The Wisdom of Sheep & Other Animals

Rosamund Young, who runs a 390-acre organic farm in the Cotswolds with her brother Richard and, in recent years, her partner Gareth, knows all about sheep. Her earlier account of this family farm – The Secret Life of Cows – was such a hit she has followed it by turning her attention to their growing flock. Kite’s Nest Farm was originally based on a beef suckler herd, but Young had always “hankered after” sheep. However, her father’s early death and her mother’s lifelong poor health, meant such a time-consuming venture could not be considered.

In 2013, she and Richard began introducing breeds such as Lleyn and Shetlands. Of their Shetland sheep, she writes, “we call them ‘leaders’ and they have stripey faces and disruptive ambitions”.

Young’s observation of these creatures has led to this vivid series of vignettes, revealing how they behave and what working with them involves. From the outset she stresses that, contrary to the old notion that sheep meekly act as one, they are as individual and characterful as we are. Some are sociable, others are loners. Some are friendly, others standoffish or even hostile. Some appear to speak – their bleating is clearly understandable – and others are noticeably kind, as when an orphan lamb needs a mother, or, on one occasion, when Young was distressed.

Despite the subject matter and the often challenging conditions in which she works, there is nothing rustic or rugged about Young’s writing. Following in the footsteps of her book-loving mother – whose passion for Shakespeare inspired a local carpenter to take classes in English literature – her work is infused with poetry and literary allusions. Nor is it contrived or sentimental.

The author knows all about sheep

The Wisdom of Sheep & Other Animals is down to earth, in every sense, as you might expect from someone who believes that “grass is the answer to everything”.

This does not mean, of course, that it does not have its poetic moments: “As November becomes December , it starts to get dark so early that we have to visit the sheep by torchlight. Their eyes are sparkling fairy lights of gold and nearly red, of icy blue and twinkly green, and of the silver that makes the stars. We blink, or we turn away, and all is dark again.”

Written in short, episodic chapters, which are more like diary entries, this is a thoughtful, pleasingly rambling book which, for me, could have continued for much longer. Although seemingly haphazard and without structure, every page is tethered to Young’s experiences with animals, and her love for them.

One moment she is enchanted by the wildflowers in the fields and the short-tailed field voles that play with her boot laces; another she is helping a new-born calf whose mother is sickly, or hand-rearing an orphaned lamb, cocooning it in the Land Rover as she goes about her day, so it can stay warm and well fed.

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Those with desk jobs will be humbled by the hours farmers work: “So often during lambing we are too busy to stop for meals, especially if the weather is difficult and/or wet. Richard hands us flasks and we float through each day on rain and tea.”

There is little of James Rebanks’s political and environmental propulsion behind Young’s writing, but her career has been founded on organic principles that were once considered eccentric and are now recognised for their acuity.

Writing about the food her family and their animals have been fed from the start, she reflects, “We have watched our farm animals getting cleverer and happier since 1953…” Of people, she adds: “Of course, eating ‘conventional’ food won’t kill you; in fact it will almost certainly sustain you long enough for you to live to regret eating it.”

Then there are the subjects she admits she cannot bring herself to address: “the really stressful or the truly heart-breaking or the intimate. TB tests, as an example of the first category, would be impossible to describe.

“The test alone means nothing if it’s not set in its turbulent historical, medical, political and emotional context.”

I would have liked to understand more about what she means by that, but there are clearly no-go areas which, in an essentially upbeat book, she is reluctant to share.

Although sheep are supposedly her main focus, they are run a close second by the cattle herds that dominate the farm, offering a source of perpetual fascination.

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With quiet humour and occasional awe, Young depicts the ego of bulls and the danger of cows, as she discovered when cornered and badly gored; the frivolity of calves, and the pleasure cows take in being out under the stars all night, far from their barn.

The rich relationship animals can have with humans is based, she writes, on “a very ‘grown-up’ give and take. Fairness is paramount”. Thus her days, it seems, are spent in subtle negotiations, alert to the individual needs of each sheep or lamb, calf, cow or chicken. The Wisdom of Sheep is both beguiling and compulsive. The product of decades of hard work and experience, it is filtered through a shrewd but generous perspective on the world, and how to make it a better place.

Tangible evidence that certain aspects of nature are indeed improving comes in the fact that, thanks to rewilding, “after a long absence of perhaps a century and a half”, kites have now returned to the farm that takes its name from them. It seems a fitting tribute for farmers like Rosamund Young, who treat nature and its creatures with such respect.