The Shepherd's Life Read Online Free

brought them here I have not seen many of them. They have looked after themselves on the abundant summer grass. Our shepherding culture includes periods when the sheep graze the fells away from our supervision. Because they need better nutrition to rear twins than the mountains offer, the ewes with twins stay down on the lower slopes on our own fenced land, called intakes or allotments. So I am anxious to see them again, keen to see that they are alive and well. Above all I am interested to see how much my lambs have grown since I brought them up when they were just a month old in May. It is now the second week in July. The rising sun is already starting to burn the mist that hangs in the hollows as I head across the high ground to the fell gate.
    I reach the fell gate second.
    One shepherd always gets there first. I suspect he is an insomniac.
    Fell gate on time. Check.
    Soon the fell gate is a meeting place for eight or ten men and women. An assorted pack of sheepdogs, and other willing mongrels, circle excitedly. Occasionally, there is a snarl up. Everyone is in short sleeves, booted, and wearing an array of sun hats that won’t win any fashion prizes. Over shoulders are slung tatty old bait bags, packed with sandwiches, pop, and cake. On bad days we stare nervously at the skyline and the clouds hugging the fells. Sometimes we have to turn back if the clouds are too low, and return later. It is dangerous up there in bad weather. On the winter gathers snow can make it potentially lethal. But today in the height of summer there is only one worry, the heat. One of the shepherds is late, so everyone is impatient and frustrated. We stand and curse him.
    â€œHe is always late.”
    â€œCan’t get up, that bugger.”
    â€œLet’s go without him. He will catch up.”
    â€œNo, we better wait.”
    â€œOh, here he is.”
    A quad bike races up the fell-side road. A slightly flustered shepherd mumbles his apologies. He has been gathering up some lambs down below that have escaped onto the road.
    It doesn’t matter.
    We need to get going. Move fast. The ewes and lambs are high up on the fells where the land meets the sky.
    The oldest shepherd performs the function of a general on a battlefield. There is a bit in the movie Zulu when the native’s battle plan is described like the “horns of a buffalo … that come around like pincers and encircle you.” That’s a bit like how we gather our fell. It takes six or eight people and a dozen or more dogs. Involves hours of walking (though is made a little quicker by a quad bike on the drivable bits) and requires everyone to work more or less like a team. As you pass over the fell you try to use your judgement to carve through between the flocks of our common and the sheep of the next, by judging their smit marks—the coloured paint marks that identify the sheep to specific farms. Anyone ignorant of the flocks and the marks and the lie of land can make a terrible mess and push sheep on to a neighbouring common and thus make unnecessary work for everyone. We stand and chat, but it’s a serious business. We must do what we’re told. No fucking around.
    One of the most experienced shepherds, called Shoddy, is sent over the fell tops to clear out some distant crags high up where the green meets the blue. The best men and dogs are sent to the hardest places. He will define the far end of the gather. Act like a blocker when the sheep try to flee from us, tucking them back down at the far end.
    Joe, a younger fell shepherd with good dogs, is sent to clear out a long deep ravine—we call them “ghylls”—carved out by the beck over many centuries, on the left-hand arm of the gather where our common meets the next one. A great dog can bring sheep carefully out of the crags, moving left or right or stopping on a sixpence at a whistled command. A young or poorly trained dog would just fail to get them down, or worse,