Urwin - Farmers diary: a year at high house farm

Im half asleep in our double bed, enjoying my first lie-in for a while. I can just hear the low purr of the quad bike as Steve drives round the back field, doing an early morning check on the ewes. Hell have the kids and Mavis the collie sitting on the back of the bike, ready to jump off and start gathering the sheep together.

The curtains are drawn back, and I can see the swallows swooping past the window, gathering in bunches on the phone lines and chirruping loudly. Theyre getting ready to make their long flight to the African sunshine. One day soon well wake up and most of them will have gone and autumn will really have started.

All is peace and quiet. The cat is snoozing on my knees.

Suddenly the landline rings shrilly and I shoot up in alarm, knocking the cat to the floor. One of our neighbours is on the line: All your sheep are in the garden! Theyre on the lawn, and I have to say, theyre making a bit of a mess.

Oh Christ.

This is the second time this neighbour has found our sheep in their front garden. Last time the ewes were staring through their front windows trying to watch the telly.

I pull on yesterdays clothes and stagger out the front door.

Opening the neighbours garden gate, I can see two white woolly bottoms right in the middle of their circular lawn. The grass is normally like a billiard table, but today its covered with tiny hoof prints and black sheep droppings.

I get a bit closer and realise that all of the sheep is just Button and her sidekick Keith. Button and Keith are seven-month-old pet lambs. Pet lambs are the sheep that we bottle feed each year, due to their mothers rejecting them or not having enough milk. Keith is a chunky lamb with strong legs, a tight-curled coat and a fat bobble tail. Hes a bit dim. Today he has rust-coloured streaks down his leg and back.

Button is a complete pain in the arse.

She was the third lamb out of triplets. Born tail first, she took a while to take her first breath. Shes never really grown properly, even after we started feeding her on the bottle. Shes tiny and has a strange shape, with a prominent spine and a sagging stomach. Her body reminds me very much of a woolly handbag. Her fleece is a lovely close-curled creamy white, which shades to a delicate chocolate brown on her legs and stomach. She has a neat black nose and big limpid eyes fringed with the longest eyelashes Ive ever seen. She flutters these at Keith and anyone who might be holding any lamb feed.

Pet lambs tend to have no fear of people or dogs and Button is no exception. She sees gates and fences as challenging obstacles on her constant search for interesting feed choices.

Shes started rolling under the bottom rung of the front gate and trotting up the driveway, nibbling on whatever garden plants catch her fancy.

This time Keith has tried to keep up with his girlfriend and has squeezed his roly-poly podge under the gate hence the muddy, rusty marks.

Button looks round when I come through the gate and bounces over to start snuffling in my coat, looking for lamb feed, while Keith keeps stuffing lawn grass into his face.

Shooing them quietly, I manage to get the pair out of the garden and close the gate on their backsides. I hoist Keith up over the gate. He looks bewildered to be suddenly upside down with his four feet in the air, and struggles until I set him down on the other side. Hes bloody heavy. Button tries to make a break for it up the drive, but I grab her by the fleece and push her under the gate.

She glares at me on the other side of the fence. Keith is two inches behind her.

I grab a couple of wooden sheep hurdles and wedge them in front of the gate. Their bottom rungs are lower, and hopefully will stop Button squeezing back under. Unless she works out how to nudge them open. I wouldnt put it past her.

Walking back to the house, I avert my eyes from the mess on the lawn and try to scuff a few pellets of lamb poo away from the drive with my feet. Back in the house, the kids and Steve are tucking into pancakes. Its just turned 9 a.m. time to check round the rest of the flock.

Its a gorgeous autumn day. The leaves are just beginning to turn, and its still warm, so I head down to the bottom of the back field to do a bit of long overdue walling.

Like most Northumbrian farms, our fields are hemmed in by a hodgepodge of grey stone walls and wooden fences, and its a constant battle to keep them upright and patch any gaps before they get big enough for sheep to get through.

Normally (and if we have the money) we ask David, a stonemason, who can rebuild a stone wall faster than anyone else Ive ever seen. Hes at least six foot tall with a shock of gingery red hair, and to watch him wall is to see an expert at work. He charges by the metre, so instead of paying him to patch the smaller gaps, Ive decided to try to fix a stretch of wall myself, just to save a little bit of cash.

I dont have a lot of experience or skill but I start off with enthusiasm and survey a broken-down section of wall at the bottom of the back sheep field.

Our walls are made up of irregular-shaped yellow sandstone and grey whinstone, with a core of smaller pebbles that holds it all secure. But a sheep has pushed through this section and all the stones are lying scattered willy-nilly on the turf.

Sorting through the pile of rubble, I find the big cope stones (ones that will cap off the top of the wall) and put them to one side. The thruff stones (through stones) are even bigger. These are the whin slabs that sit across the entire wall, holding both sides together. I heave them into a pile and start sorting out all the tiny rocks and pebbles that make up the core.

I begin by wedging in the larger stones at the base of the wall and work my way up, stuffing the central gaps with smaller rocks. Its a hot and heavy job, and after about two hours of solid work, I step back and have a look. Ive managed to build in half the gap, but it doesnt look quite right.

It has a distinct lean to the right, and when I experimentally wobble one of the larger base stones, the wall sways from one side to the other.

Looking at the stretch Ive done, I reckon all it would take would be one curious ewe to push gently against it, and then the whole flock would be out.

Sod it. I sit down on the grass in a sweaty heap and tip my head back to stare up at the clear sky and enjoy the sunshine.

Its beautiful down here. Theres a patch of trees on the right where a buzzard has nested for the past two years. I can see one of the birds now, lazily circling above me and making mournful keeeee sounds. Weve also got a pair down in the ten-acre wood, and Ive seen them up close when they land by the side of the road. Theyre huge, with deep brown feathers, and chocolate brown and yellow speckled wings.

Looking up, I can see a dark speck against the green of the field, and as I watch, it turns into the shape of my dad. Hes come to see what Im doing. He used to be a director of a large consulting firm, and since he retired in a neighbouring village, hes made it his lifes work to help me out and tell me what to do.

That looks a bit wonky, he says, surveying the leaning wall. What you need to do is

He starts telling me what I should be doing and demonstrating while lifting and repositioning some of the bigger stones in the gap. In a few minutes the wall looks much more secure and sheep-proof.

Thats better, says Dad happily.

Ive got a flask of tea and we sit down on the turf and companionably share a drink out of the plastic cup.

I love moments like these. The sky is blue and theres a warm wind. Its very peaceful at the bottom of the big field, and we cant hear any car noise, just the occasional baa from one of our sheep. Its a moment of much-needed quiet before the kids come home on the school bus.