English Pastoral by James Rebanks (100 books to read .txt) 📕

lambs are calling to each other across the valley. I take Tom and Isaac to train our youngest sheepdogs, Bess and Nell. At the barn, they jump excitedly and nuzzle us, looking for praise, as soon as I open the stable door. Isaac has to holler at them and whack them away with his hand until they respect him. Tom clings to the fuel tank of the quad bike between his knees, bent forwards as they jump on to the bike behind him. Then, as we head down the lane, they jump off, race ahead and scrap with each other, tumbling down the bank between the thistles.

Isaac is the kindest, brightest and most loyal boy any father could hope for. He is a bookworm, and as we go he tells me tales from the Norse myths he has been reading. His farming dream fills me with pride, hope and fear. Pride and hope because I would, of course, love one or more of my children to be farming here one day in this place that has become my life. I love the idea of this old farm continuing on, and that one or more of them might feel something like the love I feel for this valley, and have the same sense of purpose it has given me. But I don’t want them to feel trapped in their father’s dreams. I fear for them too, because it is at times a crushingly hard way of life, and the economics of what we do are terrible.

We train the young dogs on some old ewes in the bottom meadow, sending them out around the field’s edge to bring back the sheep to a pen made of hurdles in the middle of the field. Bess is strong and keen. She loves work. The ewes have learned that they cannot escape her and put themselves in the pen without much resistance. Bess looks at me, frustrated that such feeble sheep have been her lot. Her sister Nell is timid, and it is all I can do to keep her reassured. But after a little while she is turning them and has a certain silky style. I regret keeping them both, because Bess is a bit of a thug and seems to have affected the confidence of her sister. I will have to give Nell more praise and time away from the rest as I try and make a sheepdog of her. Instead of rushing around, chasing our tails, I’d like to get our farm on an even keel, so we can breathe, slow down and devote more time to jobs like training the sheepdogs and enjoying this amazing place we call home.

~

We go to see my tup hoggs, the year-old males we keep for selling as tups (rams). They spend their summer up on a plain little field belonging to a man called Barrie who, Isaac insists, looks like Father Christmas. Something about ‘Barrie’s Field’, perhaps its peaty acidic soil, helps darken our Herdwick fleeces to a deep slate-blue, the ideal colour for selling them in the autumn. Their white heads and legs have ‘cleaned out’, and brightened in recent weeks, losing their black lamb colour, and now their head and legs fill my keen eyes with a whiteness like snow. Their noses are wrinkling and bulking out, with testosterone kicking in as they reach sexual maturity. Their legs are becoming sturdy, their bones thickening, and behind their heads their woollen necks are silvering like manes. Their pale horns have curled around in recent weeks, twisting about their ears, and often close to their eyes. There is a pecking order, and the strongest among them strut about like kings.

I love my flock of sheep; they remain my pride and joy and, I suspect, they always will be. I work with Isaac on his sheep-judging skills, helping him to see the little things that set a great sheep apart from a field full of good ones. He is just learning the basics, but I think he will be OK. Last autumn I was unable to go to our shepherd’s meet to show our sheep; my other work had swallowed me up. I didn’t have time to make the sheep ready, so instead Isaac went with my mother, and I stayed away, frustrated not to take part in a day I love so much. That night Isaac returned proudly wielding a silver plate he had won in the ‘young handlers’ competition – an award for the young shepherd who had displayed the best ability to present a sheep to the judges. ‘But you didn’t take a sheep,’ I blurted out. ‘Oh, that was OK,’ he said. ‘Jean Wilson lent me her tup lamb, and it stood itself up real proud and proper. I thought I’d win.’ Jean loved that – sending a message home to me that if you held one of her sheep, you win the silverware.

~

I was brought up to think in a certain way about what made a ‘good farmer’. The best farmers had the best cattle, sheep or pigs – they were great stockmen. They had fields brimming with amazing crops, and they worked hard. To me, this world view felt like it had never changed and never would. But I can see clearly now, as I look back at the farming lives of both my father and my grandfather, that what it means to be a good farmer evolves from generation to generation.

I grew up understanding that a farm was a piece of property, a private thing owned by someone, a family’s entire wealth, or else a tangled legacy of debt and obligations. It was above all a place of work – work that defined people and gave them purpose. It was also a business, a commercial enterprise, producing food to pay the bills and feed other people. Feeding people is a noble endeavour, but is now often taken for granted despite its importance. Human societies are laden with risk –