‘The sheep were bleeding from wounds. I knew at once it was a dog attack...’
ICAN SEE Fallowlees Farm a mile from home. There is a moment when I’m on the highest part of the road where the gap in the trees frames her like a beautiful picture. But on this occasion, the picture wasn’t right. Normally the sheep in the front field would be evenly distributed, but this afternoon they were clustered in little white mobs in the corners. Neither was there any sign of my horse. Delphinia – Delphi for short – was a broken-down racehorse, a thoroughbred bay, thin-skinned and with a history of teeth problems.
Looking up her record I saw she had either fallen or failed to finish most of her races. She was the most unsuitable horse I could have found.
But she was just so beautiful! Right from the minute I saw her, all 16 hands, I knew she was coming home with me.
Now she was nowhere to be seen and, when I got out of the car, I was shocked by what confronted me. There was wool all over the ground in the front field and the sheep stood, dirty and traumatised, on churned-up clumps of earth.
Many of them were bleeding from wounds on their faces and necks. I knew instantly it had been a dog attack.
A public footpath runs alongside the field and sometimes I saw dogs off-lead in the nearby forest, the owners assuming there was no livestock around until stumbling upon the sheepy little oasis of Fallowlees.
I quickly assessed the damage. Six sheep were missing, as well as Delphi.
My flock at Fallowlees, the centuries old National Trust farm near Rothbury in Northumberland where I’d become the UK’S youngest solo shepherdess having taken the tenancy aged 23 in 2010, was a mishmash of breeds.
They were mostly Blackfaces, well-suited to the rough ground, but I had also collected a few characters over the years.
One of these was Peggy, a stunning Texel, a breed originally from The Netherlands, who I found in a pen waiting to be shot when I turned up to work on a farm one day. Her crime? A broken leg.
I saved the farmer the bullet, took her home and set her leg. She was quite a character, often finding her way into the yard to share food with my dogs.
My pride and joy, however, was the 20-strong flock of (almost) pedigree Texels I had bought, despite knowing deep down that they wouldn’t suit the ground.
I was frantic as I ran round the field trying to locate them. In the bottom corner I saw that the gate had been smashed and was lying in splinters on the ground. Beyond it, under the trees in the next field, stood Delphi with my missing ewes.
I was breathless when I reached them. I saw to my relief that they were all unhurt.
I went to soothe Delphi and check her over. She seemed none the worse for wear as I gathered up the Texel ewes as best I could with Roy and Alfie.
The wily Blackies on the higher part of the farm had completely escaped the notice of the dogs and were grazing nonchalantly.
When I had them all inside I surveyed their injuries. Thank goodness for their big thick fleeces, which had protected them like woolly armour. I injected the worst-bitten with antibiotics and gave sugary water drench to those who looked exhausted.
I could hardly believe I had been so unlucky – my one day off from the farm in months and disaster had struck.
After such a bad start to the year, splitting with my boyfriend Dan and losing my oldest dog, Bill, to a farmyard accident, I had thought I was due a change in my fortunes. Sadly, my bad luck wasn’t over yet.
MY CONTRACTING work came along and got me out and about again. The arrival of May found me travelling to a different farm each day. I was often employed by farmers who didn’t have sheepdogs, pleased I could bridge the gap in their workforce.
I would do whatever jobs needed doing, which at this time of year included gathering ewes and lambs for the first time, clipping the muck off the ewes’ tails, dosing lambs for worms and foot-bathing them.
I had 3,000 sheep between the four farms
I contracted for and was never short of work. Thanks to the combination of approaching summer and doing a job I enjoyed, I was slipping out of my despair.
Life at Fallowlees was getting sweeter, the sun was shining and Northumberland County Show, the start date in my social calendar, was just around the corner. But a day at Mum and Dad’s – who run the family farm Muirfield in Hawick in the Scottish Borders where I grew up – was in order first.
There is a fever caught by horses, cows, sheep and farmers alike. They call it spring fever. Symptoms include a lightness of step, a feeling of motivation and an enthusiasm for life. I had spring fever. Lambing was over and I had earned some money.
Those months of hard grafting had been good for me, I reflected, as I set off for Muirfield on the first weekend in June.
I felt as if I was finally getting Dan out of my system. Heartbreak had been followed by acceptance, I had lost weight and toned up and I was feeling excited about the future as I prepared to help my parents gather in their “hill”’ – 100 acres of rough grazing.
Mum made sure I admired the new dog box fitted on the back of their quad bike. I had long been an advocate of having something comfortable for the dogs to ride on.
After making suitable appreciative noises I set off on the quad, my dogs Roy and Alfie riding on the new dog box, to gather the 200 ewes and lambs.towards the end of the “gather”, I saw a ewe and two lambs who had pushed through into a section of the
farm fenced off for wildlife next to an old quarry. I sent Roy slipping through the fence to direct them back to the main flock.
Now Roy was good, but the ewe was aggressive and wanted to fight. It wasn’t new to have an escapee in the wildlife field, nor was it unusual for me to drive so close to the quarry. That day, however, I was concentrating so hard on not allowing the ewe to hurt Roy that I drove slightly too high on the quarry’s edge.
The next thing I knew, the whole right side of the bike was tilting. I saw a sudden view of brilliant blue before the heavy machine rolled on top of me, crushing my body into the ground.
It is a cliche to say these things happen in slow motion, but that’s exactly how it was. I could feel the bike squashing me into the earth. I tasted soil in my mouth, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move. Then it was off, careering down the hill, end over end.
BUT I STILL felt as though the bike was there; I could still feel its weight on top of me, flattening me. And I still couldn’t breathe. I started to gasp like a floundering fish, but my lungs wouldn’t inflate. Was this how it would all end for me, in a field on my family’s farm?
I could hear myself groaning. I was still alive then. Now I had to make sure I stayed alive. Gradually, a bit at a time, I managed to suck in some air. It was like breathing through a straw, tiny sips, then I managed a little more, wheezing like an old man.
Roy, having abandoned his ewe, ran over to offer me moral support. Eventually I
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managed to sit myself up, but when I tried to get on to my feet I felt excruciating pain in my back. Part of the bike had slashed right through my jeans and left a long, bloody mark on my thigh, but other than that I appeared to be unscathed.
The bike, however, had come to a stop at the bottom of the slope and was in less good shape. I groaned as I noted the smashed dog box. Luckily the quad had landed back on its wheels and looked drivable.
I shuffled off to retrieve it. Each step was agony, but I needed to finish the gather – to let the sheep go back to the hill now would have wasted the whole morning’s work.
After a wretched few minutes, tears streaming down my face, I made to swing my leg over the saddle, but try as I might I just couldn’t do it. I gave up and set off to finish the gather on foot.
Alfie had already pushed most of the ewes homeward by himself and at my command Roy set off to give him a hand.
THE FINAL 200 yards were a struggle as I could only walk very straight-legged with my chest pushed forward. I’d expected Mum to be annoyed, but she sent me up to the house for a cup of tea. In the kitchen my younger sister Caroline took one look and rang the cottage hospital.
“They’re sending an ambulance,” she said. “That’s ridiculous!” I replied.
The ambulance arrived unbelievably fast, which further embarrassed me – I was hardly an emergency. The crew agreed, after finding me on my feet and walking around.
At the hospital the doctors wanted an X-ray and a scan. “Honestly,” I said, “there’s no need – please just give me some painkillers and I’ll be good to go.”
I was thinking of the county show the following day. Nothing was going to keep me from being there. Caroline waited with me, perusing the ancient magazines.
Finally, a female doctor came in and shut the door behind her. “I’m sorry to say that you’ve broken your T12 vertebra. It’s unstable,” she said. I gasped. Caroline stopped, mid page-turn, and looked at me in horror. “I’d better ring Mum,” she said.
It was the bank holiday weekend. The country was celebrating and I was confined to a hospital bed. “You have been a very lucky young woman,” the doctor had said.
I didn’t feel lucky. But if it hadn’t been for Caroline’s quick thinking in getting me to hospital I might never have walked again.
Copyright © Emma Gray 2021. Extracted from My Farming Life by Emma Gray, published by Sphere on April 29 priced £16.99. For free UK delivery, call Express Bookshop on 01872 562310 or order via expressbookshop.co.uk