Amanda Owen (born September 1974) is an English

shepherd A shepherd or sheepherder is a person who tends, herds, feeds, or guards flocks of sheep. ''Shepherd'' derives from Old English ''sceaphierde (''sceap'' 'sheep' + ''hierde'' 'herder'). ''Shepherding is one of the world's oldest occupations, i ...

, writer and presenter.

Biography

Owen lives and farms on a remote farm, Ravenseat Farm, in

Swaledale Swaledale is one of the northernmost dales (valleys) in Yorkshire Dales National Park, located in northern England. It is the dale of the River Swale on the east side of the Pennines in North Yorkshire. Geographical overview Swaledale runs ...

in the

Yorkshire Dales The Yorkshire Dales is an upland area of the Pennines in the Historic counties of England, historic county of Yorkshire, England, most of it in the Yorkshire Dales National Park created in 1954. The Dales comprise river valleys and the hills ri ...

with her husband Clive Owen and their nine children: Raven, Reuben, Miles, Edith, Violet, Sidney, Annas, Clementine and Nancy. Owen first gained attention through her

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

feed as "The Yorkshire Shepherdess", and has subsequently written five books: # ''The Yorkshire Shepherdess'' #''A Year in the Life of the Yorkshire Shepherdess'' ''A Year in the Life of the Yorkshire Shepherdess'' (2017, Sidgwick & Jackson, ) # ''Adventures of the Yorkshire Shepherdess'' (2019, Sidgwick & Jackson, ) #''Tales From the Farm''(2021, Macmillan, ISBN 978-1-5290-7475-8) #''Celebrating The Seasons'' (28 October 2021, ) In August 2017 she appeared on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

's ''

The Museum of Curiosity ''The Museum of Curiosity'' is a comedy talk show on BBC Radio 4 that was first broadcast on 20 February 2008. It is hosted by John Lloyd (Professor of Ignorance at the University of Buckingham, and later at Solent University). He acts as the ...

''. Her hypothetical donation to this imaginary museum was a

shepherd's whistle A shepherd's whistle is a specialized, modulatable, variable-pitch whistle used to train and transmit commands to working dogs and other animals. Unlike other whistles, they are placed inside the mouth. The pitch is controlled by the placement ...

, used to communicate with her

sheep dog A sheep dog or sheepdog is generally a dog or breed of dogs historically used in connection with the raising of sheep. These include livestock guardian dogs used to guard sheep and other livestock and herding dogs used to move, manage and co ...

s. On 14 July 2019 she was the subject of Radio 4's ''On Your Farm''. On 21 October 2019, she appeared on the

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...

Trees A Crowd ''Trees A Crowd'' is a natural history podcast presented by actor David Oakes. Creation and reception of the podcast Oakes, as an environmentalist and an ambassador for the Woodland Trust and The Wildlife Trusts, started ''Trees A Crowd'' as a ...

'' with

David Oakes Rowan David Oakes (born 14 October 1983) is a British actor. He is best known for his roles in the series ''The Pillars of the Earth'', '' The Borgias'', '' The White Queen'', ''Victoria'', '' Vikings: Valhalla'', and for his discursive Natural ...

. On 10 July 2021 she appeared as the featured guest on Radio 4's ''The Poet Laureate Has Gone To His Shed'' with

Simon Armitage Simon Robert Armitage (born 26 May 1963) is an English poet, playwright, musician and novelist. He was appointed Poet Laureate on 10 May 2019. He is professor of poetry at the University of Leeds. He has published over 20 collections of poetr ...

Television work

Owen and her family first appeared as regulars on Adrian Edmondson's 2011 ITV documentary series '' The Dales'' (repeated on

Together TV Together TV (formerly The Community Channel) is a British free-to-air television channel owned by The Community Channel, a community benefit society. The channel targets a women's audience aged 40 to 60, with programming related to health an ...

in 2021), alongside the Reverend Ann Chapman, the vicar of four small churches, and a number of other people living in the Yorkshire Dales. At that point, the Owen family consisted of Amanda, Clive and their five young children. In November 2015, the family appeared in an episode of '' New Lives In The Wild UK'' with

Ben Fogle Benjamin Myer Fogle, (born 3 November 1973) is an English broadcaster, writer and adventurer, best known for his presenting roles with British television channels Channel 5, BBC and ITV. Early life Fogle is the son of English actress Juli ...

, a Channel 5 programme which is made by Warner Brothers' Renegade Pictures. Their appearance led to their own

observational documentary A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in term ...

series following life on the Owens' farm on Channel 5 called ''Our Yorkshire Farm'', which has become one of the channel's most popular programmes with over three million viewers watching each episode. On 16 February 2021, Channel 5 broadcast the first episode of series 14 of '' Ben Fogle: Return to the Wild'', which saw Fogle back at Ravenseat Farm after six years, where he met their youngest child Nancy (who was born since his last visit) for the first time. In November 2021, Owen was one of the four walkers travelling with the BBC's

360 degree camera In photography, an omnidirectional camera (from "omni", meaning all), also known as 360-degree camera, is a camera having a field of view that covers approximately the entire sphere or at least a full circle in the horizontal plane. Omnidirection ...

, in series two of BBC Four's '' Winter Walks''. with Owen's episode featuring a walk through

Wensleydale Wensleydale is the dale or upper valley of the River Ure on the east side of the Pennines, one of the Yorkshire Dales in North Yorkshire, England. It is one of only a few Yorkshire Dales not currently named after its principal river, but th ...

and

Raydale Raydale (also known as Raydaleside) is a dale on the south side of Wensleydale in North Yorkshire, England. The northern part of the dale is the valley of the River Bain, which flows out of Semerwater, one of very few lakes in the Yorkshire Da ...

. Owen also filmed a couple of reports for ''Live: Winter on the Farm'' broadcast on Channel 5 between 6–9 December 2021. Reuben Owen also filmed a feature for this series and appeared on the last episode of the series, joining ''The Yorkshire Vet's'' Shona Searson and Manchester chocolatier Sarah Gallacher at

Cannon Hall Farm Cannon Hall Farm is a working farm and tourist attraction close to the village of Cawthorne, near Barnsley in the English county of South Yorkshire. Open to visitors since 1989, it is owned and run by the Nicholson family.BBC News (11 February ...

with Rob and Dave Nicholson. In 2022, Leeds-based Wise Owl Films hired Owen to present a new farming series which would join farm-based programmes like ''Matt Baker: Our Farm in the Dales'' in More4's schedules. Unlike Baker's ''Dales'' series or her Channel 5 programme, she will visit other farms in ''Amanda Owen’s Extraordinary Farming Lives'', set to be a six-part series of 60 minute programmes. In November 2022, Channel 5 confirmed that ''Our Yorkshire Farm'' would not be returning to the channel in its original form with a three-part spin-off programme called ''Beyond The Yorkshire Farm: Reuben & Clive'' due to be launched on the channel on 6 December 2022. This series will show the father and son duo launching a digging business venture which sees them in the Cumbrian village of

Langwathby Langwathby is a village and civil parish in northern Cumbria, England, about north east of Penrith on the A686 road. The village lies on the east bank of the River Eden. At the 2001 census the parish had a population of 748, increasing to 8 ...

digging out a series of ponds.

Ravenseat Farm

Ravenseat Farm is a working hill farm located in Whitsun Dale at the top of

. The nearest village is Keld in

North Yorkshire North Yorkshire is the largest ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county (lieutenancy area) in England, covering an area of . Around 40% of the county is covered by National parks of the United Kingdom, national parks, including most of ...

, and the nearest town is

Kirkby Stephen Kirkby Stephen () is a market town and civil parish in Cumbria, North West England. Historically part of Westmorland, it lies on the A685, surrounded by sparsely populated hill country, about from the nearest larger towns: Kendal and Penrith. ...

Cumbria Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in North West England, bordering Scotland. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local government, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. Cumb ...

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: ''Howgill Fells and Upper Eden Valley'': OL19 Explorer Map It is predominantly a sheep farm of 2000 acres; as of summer 2016 there were about 900 sheep and 30 cattle. The place name was apparently not recorded before the first edition of the

in 1860. The name must have been given first to the summit on Ravenseat Moor. ''Seat'' is a dialect word for

summit A summit is a point on a surface that is higher in elevation than all points immediately adjacent to it. The topography, topographic terms acme, apex, peak (mountain peak), and zenith are synonymous. The term (mountain top) is generally used ...

. Place names in the

North of England Northern England, also known as the North of England, the North Country, or simply the North, is the northern area of England. It broadly corresponds to the former borders of Angle Northumbria, the Anglo-Scandinavian Kingdom of Jorvik, and the ...

that include the element ''seat'' or ''side'' are usually derived from

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...

''saeter'',

seter Transhumance is a type of pastoralism or nomadism, a seasonal movement of livestock between fixed summer and winter pastures. In montane regions (''vertical transhumance''), it implies movement between higher pastures in summer and lower vall ...

or ''setr'' (elevated summer pasture).

Landscape features around the farm

Derived from

''saeter'' (elevated summer pasture). * Ravenseat Moor * Robert's Seat * Old Side Top * Side Edge Derived from

''dalr'' (valley). * Swaledale * Birk Dale * Whitsun Dale Derived from

''bekkr'' (stream or river). * Whitsundale Beck * Hoods Bottom Beck Derived from

''foss'' (waterfall). * High Force * Jenny Whalley's Force

Scandinavian origins

In the year 876, the

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the ''Chronicle'' was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alf ...

reported that the Viking ruler

Halfdan Halfdan (, ang, Healfdene, Medieval : "half Dane") was a late 5th and early 6th century legendary Danish king of the Scylding (Skjöldung) lineage, the son of king named Fróði in many accounts, noted mainly as the father to the two kings who ...

had divided up the land of

Northumbria la, Regnum Northanhymbrorum , conventional_long_name = Kingdom of Northumbria , common_name = Northumbria , status = State , status_text = Unified Anglian kingdom (before 876)North: Anglian kingdom (af ...

References