We have just added these photographs of this lamb to our ecard collection.

We came across this young sheep – still practically a lamb – scratching its fleece against an gnarled old hawthorn tree.

It was so preoccupied with this that we were able to walk quite close to it. We knew it would make a good subject for our ecards, so we took our time and walked slowly towards it.

From there I was able to circle around to get the rise of the ground behind the sheep so that I could keep the background plain and uncluttered.

In fact the sheep was so preoccupied that I was able to walk right around it and watch it as it scratched.

As I walked around and got nearer, my height meant that I could look down and take advantage of a plain background (the grass) and keep the sheep and tree in the frame.

I expected the sheep to run away at any moment. I didn’t want to scare it but things were unpredictable. It’s important in these kind of situations, therefore, to be completely familiar with your camera and know just what knobs and dials to twist in order to get the shot.

The sheep eventually took notice of me and moved a yard or two away from the tree. It still didn’t look bothered on account of me being so close.

I was shooting with my Nikon D700 and a 50mm lens, so the angle of view was quite wide. That was great for capturing the whole of the tree but not so good for homing in on the sheep.

So I walked a bit closer still and even then it didn’t panic or skedaddle as I expected. I was able to take several shots and then back off and leave it to get back to its scratching.

Did You Know That Farmers Mark Their Sheep?
You might just be able to see a mark on the back of the sheep in the photograph above. It is red dye or paint that farmers use to mark their flocks.

Sometimes farmers paint individual numbers on their sheep to identify mother ewes and their particular lambs.

It is fun to stand watching a flock of sheep and see a couple of lambs with a number, for example ’34’, written on their backs running across the field to their mother – which also has number 34 marked on its fleece.

Memory And Travels

Memory… is the diary that we all carry with us.
Oscar Wilde

What has often been most memorable in my travels are those moments that were unplanned and unexpected, and not necessarily those places about which I have had great hopes that something wonderful would occur.

One such space in time happened last month when my husband David and I went to Devon, a county in southern England. I was expecting gorgeous countryside because Devon is always described with such a superlative.

However, I hadn’t given much of a thought in particular to Dartmoor National Park and what I would see there – but it was in fact there where something took place that has become a lasting memory.

Ponies At Dartmoor National Park
First, however, some background about the area:

Dartmoor National Park is the largest and wildest area of moorland in the UK. It is well known for its Dartmoor ponies who roam free on its land, like the three horses pictured above. In fact, the pony is also the park’s logo since it is such an important part of life on the moor.

Ponies have roamed on the moor since prehistoric times. Many other kinds of ponies have also lived on the moor, such as those from the Shetland Islands. Shetland ponies like the one pictured below adapt well to the harsh conditions on Dartmoor.

Aside from the Shetland, cross breeding also means that there are a lot of ponies living in Dartmoor who are of no particular breed.

Some History About These Dartmoor Equines
During the 1970s, an archaeological excavation came upon hoof prints providing evidence that domesticated ponies where found on Dartmoor around 3,500 years ago.

In fact, horses have been on Dartmoor for so long that an indigenous breed – the Dartmoor pony – evolved.

In the mid-1800s, Dartmoor was one of the main sources of granite in Britain. A railway was built to transport the rock, and ponies were used to haul trucks to and from the railway. By the first half of the 20th century, ponies were also used for farm work and for delivery of goods and services.

Locals, visitors, and tourists also liked to see the ponies then as they do to this day.

In Modern Times
By the middle of the 20th century, there were nearly 30,000 ponies on Dartmoor.

However, today there are fewer than 1,500 including fewer than 900 breeding mares left – which is why the Dartmoor pony breed is considered rare.

The reason for the decline is that in earlier years ponies were sold for horse meat – in Britain and then when that was no longer acceptable to the British public, in Europe.

With the rising tide of public opinion against the sale of horse meat to Europe, the number of ponies that the farmers could afford to keep declined.

A 1998 article in the Independent newspaper tells the whole story under the title The Ponies Killed By Kindness.

From Foal To Pony ‘Vital Statistics’
Some say that Darmoor ponies have the majority of their foals between April and July, others between May and August. At whatever time they are born, foals remain with their mothers for some time afterwards.

When a foal reaches maturity, it is never more than 12.2 hands (that’s 50 inches or 127 centimeters).

The colors for the breed include bay (which means that the horse has a reddish brown body color with a black mane, tail, ear edges, and lower legs), brown, black, grey, chestnut, and roan (which means that the horse has an even mixture of white and pigmented hairs that does not get gray or fade as the animal ages).

Piebalds (who are black and white) and skewbalds (who are brown and white) are crossbreds, and usually part Shetland pony.

Wild They Are Not, Though Close To It They Are
Some people mistakenly think that the ponies at Dartmoor are wild: They seem to roam as they wish; they don’t have saddles; and for the most part there are no people about.

Actually, all of the ponies are owned by local farmers, who mark the ponies to indicate their ownership and who let them out on to the Dartmoor commons to graze for most of the year. These farmers have rights to graze a certain number of sheep, cattle, and ponies on the moor.

Drifts
The ponies live out on the moor all year ’round. They spend the majority of their time in small herds of mares with young ponies and one adult stallion.

In late September and early October the local farmers get together to round up their ponies. These round-ups are called ‘drifts’.

During a drift, ponies are herded towards a small field or yard that’s easy to access. Not only people on horseback, but others using four-wheeled bikes and some on foot as well all get in on the act.

After they are herded, the ponies are separated into groups. They are checked out health-wise and treated if necessary. Those who are too old or ill or those to be sold are separated out, while the others return once again to the moor.

Out On The Moor
Intent on seeing the moors, we drove through the narrow roads that wind their way across Dartmoor.

Soon we came to a part of the moor where small clusters of the ponies with their foals were congregated on either side of the road. We parked our car and walked out gingerly on to the springy turf to try and get a closer look at the lovely creatures.

Here is a young foal that we saw at that time, cuddling up to its mom on the moor:

Visions On The Land
History, statistics and characteristics about the ponies aside, there are few things more peaceful and moving than being in the presence of these ponies as they walk and trot about, chomp down on the vegetation, snuggle against one another, and otherwise while away the time and play around at their home in Dartmoor.

The gentle mist wafting in the atmosphere during the afternoon when we were there also provided a soft and protective veil to the splash of colors and quiet sounds of these generally placid ponies and their foals.

Acknowledging Our Presence
The ponies and foals that we ‘met’ on Dartmoor quietly gave us the merest slip of a nod in a type of recognition of our presence.

We managed to get within a foot of some of them so we tried to pet them. However, they would have nothing of that: They skidaddled when they saw us get too near, and then they resumed their grazing and romping about further up a patch in that ancient and gloriously memorable setting.

A Beautiful Dignity
As we turned around from the horses to make our way back across the moor toward our parked car, we spotted this final scene:

Seeing that pony looking majestically into the haze of the horizon with another grazing peacefully and the little one looking straight ahead at us, we felt a world away from our normal urban living in that serene and tranquil setting.

So as the mist softly drizzled over all of us humans and horses, this was the peaceful memory that I was lucky to get – and to remember, whenever I wish.

It Always Rains On ‘Show Days’

There is a tradition that it always rains on ‘show days’ and sure enough it started raining heavily as we approached the showground of the Great Yorkshire Show that is held in Harrogate in the north of England in July each year.

The Great Yorkshire Show is the largest agricultural show in England and, as we drove in and were guided by the stewards past fields full of parked cars, we envisaged a long and muddy tramp ahead of us from the car to the entrance gate to the show.

We parked and sat and waited out the rain. Through the steamed-up windows we sat and watched the comings and goings, trying to work out which way to walk to the showground.

As well as looking forward to enjoying the show, we were looking for opportunities to take photographs for the Animals category of our ecard collection. Consequently, the prospect of rain the whole afternoon was not what we had hoped for.

Then the rain stopped and the sun came out between banks of white clouds and we walked through the fields, dodging the puddles until we reached the track that led to the show.

Although the sky grew dark and threatening again during the afternoon – as you can see in the photograph above – it didn’t rain.

This sense of keeping one eye out for the unreliable weather is a facet of England that everybody learns to live with. It’s one of the jokes about the social interactions of the English that the first and most regular topic of conversation is the weather.

An Oddity

Agricultural shows are a long-standing tradition in England. They take place at various towns up and down the country, mostly in the summer months.

Yet these shows are an oddity in some ways. If a visitor from another planet were dropped into the Great Yorkshire Show, he might come away thinking that England was a country where everyone was involved in farming.

The fact is though, that the overwhelming majority of the people who attend the shows are urban dwellers because England is of course an urban society. It ceased being a network of rural communities generations ago

Yet going to these shows is like stepping into a parallel world of people who live and work in the English countryside, as though we rub shoulders with them every day.

Farmers And Their Animals

The English countryside is beautiful, but it is not quaint. English farms are amongst the most highly efficient and mechanised in the world.

Because of this mechanisation and efficiency there is a tendency to think that farmers regard their animals as ‘produce’ rather than as individuals. It is obvious however from watching the farmers at the shows that they have a caring relationship with their animals.

That was brought out very forcibly during the epidemic of foot and mouth (FMD) disease of 2001 when hundreds of thousands of cattle and sheep were buried in mass graves or incinerated under government orders to try to contain the outbreak. There were interviews on television then with farmers who were crying at the loss of their animals.

Foot And Mouth Disease

The evidence suggests that the outbreak in 2001 began when pigs were fed catering swill that contained illegally imported meat that was infected with the FMD virus.

FMD is an airborne virus. Pigs are relatively resistant to infection this way, but having eaten the swill they became ‘virus factories’ pumping out plumes of the virus into the air where it then spread to cows and sheep.

In the acute stage, the symptoms are blistering around the feet and mouth. Animals rarely die from the disease but the long-term effect is that they don’t regain full health and they are often in pain. Therefore the disease is a risk both to the welfare of the animal and to the farming economy.

At the time of the outbreak, many farms were off limits to visitors. Nor were the animals permitted to leave the farms. We remember visiting farms outside the known areas of contamination and driving and walking through shallow troughs of disinfectant that were set across the entrance to farms. Everyone entering and leaving had to walk or drive through these troughs.

2007 Outbreak

There was another outbreak of FMD in 2007, but by then the lessons of the earlier outbreak had been learned and the outbreak was contained in the south east of England and stopped.

There were no disinfectant troughs at the Yorkshire Show and if there had been a reported outbreak this year, I do not think the Great Yorkshire Show would have taken place.

The Main Event

It is farm animals that dominate the events at agricultural shows, and showing animals and winning rosettes is a serious business. This is so whether it is for cows, pigs, or any other farm animals.

However, we spent most of our time looking at the sheep, taking photographs for our ecards, and in talking to the sheep farmers.

Sheep

There are over 40 million sheep in the United Kingdom, which in a population of 60 million people means that one doesn’t have to travel far to see sheep in the fields.

About 50 per cent of the flocks are from the hill regions of Scotland, Wales, and the Lake District. They are cross-bred each year with upland sheep who are then bred with lowland sheep to encourage the best genetic mix.

That is why there are 70 breeds of sheep and a further 12 recognised crosses in the UK living everywhere from the harsh, hill areas in the north to the lowland ‘downs’ or valleys near the south coast.

Lamb

If you are wondering where the lamb that reaches British tables comes from, it is the male cross-bred lambs that are taken off to market at about three months old.

When they have been taken away, it’s eerie and poignant to travel past a field that was full of sheep a few days before and now see only the mother ewes.

Benefits And Dangers

While cross-breeding helps maintain the health of sheep, transporting sheep to different parts of the country at breeding season was cited as one of the reasons that the foot and mouth epidemic spread so quickly throughout Britain.

Breeds

Some of the breeds of sheep have delightful names and wonderful appearances to go with the names. For example, at the show we saw the Leicester Longwool breed of sheep that has long strings of delicate, silky curls that stretch like beaded curtains to the ground all along its body.

Then there is the Hampshire Down breed, with short legs, short muzzles, and a characteristic chubbiness – as you can see in this photo.

We have seen the Herdwick breed of sheep many times. This is the breed that was saved for the nation by Beatrix Potter on her farms in the Lake District.

These hardy hill sheep and other similar breeds like the Blackface and the Swaledale are a the top of the cross-breeding chain. They are crossed with Upland sheep like the Border Leicester which produces mules or half-breeds that are then crossed with the lowland breeds like the Lincoln Longwool and the Hampshire Down.

For the first time, however, we saw Herdwick sheep that had recently been shorn. Then we were able to see that they have long, elegant necks that are normally hidden by a coarse grey and white fleece or jacket as farmers sometimes call the fleece.

Talking to a farmer who farms in the Lake District he told us that he knows the face of each one of his flock of Herdwicks.

When six of his sheep were stolen earlier this year, he knew immediately which six faces were missing.

Sheep Shearing Exhibition

At intervals throughout the day two sheep shearers put on an exhibition of sheep shearing. One sheared used electric clippers while the other used hand shears.

The commentator explained that all shearers know how to use hand shears because they travel the world with their trade and sometimes they are called upon to work far from a source of electricity.

As we have seen before, such as when we visited Masham Sheep Fair, shearers wear short felt bootees to prevent themselves sliding about on the floor when it becomes covered in lanolin from the fleeces.

Of course the electric clippers worked much faster than the hand shears, but it was amazing how quickly the shearer with the hand shears clipped the fleece off an animal.

In fact the whole business was over so quickly that the shorn sheep looked as though they were unsure what had just happened.