Who is Amanda Owen? Everything you need to know about The Yorkshire Shepherdess who stars on Our Yorkshire Farm

Fans of the hit documentary Our Yorkshire Farm were offered another glimpse into the lives of Amanda Owen and her family as they tend to their remote farm in the Yorkshire Dales.

In the sixth episode of the fourth series of the Channel 5 show, the family buy their first dairy cow and attempt to round up ewes who have scattered across wild moorland ahead of mating season.

Who is Amanda Owen?

She was born in Huddersfield in 1975 and grew up there as the daughter of a model and an engineer, but decided to move out to rural North Yorkshire in her early 20s and pursue her dream of becoming a shepherdess after reading the James Herriot books, which recount the adventures of a newly qualified vet in Thirsk in the 1930s.

Amanda Owen on her farm at Keld in North Yorkshire. (Simon Hulme).Amanda Owen on her farm at Keld in North Yorkshire. (Simon Hulme).
Amanda Owen on her farm at Keld in North Yorkshire. (Simon Hulme).
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She offered her services as a labourer at farms in the Dales, milking cows, driving tractors and carrying out other important work to gain hands-on experience, but also picked up shifts in a newsagents, a pottery shop and a factory to earn some money.

During a stint at a farm in Cumbria in 1995, she travelled over to the Dales to borrow a male sheep and that is where she met Clive, who is the tenant of the remote Ravenseat Farm where they now live.

The couple married in 2000 and they now have nine children together and tend to a 2,000 acre farm, which is home to around 1,000 sheep. They announced in June 2022 that they had separated.

When it came to the birth of her eighth child, Clemmy who is now five, she decided she could handle the task on her own while her husband was asleep upstairs.

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Several other births have happened in cars and ambulances at the side of the road during the 69-mile trip to the nearest maternity hospital in Middlesbrough.

The children travel for several hours just to get to school and while the older ones have phones, there is no mobile phone signal or broadband coverage at the farmhouse, so they cannot spend time on social media at home.

Before the pandemic, they also ran a B&B which offered afternoon tea that was popular with people who were passing by while tackling the Coast to Coast walk.

How did the family end up on TV?

The unconventional family first appeared on our screens when they featured in an ITV documentary called The Dales, which aired in 2011.

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They then appeared on Channel 5 show New Lives in the Wild, before they were given their own show, which launched in 2018 and went on to become Channel 5's most-watched show.

Amanda, who is now 46, is also an author, photographer, newspaper columnist and public speaker.

She has written Sunday Times bestseller The Yorkshire Shepherdess, A Year in the Life of the Yorkshire Shepherdess and The Adventures of the Yorkshire Shepherdess.

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