MEET THE SHEPHERDESS
Ever dreamed of a life watching your flock, striding sunlit hills while lambs gambol at your heels? Four women who chose a career tending sheep talk to Rosanna Morris about what their working lives are really like
Ever dreamed of a life tending your flock? Four shepherdessess tell us what their working lives are really like.
Shepherding is among one of the oldest occupations in the world and conjures up fairy-tale scenes of nomadic herdsmen with crooks and dogs out in the remote wilderness watching over their flocks. It’s difficult to imagine such a simple and nurturing life still exists in these modern times. Yet, thanks to some inspiring women, the vocation is more popular than ever before.
Shepherdesses Amanda Owen, Zoë Colville, Alison O’Neill and Hannah Jackson have several things in common: a love for animals and working out in the countryside, but also a fierce tenacity. All of them are showing us that you don’t need to have grown up on a farm or own a holding to be a farmer. But you do need dogged determination and serious amounts of grit.
These brilliant women can wrestle sheep, roll giant bales, graft hard in all elements and are not afraid to get down in the dirt. But they are also poised and media-savvy and enterprising; they are wonderful storytellers who are sharing their shepherding lives with their growing global audience via social media, books and television appearances and transforming the image of farming.
Their stories are educating people about agricultural life, inspiring young women to become first-generation farmers while also reconnecting the masses with where their food comes from, encouraging people to make more sustainable and ethical food choices, and demonstrating the critical role farmers play in conservation and caring for our environment.
And despite what some of their photographs posted on Instagram may lead you to wonder, it’s certainly not all fluffy lambs, sunshine and beautiful country views. Other posts are brutally honest and reveal the realities of treating fly strike or having to worm hundreds of sheep, the messiness of lambing, and the trauma of dog attacks.
HANNAH JACKSON, CUMBRIA
“There are times when it all goes wrong and there are times when it is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen,” says Hannah Jackson, who is known as the Red Shepherdess (for her bright red hair) and occasionally appears on Countryfile.
“Women have always been farmers but we have a bigger, better voice, which is what was needed. Girls are now doing badass farming in their own right.”
Hannah, originally from Liverpool, found her calling aged 20 when she watched a lamb being born. She cancelled the marine biology masters she was about to do and instead learned how to farm sheep.
“I had a new Border collie and went to a hill farm near Keswick for a week’s training course. I stayed for nine months.”
“These brilliant women can wrestle sheep, roll giant bales and graft hard in all elements”
Hannah went into contract shepherding, which involves travelling from farm to farm to help with lambing. Inspired by her work, her family bought a 21-acre smallholding in Cumbria and moved out of Liverpool.
“I started with 70 sheep and I now lamb 250 ewes,” says Hannah. “I’ve been the townie and now I’m the person producing food and encouraging people to make the right choices,” she says. “Being a farmer has made me way stronger and way fitter. I’ve proved to myself that I can be as strong as a man and I can do anything a man can do. I farm by myself so I have to find this inner strength, physically and mentally.
“Sometimes the weather is awful and you have to drag sheep out of snowdrifts or floods, or you’re out in icy cold rain, but this life is better than I could ever have expected. My farm is growing. I’ve spent so much time looking after other people’s sheep, it’s now time for me to put everything I’ve learned into my farm.”
AMANDA OWEN, YORKSHIRE
Also a first-generation farmer, Amanda Owen is one of the most high-profile shepherdesses in the UK, having written three books, including
The Yorkshire Shepherdess. Amanda is also now filming her third series of
Our Yorkshire Farm for Channel 5, which documents her life on one of the most remote hill farms in the country with her husband Clive and their flock of nine children: Raven,
Reuben, Miles, Edith, Violet, Sidney, Annas, Clemmie and Nancy.
Amanda has lived and worked in Ravenseat in the Yorkshire Dales for more than 20 years. As a teenager growing up in Huddersfield, she longed to be a shepherdess after finding the book Hill Shepherd by John and Eliza Forder in a library.
“To this day, thinking about that book gives me goosebumps,” she says. “I didn’t believe that life still existed. I looked at the pictures and thought: that’s what I want to be.”
She started by working as a farmhand driving tractors and milking cows, then caring for sheep. Mastering the art of shearing was one of her biggest hurdles. “To be a shepherd, you need to be capable of doing all the aspects of sheep work – not just bottle-feeding orphan lambs. I can clip like the best of them now,” she says.
Today, Amanda runs a large operation, both in terms of farming and media work, but says she is always learning and now views her job as a custodian of nature and wildlife rather than purely a food producer.
“I never rest on my laurels,” she says. “The goal is always changing because the world is always changing. There is this intrinsic tie with the landscape and the sheep and the cycles of life, the seasons, but there is a bigger picture. Ravenseat is just about one of the worst farms you could ever take on. It is high, it is wet, it rains a lot, we have long winters and short summers. But this farm is now one of the most desirable farms because of the nature – the birdlife, the biodiversity, the wildflower meadows and the peat bogs, which can help tackle climate change by sequestering carbon.”
Amanda finds sharing her life with others exhilarating. “It encourages people to be themselves. What we’re doing is real. We’re showing how life really is here. You have different days. You have days when you don’t want to go outside. How many women have to wear a balaclava as workwear?”
ALISON O’NEILL, CUMBRIA
Over the hills from Amanda is Alison O’Neill on her hill farm, which she runs on her own. She grew up in a five-generation hill-farming family in the Yorkshire Dales. “It was a male-dominated world,” she says. “Women have shepherded for centuries but always as the wife or daughter of the farmer. I wanted to be the farmer.” When she was 12, her father and grandfather sold the farm but she vowed she would one day have a hill farm and be a shepherd.
After stints at other jobs and some travelling, she took on the tenancy of Shacklabank Farm 22 years ago. “I came here with £60 in my pocket and pregnant with my daughter. I had no money, no tractor and no sheep,” she says. “They have been the 22 happiest
“I farm by myself so I have to find this inner strength, physically and mentally”
and hardest years of my life.” Today she has a large flock and makes a living from their wool. “There isn’t a lot of money in it, but it’s not about money, it’s about being connected to the sheep and the place I love.”
Alison walks the land every day with her dog, heading out of her door early and sharing photographs of the 360° views of the Yorkshire Dales and the Howgill Fells she is immediately afforded – of the valleys shrouded in mist, of sunrises, and her girls. “It’s beautiful every day. It lifts my heart. I like the romance of it, but in reality it is a tough world,” she says.
“Shepherdesses are a tough breed. The views are spectacular but it’s also a harsh environment. Last spring we had six weeks of rain. And where there is livestock there is dead stock. If something dies, I have to drag the dead sheep up the hill in the mud. It tests your mettle. It has tested me. Some days you want to cry. But then there are the skylarks, the sunrises, and for me it’s life-fulfilling.”
ZOË COLVILLE, KENT
Based at the other end of the country in Kent, Zoë is the most unusual of these four women, having switched roles from working as a hairdresser to becoming a full-time shepherdess three years ago. Zoë is not afraid to show all facets of her daily life – the good, the bad and the ugly – and her social media followers are fascinated by her honest and frank ramblings.
She is soft and sweet-natured yet raw and honest, and not unknown to use strong language.
Her partner Chris grew up on a farm in Kent but left to become a plumber and work in London. Six years ago, he returned to his roots. “He called me one day and said he’d been to a livestock market and bought 32 in-lamb ewes,” says Zoë. “It grew from there.” For a while she juggled hairdressing and farming but eventually joined Chris.
When they started, they had no barn, no trailer and a whole lot to learn. Through hard work and persistence, they are now making a living from the land. “Last lambing we lambed
700 ewes, just the two of us. It was wild,” says Zoë. “We both take a wage from farming. We rent farmland and manage to find enough grazing, which is quite rare.”
They opened the Little Farm Fridge this year to sell their farm produce direct. “It has been a lot of work but it is paying off. It is not an easy life but I am outside every single day and I feel incredibly thankful for that.”
She adds: “I love seeing the growth in my farm and business but also in myself as well. It’s a nice feeling to cling on to when you lose an animal or your livestock trailer breaks down in the mud. I am 10 times stronger now than I ever was. You can do anything you want to do, even if you’re told you can’t.”