Black sheep the torment

WITH HER shock of pink hair Nina Baptiste is not your average farmer. But then again she doesn’t own an average farm, given that it homes a flock of Hebridean black sheep that she says can help fight mental illness. While it’s often claimed that cats and dogs can heal, as Churchill called it, the Black Dog of depression, Nina says her sheep – some with four horns – are just as therapeutic.

Nina, 45, and her husband Phil gave up life in the city to set up a smallholding in Kildwick in North Yorkshire in 2007.

It evolved into Crowkeld farm – a centre for rare sheep, pigs, geese and chickens and it’s since become a refuge for people who are struggling emotionally.

Nina, who recently featured on BBC’S Countryfile, says: “I knew living on the farm with the animals had worked wonders for my own mental wellbeing and stress levels.

“But it was when a friend who had been struggling with bipolar for many years visited that I realised just how powerful being around the animals could be.

“She had spent a fortune on therapy and been under the care of psychiatrists. She came out to the field while I was lambing and a little fourday-old lamb bounded over to her.

“My friend sat down and the lamb curled up on her lap. She was there for about an hour in total silence and said it was the best therapy she ever had in her life.

“It was focusing on the little lamb and how something so beautiful and innocent could put their trust in her made her brain stop racing and was a moment of calm in the storm.

“It helped her put everything into perspective. It’s hard to explain and you have to be receptive to it but animals instinctively know when people