BRUSH MAGAZINE

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Musings of a Kent sheep farmer
Shetland sheep rearing in the Alkham Valley
WORDS
Peter Smith
NATURE
WHEN A LAWYER IS FORCED INTO EARLY RETIREMENT due to ill-health, what does he do?
He becomes a farmer. Peter Smith says he already knew, he'd decided a year before.
Peter tells his story...
When I retired from being a City solicitor living in
London in 2011, I wanted to do something completely
different. Much as I like London I wanted open green
spaces - bigger than Clapham Common.
However, it was not as difficult as I thought it might
be after my birthing experience . My choice of the
Shetland breed was crucial in this. They are
intelligent, hardy sheep who know what to do.
Watching Country file on Sunday evenings and not
looking forward to the Northern Line early next
morning had something to do with it. I also had fond
memories of time spent on a small farm in Dorset in
the 1960s, when we would walk down the lane
following their 20 or so cows for milking or loading
old fashioned small straw bales on to a farm trailer
with pitch forks.
I knew that I would become a farmer than a year
before I retired. That was plenty of time to read Mary
Castlell’s Starting with Sheep and - by far the most
important thing - deciding on the right breed of
Sheep. A one day course on lambing made me think
there was a bit more to it. Helping a working
shepherd lambing 1,300 pregnant ewes with 4 or 5 vet
students was alarming. It was clearly hard and heavy
work with a need to help many ewes deliver lambs.
After 170 or so lambs have been born on the farm
since 2011 we have still not needed to assist a birth
although one day I will have to intervene. In order to
learn the trade, I spent a lot of time with Shetland
breeders and friends near our farm, a shepherd called
Nigel and his wife Angela.
You never stop learning about sheep. You learn most
by watching them and by being patient. It used to be
impossible for us to get them through a gate without
a dog. They can run much faster than you can and in
different directions. Now I can open the gate and call
them in or I can walk through three fields and they
will follow.
What attracted me to the farm and it's surrounding
area was the chalk downland with its open pastures
and surrounding woodland. It is an Area of
Outstanding Natural Beauty.
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