Sheep are part of our landscape, and they created the views we enjoy today by strimming up after fussier cows.
A Swaledale tup symbolises the national park but we heard at St Oswald’s lambing service that the ancestor of all sheep is the meaty Mouflon of Mesopotamia. It was brought here by Neolithic farmers and their domesticated animals replaced hunter-gathering. Later the Romans brought ‘woollies’ and by the Middle Ages wool had become white gold. Cities were built on its trade and monasteries ran flocks that uncovered limestone pavements.
In 1800 the focus shifted back to meat. Victorian farmers with 250 sheep and farmhands were regarded as rich but today the same farms struggle to break even with 850 sheep and no staff. Farms have merged or offer holidays in old shepherds’ huts. The future is uncertain as the consumption of meat has fallen since 2012 due to changing diets and concerns about over-grazing.
For their part, churches value farmers and their work in tending the landscape. Farms with one cut of grass enable other species, from wildflowers to curlews, to flourish and the National Farmers’ Union reminds us that farming families fill rural schools with children and serve as governors, councillors and churchwardens. They rarely go on holiday and help their communities in myriad other ways. It would be tragic if industrialised farms, producing more from the same acreage, led to people leaving the Dales.
As Easter gives way to Rogationtide churches give thanks for all who work the land and hold lambing services. We will recall Biblical ancestors like Moses, moving sheep when he came across someone guarding an eternal flame, and King David who wrote, ‘The Lord’s My Shepherd.’ Both those characters were given new jobs in changing times.