The Shepherd's Life (19 page)

“It's out of that Geoff Marwood ewe I bought.”

“I should have known her—put her to the big Ewbank tup.”

My grandfather used to have an anecdote for every ewe, and used to drive us mad, telling us where each one lambed, what its lamb sold for. Today my father and I take turns offering comment and judgement. We will remember today's judgements a year or so from now and remind each other about where we went wrong (or right).

Sometimes great sheep are flukes, the result of accidental mating combinations. But more often than not there was a plan in someone's mind. I had until recently a fine old Herdwick tup that had bred very good sheep for me. He was old; about ten wives would be sufficient or I would kill him with the effort. One of my best old ewes had bred a son to that old tup that I sold for a good price the year before, £1,900. So as we sorted the ewes to the different tups, I looked for her, found her, and made sure she was returned to him. The next spring she bred me one of the best sheep I have ever had. The old tup died the following winter of old age, but I still have his special son to pass his blood on in the flock. Three years ago a good friend Anthony Hartley kindly let me take five ewes to a tup that I admired but which he did not want to sell. I chose five ewes carefully. It was perhaps the best hour's work I have ever done. Two years later I sold the offspring, the first tup for 5,500, the second for 2,000, the third for 950 guineas; and one of the daughters is now my show ewe and has filled my mantelpiece with silver cups. But like everyone else, we have bred plenty of average and unexceptional sheep, and made plenty of matches that didn't work. As ever with a farming life, the little triumphs matter because of the countless failures.

After an hour or two we have sorted the ewes into different flocks for each tup. We then introduce the tups. They are strutting and head butting the gates, and stamping their front feet. They know what is happening. Their hormones have been rising within them for the past few weeks. Their manes bristle. They haven't done a thing except eat, drink, sleep, fight, and enjoy life in the intakes or valley bottom fields since they were retired from service last Christmas. They will butt each other angrily, or jump on each other. Each ram is raddled (we say “rudded”) with an oily, brightly coloured paste on his chest that leaves a bright smudged mark on the rear end of each ewe he mounts. A ewe has a cycle of sixteen to seventeen days. We will change the colour on the rams after that period to show us whether the served ewes became pregnant and are marked again, revealing that they have come back into season. We monitor this so we can see whether a ram has a fertility problem, and can tell in the spring which colour cycle of sixteen days the ewes were made pregnant in. The tup often finds a ewe in season straightaway. He humps her doggedly, like it has been a long time. I make a mental note, because five months from now she should be the first to lamb.

We run the sheep back along the roads to different fields. The ewes galloping away fast, and the tup in pursuit; occasionally he jumps on a ewe as she runs, like he can't wait. In the field the ewes put their heads down and graze, and the tup starts to inspect each of them in turn, smelling their tails, occasionally kicking one to see if she stands and is in season. He raises his head in the air, smelling the pheromones like a stag. Every day we look at these batches of ewes and tups; every other day we catch the tups and refresh the raddle on their chests. If we have any doubts about the fertility or motivation of a tup, we will change him for another. It is crucial that we produce lambs the next spring. We leave the ewes with the rams for about six weeks (three cycles of raddle—red, blue, and green). When they are picked up, the rams are exhausted, some dangerously so, and in need of R&R. The young tups might mate fifteen or twenty ewes. The best older tups can serve a hundred or more. The field might be twenty acres, and he might circle it several times a day for six weeks, whilst getting that many ewes pregnant and barely having enough time to eat; so they are exhausted and can lose a massive amount of their body weight. They don't fight so much when we pick them up, because they've used up their energy, and they kind of know that the mating season is over for another year.

 

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This autumn, as I worked in the fold sorting the ewes to the tups, my best ewe stood up like a statue in front of us as we worked, as if to remind us that she is the boss. The best sheep have a sense of their specialness, and this ewe seems to know that she is one of the stars. Her son was the best I have ever sold, maybe the best I ever will, the one that holds the current record price for a shearling Herdwick tup.

I knew he would make a high price when a highly respected shepherd from Borrowdale called Stanley Jackson spent almost an entire day staring at him. I was at Eskdale Show, the “Herdwick Royal”; and whilst everyone else, me included, went about our washing and preening and then showing through the day, Stanley parked himself at the edge of my pen, leaning over the hurdles. Occasionally he would hold his head on one side and scrutinize the tup from another angle. When I asked him what he was doing, he replied, “Looking for faults.” I smiled and asked him if he'd found any, and he replied, “Not yet, but I haven't finished looking.” When I won the show with one of my other sheep (the one he liked didn't even get a third or fourth prize rosette), he dismissed that with a wave of his hand, as if it were a trifling detail. Stanley had come to the same conclusion as I had at home the winter before. This was a really good tup, the kind you dream of but rarely achieve.

 

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There is an art to presenting sheep for the autumn shows and sales, and part of that art is accepting that the sheep will not look their best all the time. Wise shepherds hide their sheep away from critical eyes until they are ready to be seen. My best sheep stay under wraps until the Patterdale and Eskdale shows, two traditional gatherings where shepherds have long competed for the pride of having the best sheep in our area and the whole Lake District, respectively.

One of the valley bottom fields is temporarily turned into a show field. By late morning the pens are full, two long hurdled rows of show sheep. Small marquees flap in the breeze. Other activities, like the sheepdog trial and crook competition, are judged away across the field. But the important business is trying to make your mark in the sheep pens. The day ends with a lot of banter in the beer tent. The winner is forced to buy everyone else beer from his or her winnings. The prize money is tiny, but no one cares. For many years Anthony Hartley has taken all the beating in the Herdwick shows. But some of us are working on making it tougher for him. This year I had the champion ewe and reserve champion overall, beating a beautiful ewe of his.

The shows build excitement for the sales that follow. The autumn tup sales are the mecca of our world. For Herdwicks the two main sales are at Broughton-in-Furness and at Cockermouth. For the Swaledale breed, the two main sales are at Kirkby Stephen and at Hawes. The whole place tingles with excitement and anticipation. Although the heartland of both breeds is in the north, there are breeders from across the UK and further afield, so everyone descends on these little auction marts in droves.

We enter a number of rams for sale in the preceding weeks, and are allocated a suitable number of pens to hold them. The order of sale is balloted so that in theory everyone has the same chance of a prime sale position (being sold too early can be a disadvantage because the trade may be cautious—being too late might work against you if the buyers have secured what they need). Being balloted a pen amongst some of the best breeders can help because of the interest and buzz their sheep generate. I was balloted almost last in. Potentially a disaster unless you have a sheep that the top shepherds want, and then it becomes an advantage because they wait all day and are in a frenzied state by the time you are up there, because the potential alternative purchases have been and gone.

The day started with the presale judging. The tups walked, tugged, and jostled to the judging yards, held in a line by their breeders. Everyone is trying to get their tup to stand correctly, as broad and thickset as they can be made to look, with their heads up. The desired effect is one of arrogance, an alpha male impression, like Russell Crowe in
Gladiator
.

Hundreds of farmers look on, crowding the pens five or six deep. To see anything they have to climb up the pens in the background. Everyone has an opinion about which tup is the best, and whether the judges know what they are doing or not. And opinions matter because they may become bids later round the ring. After maybe half an hour, the half dozen best tups are pulled into another little yard, and the others dismissed. My tups are dismissed without a prize. I'm not surprised because the two judges—good men—have different taste from me. As I lead him away a friend says, “Don't worry—that un will make more than any of them in the prizes.”

Eventually the chosen ones are lined up in order of preference, and the rosettes awarded. To win one of the presale shows is, for most people, a once-in-a-lifetime thing, for others but a daydream, though some of the shepherds of the great flocks win with tups regularly.

The rest of the day is about the sale. Thousands of farmers comb through the hundreds of pens of tups, trying to find the tups with the attributes they admire or need. The alleys between the pens are crammed with people jostling past one another as they work their way through. Everyone clutches the sale catalogue and works out the breeding and sale order of their favourites. A breeder next to me stands lonely for most of the day generating little interest, his flock out of fashion. This is a tough school with little sentiment. A cursory look over the pens may be all most people give his sheep (I have been there). Other flocks have big reputations based on many years of having bred well for buyers, and their pens are crammed from morning until night. The tups are pawed over. Feet inspected by pulling back the straw. Teeth checked. Wool parted. Bodies prodded. Ears checked for colour. Hair on their heads felt with the fingers for how hard it is. Everyone here is a scholar about sheep and their breeding. The top shepherds have followed the breeding for decades, and will pore over the flock books that detail the pedigrees and registered rams all winter on dark nights.

“What's he got with [What is his father]?”

“What was his mother? Grandmother?”

“Does it go back to that old Gatesgarth tup?”

These are whims, fancies, and fashion to an extent. So men and women chat about what they have seen and which they like best. Some sheep become objects of intense debate.

“It's just too short.…”

“No, it's a hell of a tup.…”

“I think it's dirty of the wool in its neck.…”

“No. Its one of the best I've ever seen. It'll make a bloody fortune.”

This is a world of judgements. Some good. Some right. Some wrong. Some bad. Only time really proves anyone right or wrong. It turns out my best tup divides opinion. He is too dark in the wool for some shepherds, perfect for others.

I briefly cause a stir and am subjected to questions about my mental health status by buying the champion for 4,600 guineas (pedigree breeding sheep are sold here in guineas—a guinea being one pound and five pence) in the early afternoon. I like him, though not as much as my own that I am selling, but he is fresh blood and has a lot of style. I can feel Helen glowering at me from the high back seats (the bleachers) of the sale ring, so I avoid looking up. The sale rumbles on through the afternoon and the ring starts to clear out as the sale reaches its end. It feels like the excitement is dying down, like I am too late in the day. I sweat it out, waiting my turn. And then I am approaching the ring, and I'm relieved to see some of the top shepherds have been waiting for my tups. There is a buzz in the pen before they go into the sale ring. An old shepherd I admire tells me that one of mine is the best tup he has seen for five years. Stanley is across the ring, looking nervous; I know he wants him. And then he is sold, and it goes by in a blur. He makes the top price, 5,500 guineas, but, as important, goes to one of the top flocks, Turner Hall, where he will be looked after and given a chance to breed with some of the best ewes. For weeks after the sales I miss seeing him each day, as if I once had a van Gogh on my wall and now it is gone.

 

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Only tups that have been inspected and approved by the breed societies can be sold. My father sometimes goes inspecting for the Swaledale Sheep Breeders Association and I sometimes do the same for the Herdwicks. The job is to make sure that no bad faults are missed—each tup needs, obviously, two testicles, good teeth, sound legs and feet, and to be the appropriate colour for the breed. Judgements are made about relatively minor issues because self-respecting breeders rarely put a poor sheep in front of the inspectors.