Hefted?
I have just returned from a transformative holiday in Greece to find that my increasingly small flock of Herdwick sheep have disappeared from our field.
In less than six months I have lost eight of the ten animals I started the year with. In March I lost one of the five Herdwicks to inexplicable illness and blindness. In June I had to say goodbye to my beautiful 'daughter' Beanie, our motherless lamb - umbilically connected to me by the bottle feeding and love we gave her in her first weeks and months - due to an equally inexplicable incident where I found her on her back in the field and henceforth unable to stand upright on her back legs despite rest and medical attention. The agony and the anguish of having to cull a much-loved animal I suffered twice in two months.
We got rid of the pygmy goats - little buggers. Couldn't cope with their Houdini act. Cost us a fortune in new fencing, all for nought.
And now our remaining four Herdwick's have decided they are no longer 'hefted' after all and have disappeared off the face of the earth, all gates locked, all fencing and walling intact. Now you see me, now you don't. So that leaves just my two lovely llamas luxuriating in the field all by themselves, probably wondering what exactly is going on....
As explained by the now famous 'Herdy Shepherd', James Rebanks - whose book I have and whose talk I went to a few years ago at the Buxton Festival - Herwick sheep are 'hefted'. This means that they hold (without fences) to a place in their natural northern uplands environment because they are taught a sense of belonging by their mothers in their first summer. This explained why my original flock of four (before Beanie and another lamb came along) spent a lot of energy on escaping when they were first transferred to our field from their original home. Yet bit by bit they settled and have been happily mooching around without any apparent desires to find pastures new for over three years now - even if you left the gate open by mistake. Hence their sudden disappearance makes for a lot of head-scratching. They have luscious grass, a pile of stones to scramble over, shelter, water and two weird looking South American camels to protect them. They have lived happily side by side for all this time. It is a conundrum, for sure.
I have been mildly thinking about the whys and wherefores over the last 24 hours and have come up with very little. The only thing that I'm finding hard to ignore is that it is fitting a current pattern in my life. I have been becoming acutely and poignantly aware in recent months of how the anchors that have held the mothership so securely here for the last 16 years are slowly being pulled up, one by one. The anchor of my husband's career; the anchor of the girls' schooling; the anchor of the bonding friendships made through those two journeys. Everything that held me in these high, wind and rainswept northern pastures is slowly shifting: my husband will retire within the next 18 months; my last child will be finished with schooling within the next eight months; the friends who I used to see so regularly through that diurnal round seem all so busy now with other things given that their own children are leaving or have already left home too. Everyone and everything is subtly shifting. Life is moving on. Perhaps the sheep are part of that pattern of letting go, of removing the ties and dependencies that keep me here? With all the anchors pulled up, the mothership is free to explore oceans new....
I have spent nearly two decades nurturing my beloved family home, trying so very hard to create a warm, supportive environment which everyone couldn't wait to get back to after their day's activities. While peaceful during the day, the mornings and evenings and weekends were filled with tears and laughter, singing and shouting, music and conversation - quite simply the dynamic energies of five human beings and their busy, busy lives. All too often now it is feeling too quiet, too empty. From homework round the kitchen table, or up in their rooms, to daily family meals for five; from overflowing laundry bins and ironing piles to loud music pumping out in the showers; from sporting fixtures and dashes for the school bus; to cups of tea and chats about 'their day', it is increasingly just three (and sometimes just two) places to set round the kitchen table and an endless sense of departure rather than arrival. The rooms and spaces are emptying one by one and I wonder now if the memories that are left are enough to continue to fill them.
Only a short time ago I had harboured dreams of 18 and 21st birthday parties here, weddings and all; endless Christmases and grandchildren coming to enjoy what my own girls had in their younger years. Baking like Mary Berry, happily content in a calmer existence. Now all this seems just pipe dreams: the girls say we live too far out so their friends can never be bothered to get themselves over here; my eldest daughter says the sitting room is old and dusty and gives her allergies so she only ever stays in the kitchen or her bedroom; the carpets need changing; I still have curtains and lighting I hate from when I inherited them with the house all those years ago!
I have set myself the target of finally focusing on the things in the house that still need sorting so that it feels 'complete' and totally 'ours' for us to enjoy for a few years more. I will turn out all the boxes filling the garage; I will sort all the other crap we still have piled up in rooms and spaces around the house. I will get my life in order. And that order will include time for me and all the things that I've always wanted to do and for which I've never had enough hours in the day.
I trust that we will know when the time is right to move on. Perhaps it isn't quite yet, but I do sense the curtain coming down on the stage. The question is, is it the end of the play, or just the first half?
Meanwhile, has anyone seen my sheep..?!
In less than six months I have lost eight of the ten animals I started the year with. In March I lost one of the five Herdwicks to inexplicable illness and blindness. In June I had to say goodbye to my beautiful 'daughter' Beanie, our motherless lamb - umbilically connected to me by the bottle feeding and love we gave her in her first weeks and months - due to an equally inexplicable incident where I found her on her back in the field and henceforth unable to stand upright on her back legs despite rest and medical attention. The agony and the anguish of having to cull a much-loved animal I suffered twice in two months.
We got rid of the pygmy goats - little buggers. Couldn't cope with their Houdini act. Cost us a fortune in new fencing, all for nought.
And now our remaining four Herdwick's have decided they are no longer 'hefted' after all and have disappeared off the face of the earth, all gates locked, all fencing and walling intact. Now you see me, now you don't. So that leaves just my two lovely llamas luxuriating in the field all by themselves, probably wondering what exactly is going on....
As explained by the now famous 'Herdy Shepherd', James Rebanks - whose book I have and whose talk I went to a few years ago at the Buxton Festival - Herwick sheep are 'hefted'. This means that they hold (without fences) to a place in their natural northern uplands environment because they are taught a sense of belonging by their mothers in their first summer. This explained why my original flock of four (before Beanie and another lamb came along) spent a lot of energy on escaping when they were first transferred to our field from their original home. Yet bit by bit they settled and have been happily mooching around without any apparent desires to find pastures new for over three years now - even if you left the gate open by mistake. Hence their sudden disappearance makes for a lot of head-scratching. They have luscious grass, a pile of stones to scramble over, shelter, water and two weird looking South American camels to protect them. They have lived happily side by side for all this time. It is a conundrum, for sure.
I have been mildly thinking about the whys and wherefores over the last 24 hours and have come up with very little. The only thing that I'm finding hard to ignore is that it is fitting a current pattern in my life. I have been becoming acutely and poignantly aware in recent months of how the anchors that have held the mothership so securely here for the last 16 years are slowly being pulled up, one by one. The anchor of my husband's career; the anchor of the girls' schooling; the anchor of the bonding friendships made through those two journeys. Everything that held me in these high, wind and rainswept northern pastures is slowly shifting: my husband will retire within the next 18 months; my last child will be finished with schooling within the next eight months; the friends who I used to see so regularly through that diurnal round seem all so busy now with other things given that their own children are leaving or have already left home too. Everyone and everything is subtly shifting. Life is moving on. Perhaps the sheep are part of that pattern of letting go, of removing the ties and dependencies that keep me here? With all the anchors pulled up, the mothership is free to explore oceans new....
I have spent nearly two decades nurturing my beloved family home, trying so very hard to create a warm, supportive environment which everyone couldn't wait to get back to after their day's activities. While peaceful during the day, the mornings and evenings and weekends were filled with tears and laughter, singing and shouting, music and conversation - quite simply the dynamic energies of five human beings and their busy, busy lives. All too often now it is feeling too quiet, too empty. From homework round the kitchen table, or up in their rooms, to daily family meals for five; from overflowing laundry bins and ironing piles to loud music pumping out in the showers; from sporting fixtures and dashes for the school bus; to cups of tea and chats about 'their day', it is increasingly just three (and sometimes just two) places to set round the kitchen table and an endless sense of departure rather than arrival. The rooms and spaces are emptying one by one and I wonder now if the memories that are left are enough to continue to fill them.
Only a short time ago I had harboured dreams of 18 and 21st birthday parties here, weddings and all; endless Christmases and grandchildren coming to enjoy what my own girls had in their younger years. Baking like Mary Berry, happily content in a calmer existence. Now all this seems just pipe dreams: the girls say we live too far out so their friends can never be bothered to get themselves over here; my eldest daughter says the sitting room is old and dusty and gives her allergies so she only ever stays in the kitchen or her bedroom; the carpets need changing; I still have curtains and lighting I hate from when I inherited them with the house all those years ago!
I have set myself the target of finally focusing on the things in the house that still need sorting so that it feels 'complete' and totally 'ours' for us to enjoy for a few years more. I will turn out all the boxes filling the garage; I will sort all the other crap we still have piled up in rooms and spaces around the house. I will get my life in order. And that order will include time for me and all the things that I've always wanted to do and for which I've never had enough hours in the day.
I trust that we will know when the time is right to move on. Perhaps it isn't quite yet, but I do sense the curtain coming down on the stage. The question is, is it the end of the play, or just the first half?
Meanwhile, has anyone seen my sheep..?!
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