Shear determination

Alice Petch is on a mission. Passionate about the countryside and passionate about farming, she’s out to destroy some of the stereotypical ideas about women in agriculture.

In the traditional model, it would be 17-year-old Jack Petch who would be lined up to take over the family farm at Little Ayton on the edge of the North York Moors. But next year Jack is off to university to study architecture. It’s his older sister Alice who is now getting to grips (literally) with sheep, crops and paperwork. And from this summer there will be deer to deal with, too.

“It’s a bit strange really but Jack and me, we’re the complete opposites,” says Alice, who turned 21 last week. “I think dad’s pleased that I’m keen.”

Keen isn’t the word – driven might be a better word describe Alice’s desire to take on the farm. She says it goes back to her childhood.

“I just grew up on a really nice farm, just outside of Kildale, on the hills and I was always out. I was very hyperactive as a little child and dad used to take me out really early. I would stay out late with him on the combining. I don’t know how Jack didn’t really get into it.

“I don’t think he was really wanting to go out and feed the pigs. He used to bring home birds with dodgy wings, or kittens. I just used to always be outside. It was a really good lifestyle and that’s why I want to carry on and run the farm because it’s so good.”

Alice recently completed a two-year foundation agricultural degree at Bishop Burton college and followed this up with a trip to Australia.

“I worked on a sheep farm and they were lambing. About November time the shearing started. They shear all year round, but the majority of the big flocks start in the summer. I went round with a big team and did roustabout – which is just picking the fleece up – and then I had a few days shearing.

“The sheep are merino and merino crosses and are all for wool. The majority are not for meat. At the farm I was living on, the farmer said that the wool cheque was worth more than the lambs’.”

It was some time ago that Alice took up the tough and draining job of shearing sheep at home. It all began when she saw what a raw deal many hill farmers were getting for the wool the shearers had taken off breeds like Swaledales which the Petch family keep on the moors nearby.

“I was 16 or 17 – I’d just finished school. We were shearing and I said to dad, ‘How much is it, how much does he charge?’ and he said, ‘A pound a sheep.’ I said, ‘How much do you get for the fleece...?’He replied ‘15 pence’.

“I thought it was stupid if all of these poor farmers are paying that. To save my dad spending that on a shearer, I thought, ‘I’ll try it’.”

She was introduced to shearing by Nigel Buckle from Ryedale who works on the farm as a contractor. “It is physically demanding,” admits Nigel. “But given that Alice isn’t very big – she’s quite a slight build – she’s strong and she has technique.”

Alice concedes her idea had not been well received at first. “My dad said, ‘You don’t want to be doing that, Alice – you’ll break your back with doing that.’ But Nigel said, ‘We’ll have a go....’. It was three seasons ago when he took me to a few farms and helped me along. And then I went on a Wool Board course and that helped.

“The first farm I went to was in Leyburn. The last two years I have been at Thirsk which is a bit closer and they’re good sheep at Thirsk.”

A typical ewe being sheared would weigh in at about 70 kilogrammes – that’s 11 stones or roughly the weight of an average person of about five foot nine. Nigel Buckle reckons his pupil doesn’t need a big build to cope with that.

“Alice knows how to handle stock - she does a lot better than a lot of men do.”

“It was real hard the first year,” Alice adds. “There was a lot of tears. I came home at night and I said ‘I can’t do this, I can’t do this....’” But things slowly improved as she got the right idea.

“I think it’s just to keep your legs straight. When you’re starting, all you want to do is crouch down and get closer to the sheep. If you just keep your legs straight and keep the sheep rolling round all the time, they seem to just sit better for you. And as you get faster, they don’t have a chance to kick you.”

There’s another plus for Alice walking around after the sheep on the moors of Lonsdale behind the Captain Cook memorial. It keeps her fit.

She has also worked as a freelance shepherd on other farms. This spring, she was at one at Bishop Burton College run by Dominic Naylor. He thinks a young woman’s ambition to take over the family farm is ‘totally commendable’.

He adds: “It doesn’t surprise me. With Alice you just have to forget she’s a lady. She’s better than any farm lad that I’ve come across with sheep.”

Nigel Buckle reckons attitudes towards women running farms and working as shearers are changing.

“One or two of the older farmers look twice. But the younger farmers take no notice, just accept her as she is really. She never asks for help she just gets on and does it herself. She never complains.”

Alice herself has noticed a difference in attitudes between the generations. “My grandma next door for instance, she wasn’t very keen on me farming. She said, ‘It’s not a girl’s job’.

“But I think I’ve proved myself now. You can just get on and do it, just like any of the other boys can. I might be small when you look at me next to the other shearers, but it’s about how you hold the sheep.

“When you turn a ewe over to do its feet, you can get the biggest lad in the world, and he can’t turn it over. But if you know how to go about grabbing its head and turning it over, you can do it all day long.”

Alice was judged the best young shepherd from Yorkshire at a recent North Sheep event when she came fifth overall in the Young Shepherd of the Year competition.

“It was good,” she says. “I’ve never been to North Sheep before. You had to shear two sheep, a blackie and a mule. The blackie wasn’t so good. I think a lot of shearers will tell you that Scottish black-faced are a bit temperamental.

“Then you had to do an animal health questionnaire; you had to worm a sheep; there were some pictures of disease in sheep, and you had to say what they were; and then you had to do some stock judging. You got a pen of four and you had to pick which ones you thought were the best.”

Growing up on a farm and encountering the good and the bad has made her more, rather than less determined that this is the future she wants.

“I’ve seen a lot and had to deal with things. Lke sending sheep away, for instance. You have a pet lamb – you have four pet lambs – and they all go to slaughter. There’s no question of ‘can we keep it?’. It has to go.

“I’ve grown up with that and with things like, ‘you’ve got to be cruel to be kind’. And you’ve got to pick things up off the road when someone’s knocked then over on the moor. You’ve just got to be stronger than other people I suppose.”

Many young women of her age enjoy the gregariousness of their working day. Does Alice ever feel isolated from her peers up here on the moors?

“It isn’t gossip I’m interested in but learning from other farmers about how they do things and chatting in the farmhouse kitchen when I take a break from shearing.”

She says that she has no problem finding time to go out and likes to go clubbing. More often, she is to be found at events organised by the Young Farmers.

“I’ve not really got a lot of farming friends. A lot of my friends are quite arty and we go out quite a lot. I think you make plenty of friends outside if you make the effort. Probably quite a few people in farming probably don’t get out enough.”

She also does horse riding, and hunting during the winter months is another passion.

The next year will be spent helping her father to set up a deer farming enterprise at Little Ayton. There’s also a matter of acquiring, breaking in and training a new pup as a sheepdog.

She won’t choose a name until she has been to Scotland to get it. It will be a bitch however.

Apparently, sex has no bearing on the quality of sheepdog but Alice is keen that if her pup comes up to the mark, she can eventually have her own litter.

In the coming months, there’s the prospect for Alice of plenty of freelance shepherding and shearing.

She would also like to go back to New Zealand or Australia and spend some more time on horseback on the massive cattle ranches.

“They’re huge farms, you can’t imagine it until you actually get out there.”

This kind of antipodean livestock management could also be the future for the Yorkshire hills. Whatever way it goes, Alice Petch wants to be a part of it.

“The little hill farms that we shear on, there’s a hundred sheep and you wonder how they make a living on it.

“Without the subsidies I don’t think they would. I think as older people pass away or retire and younger people don’t want to take over, especially hill farms, they will turn into ranches.

“I don’t know why I love it so much. I suppose it’s just in my blood.”