and come off the fells with a lamb of value in the autumn. Recent scientific research has shown that Herdwicks are genetically rather specialâthey have in them a primitive genome that few other British sheep carry. Their nearest relatives are sheep in Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and the northern islands of Orkney. It is believed that they go back to ancestors that lived on the islands of the Wadden Sea, or further north in Scandinavia. Local myth has always said they came with the Vikings on their boats, and the science now suggests this is true. Since they arrived, they have been selectively bred for more than a thousand years to suit this landscape.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
The first time I saw Herdwicks on our farm was as a child. They have more character than more modern sheep. The six-month-old lambs stood there, watching me knowingly. Dark-brown fleeced, with sturdy white legs, a touch of the teddy bear about them in their early winter coats. My grandfather had bought a hundred from a neighbouring farmer to fatten them. He was rather startled by them, as (unlike our other breeds) they seemed to think his modest farm was paradise and got fat quickly, and he was able to sell them for a profit. They had probably lived