All are safely gathered in for their MoT
IT’S been that special time of year, when daylight has found me and the hound out on the hill, fetching the blackface ewes in for their annual MoT, bath, and tupping.
The solitude and peace up there is pretty much beyond price to a man. Much of the time it’s been dog, stick, sheep and me. The wind seethes through molinia grass and rushes, snipe leaping skywards as we pass. The river runs timelessly below us, brown with peat. V-shaped ripples in the shallows showing one or two salmon are still returning to spawn, clinging on in a changed world.
The sheep haven’t reared a big crop of lambs – they seldom do – but what is there is in very good fettle. There are plenty enough bonny ewe lambs to ensure the continuation of a flock which my Granny came with when she married my Grandad in 1920. I don’t know the circumstances of her father’s acquisition of the flock, although a legal dispute in 1910 over ewes straying had tested relations within the valley… resolved more by the subsequent marriage than the courts ruling.
The main group came easily enough off the ground they are usually to be found on – their ‘lear’. They’d already started looking down the valley, wondering if the rams might soon be found. I left the lads going through them, treating for debilitating trace element deficiency and nasty liver fluke bugs. I slipped back up to expand my search for my own strays, and those of neighbouring flocks; we have collective ‘clear days’ when everyone’s sheep have to be gathered. My respective neighbours are based miles away by road, so there are phone calls each evening, reporting where odd strays have been seen, and who has gathered which vagrant ewes. If I’ve got two of Bill’s, and he’s got one of Fred’s, but
Fred hasn’t finished yet and might get some of mine… who will drop which sheep back to whom?
It’s a warming feeling, being in a widespread but strong community, helping one another maintain such a deep-rooted culture.
One colleague messaged to say he’d missed five sheep adjacent to mine, and could I kindly pick them up. In a straight line, these ewes would be about six miles from home.
And then, the rather wrigglier route he has to take, avoiding wide bogs, and deep combes and rock clitters must be even further. He also has to crest a ridge of hills of about 1,500ft to get home… and the cloud base is often rather less than this, which gives its own problems. It’s hard to gather sheep you can’t see.
His missing five were only twoand-a-half miles from my yard, and within sight of my ewes, so it made sense for me to get them. As it happens, they were extremely testy little blighters – he admits they often give him trouble, lifting them out of the deep-sided combe they generally lie in.
Couple that to my having to push them in the ‘wrong direction’, and they certainly tested my boy and me when we got to them. Our first job was to lift them out of their hidey hole, a 45-degree slope with waistdeep clumps of vegetation, above which I could barely see their heads. ‘Fly’ couldn’t see them at all.
The sheep know the game all too well, and will trot along happily while you can see them, then drop into a hollow and stop stock still, hoping you’ll pass by. I should admit I tried to fetch them on my own the first day, but within minutes they’d slipped out of sight, like members of the magic circle.
However, on day two, we gently tickled them out on to more open ground. Thereupon, we managed to drive them down to a gate into an enclosure, from where they’d be secure enough that we could relax a bit. But once they realised what was on, the oldest ewe put her head down and bolted through the dogs. She simply wasn’t going to be driven through that gate. I note ‘One Man And His Dog’ seldom shows such operations.
Happily, my boy has an ace little collie which will ‘seize em’. She’s only slightly built, but on command will grab such an errant ewe by the base of the ear, and bring it down – without marking it. I trussed the old ewe up, and left her – undignified – within carrying distance of where we could get a vehicle. The remaining four accepted their fate, and were soon safe inside the gate.
The gather is complete for another season, and the tups are at work.
‘It’s a warming feeling being in a widespread but strong community helping one another’