The Shepherd's Life: A Tale of the Lake District by James Rebanks

Our nearest town is Mildenhall, which is actually a very small town, where we visit for various necessary errands. A notable feature is the substantial parish church of St Mary's in the High Street. The oldest part of the church dates from the 13th Century. I have often visited the church but over the last year or so I have gone in for about half an hour every six weeks. This is when Janet goes to the nearby hairdresser to have her regular hair trim, so I have time to kill. The reason for going to the church is that they have a book corner and in amongst the biblical commentaries I came across James Rebanks' The Shepherd's Life: A Tale of the Lake District. I am about half through. I use a small chicken feather which I found in my pocket for a book mark and replace the book in the same position at the end of a lower shelf where it can be easily located for the next installment to read. I hope that the church helpers are not too thorough in tidying the book shelves. I could easily seek out my own copy but I am happy to read it slowly. I normally have two books on the go, a downstairs book and an upstairs book at bedtime, and this happens to be a third for a different location.

The Shepherd's Life is a fascinating account of hill farming in the Lake District but it has lots of interesting and insightful reflections on aspects of life generally. It conveys a great sense of time and place. Rebanks notes how his annual calendar of shepherding tasks is identical to his father and his father before that. In fact shepherds in Anglo-Saxon times would have been just as familiar with the same process of gathering from the hills with dogs (or hefting as they have it in those parts), lambing, shearing, foot trimming, feeding, dagging; little has changed. On a smaller scale this is what we do too except on our lowland holding we do not have to trouble with the complexities of the heft. 

There is such an intimate relationship with the land and the many unfenced acres they graze. It also only works because of close collaboration with neighbouring farmers who graze the same hills and carry out the same activities. 

Lambing time next, which I will read about in December.

St Mary's church, Mildenhall where I read and think
about shepherds.