Will festive cheer prevail this Christmas at Ravenseat, the remote moorland farm where Amanda Owen – aka the Yorkshire Shepherdess – will be spending the season of goodwill with her estranged husband Clive and their nine children?
Despite their separation in 2022, Amanda, 51, and Clive, 70, who with their large, photogenic brood became stars of the popular TV show Our Yorkshire Farm, charting their chaotic rural life high in the Dales, are now filming another series, Our Farm Next Door.
They also still co-parent and work the farm together, although they no longer share the same home, with Amanda living in their nearby cottage and the children – aged nine to 22 (only 24-year-old Raven having flown the nest) – shuttling between them as they choose.
But if it seems they have now achieved a comfortable equanimity as a family and former couple, for Amanda, the past few years have been especially tough.
In this interview she discloses for the first time that in the dark days following their split, after 22 years of marriage, she suffered an eating disorder from which she is only now emerging.
It was part of a ‘cataclysmic’ breakdown she endured after she began a short-lived new relationship with web designer Rob Davies, 72, which ended when intense media interest became overwhelming.
‘I just shut down,’ she says. ‘Physical and mental health are intertwined and anxiety, depression, paranoia, agoraphobia and an eating disorder were all smooshed into one.’
Amanda Owen – aka the Yorkshire Shepherdess – starred in popular TV show Our Yorkshire Farm along with ex-husband Clive and their children
Her despair only worsened when trolls vilified her for her weight loss. ‘I was called, among other things, a bag of bones. I still get trolled. Edith [her 17-year-old] deletes a lot of it.
‘I remember sitting in the sheep pens in the dark, just hiding,’ she says. ‘It’s the price you pay for living your life in the open, for being observed. It’s like having a post mortem before you’re dead.’
We’ll return to this low ebb but, today, having sought medical help, Amanda is in recovery and, although her imposing 6 ft frame is still fragile, she’s up-beat, smiley and strikingly glamorous.
We meet as her sixth book – Christmas Tales from the Farm, her first for children – is published.
It celebrates all that a family does in winter when it has access to 2,000 acres of sheep-grazed farmland, from skating on frozen tarns to chasing a runaway reindeer and staging its own quirky version of the Winter Olympics, which ‘makes the one on telly look very staid and boring’.
But what about the nitty-gritty of the festivities? Who organises everything? ‘Clive still believes in Father Christmas. He doesn’t know how it all happens,’ laughs Amanda.
‘I don’t buy any presents,’ concedes Clive. ‘I’m the worst shopper in the world. Completely hopeless. But I’ll get something for Amanda. She always makes everything perfect for everyone but does nothing for herself.’
‘If you think I’ve bought you ’owt for Christmas, I haven’t,’ adds Amanda. ‘I’m frugal. Everyone gets a token gift and a massive meal. I could fit all the presents into a supermarket bag for life.’
There is something in their tone that suggests comfortable familiarity and I ask Amanda if they get on better now than they did when they were actually living together.
‘Do you know what? There isn’t the tension between us now because we have space. Before we lived together, worked together, raised the kids together, but the fact there’s separation now is actually a blessing.’
Clive lives at Ravenseat Farm where we meet: all flag-stone floors and snug with a wood fire and a vast Christmas tree bought by Reuben, 22, which grazes the beamed ceiling.
‘I live down at the road end, in the other place,’ says Amanda. She’s referring to their holiday rental cottage called The Firs.
‘With the passing of time, things have settled and calmed. The separation has, in my eyes, taken the heat out. It wasn’t quite toxicity, but it’s taken away the sharp edges of two people being together and not getting on.
‘We’re both strong characters, belligerent and pig-headed and there was no one particular problem that needed ironing out. It was a clash of personalities.’
Clive agrees: ‘Yes, I think we do get on better now.’
Then they’re off on a riff, joshing again. ‘Are you sure you haven’t got one of my nighties under your pillow?’ teases Amanda.
‘No, I have not. No. I’ve stopped with that.’
‘Do you cry into your pillow?’
Amanda and Clive still co-parent and work the farm together, although they no longer share the same home, with Amanda living in their nearby cottage
Amanda Owen with seven of her nine children – who shuttle between their parents’ houses as they please
‘No, I’ve stopped with that, too.’
‘Do you still ring up and say: “Have you got any toilet rolls?” ’
‘Yes, and you answer, “No”, so we’re on to the oversized blue rolls from the dairy now. I’m hopeless at the household stuff. It’s total chaos,’ concedes Clive. ‘Amanda comes up every day because she has her farming to do . . .’
‘And I say, “I’m not your freaking housekeeper, Clive.” ’
‘I think it’s done me a bit of good, the separation,’ says Clive mildly. ‘I’m much calmer, more understanding, less argumentative. And the biggest thing I’ve learnt is to cook.’
‘And I’m going to say two words to you,’ laughs Amanda. ‘Fairy Liquid.’
‘Well, it was your fault really. Fairy Liquid is green and you bought yellow . . .’
‘And you fried your eggs in it, thinking it was cooking oil.’
So it goes on, an impromptu double-act, and it is easy to see why their unscripted TV show – set against a backdrop of endless skies and open moorland, with their sweet-faced children in leading roles – is such a success.
In descending age order, their children are: Raven, 24, Reuben, 22, Miles, 19, Edith, 17, Violet, 15, Sidney, 14, Annas, 12, Clemmy, ten, and nine-year-old Nancy.
They are their parents’ priority: ‘We’ve always put them at the top of the list,’ says Clive.
‘It wouldn’t work if we did the child hand-over at McDonald’s, would it?’ adds Amanda. ‘Although a lot of people wouldn’t call what we do “normality”, to still eat together and spend a considerable time with the person you’re separated from.’
They have raised nine well-adjusted, independent and resourceful children. ‘Raven [living in Newcastle] is academic. She’s a consultant something, specialising in gas chromatography, and proudly announces she’s achieved all that from being dragged up,’ says Amanda.
Reuben has his own heavy plant machinery business, which has spawned a spin-off TV show, Reuben Owen: Life In The Dales.
Clive shows me Clemmy’s letter to Santa which (modestly) requests a ‘goat coat’, a ‘baby horse teddy’, ‘lip barm’ (sic) and a ‘crop top’ – ‘She’s just like her bloody mother,’ he harrumphs – but the list comes with the proviso: ‘I don’t mind if I don’t get all these things.’
Edith has a part-time job at the pub where I stay overnight and where both staff and customers compliment her politeness.
Clive, announces Amanda, is dating. ‘Yes, I’m seeing someone and that’s very nice,’ he confirms.
Is she younger than you?
‘Everyone is! But she’s older than Amanda.’
‘She’s not the first lady friend he’s had. He’s had three,’ says Amanda. ‘He’s a popular man.’ She smiles mischievously.
‘She gets the best side of you and I get the crappy side,’ she tells him. ‘I still clean up all his mess – and I’ve bought her Christmas present from him, too.’
There is no man in Amanda’s life: ‘I’m quite ambivalent about them. It would be foolish to say “not ever” – it can get a bit tedious just having conversations with children – but now? No.’
She talks about her romance with Rob, another man older than her by two decades. ‘He was a good, kind man, but he had a lot to put up with.’
The whole family, from left, Raven, Clemmy, Reuben, Edith, Sidney, Amanda, Annas, Violet, Miles, Nancy and Clive
An amalgam of pressures led to the breakdown of her marriage to Clive. Amanda recognised early that farming was ‘at its lowest ebb and financially it was blatantly obvious we needed to diversify’.
But her success as a TV personality, with book tours and promotional appearances, aside from the show, bred resentment in Clive.
Bitter rows ensued. ‘I saw these opportunities as God-sent. I knew we’d struggle without diversifying. I didn’t want Clive to feel emasculated or make him into a house-husband. Every time I went out on a promotional tour, I’d pay credit to him for keeping the home fires burning.
‘And, of course, I’d come back from places dressed up, all glam, and I’d be trying to be all things to all people and Clive resented the fact I could make more money talking about sheep than he could from shepherding. For me, it’s not about changing our lives, but preserving them. I think even Clive understands that now.’
Clive has also become more magnanimous about Amanda’s aptitude for farming: ‘She can shear a sheep better than me, which is a bit of a bugger.’
Yet such ‘harmony’ has been hard-won: ‘In the throes of everything that happened, when I was ill, I could never have envisaged things working out as they have done now,’ says Amanda.
She talks, openly now, about her eating disorder: ‘I always had issues with eating and food and it gets amplified when you’ve had nine pregnancies. There are photos of me as thin Amanda, stressed, fat, tired Amanda.
‘You can find a picture to suit any situation. And the media intrusion got to me. I had no control; I didn’t know what would pop up next and it made me mentally ill and physically sick.
‘The children witnessed it all. It has taught them resilience. It’s a weird sort of double life. You have moments of extreme strength, of feeling belligerent and spiky, then times when you feel the rug has been pulled from under you.
‘I was back and forth to the hospital, to the doctors; it was a critical time and we were also doing the renovation at Anty John’s [the property that features in Our Farm Next Door].’ Clive recalls it as ‘the scariest time’ and says there were nights when he feared he would not see Amanda the next morning.
‘I had a swallowing issue,’ she continues. ‘One Valentine’s night I went outside in the dark and something happened in my throat and I was throwing up blood. It was awful. The eating disorder has always bubbled up beneath the surface but I never imagined it would happen to that degree.
‘Clive, in his basic, simplistic way said: “Why don’t you just eat summat?” There were a couple of times when I went out gathering [sheep] and I just flaked out. They had to come and get me.
‘And Clive said to me in a moment of vulnerability: “I know you’ll always have my back and you can always rely on me.” ’
‘And that’s absolutely true. We can split up, shout the farm down, but we’ll always be there for each other,’ confirms Clive.
Amanda looks radiant today. She wears jeans, an off-the-shoulder jumper and – as is her custom, even around the farm – light make-up and statement earrings.
‘I’m out of the woods now. I’ve turned a corner,’ she says. ‘You have your moments, your relapses and wobbles, but I’m here to tell the tale and I almost feel better armed with the awareness I have of eating disorders now.’
And of course, there’s their own, idiosyncratic brand of Christmas to look forward to. ‘The kids aren’t allowed to open presents until all the animals are fed and Edith gets back from work at 3pm. They’ll hang their stockings on their bedroom doors. The older girls will get a lipstick or mascara, perhaps.’
‘A tangerine?’
‘No! We’re not in the 1880s!’
‘Sidney loves his bike, Clemmy likes horses, Violet is very into science. So they’ll all get an appropriate gift. If there’s snow, it brings a whole new quietness and purity. You feel completely undisturbed,’ adds Clive.
‘Last year it went down to minus 13,’ says Amanda. ‘Edith is beautiful with her fake nails and eyelashes, but does she have a snowboard? No, she has moon boots and a plank of wood. Everything we have, from skis to sledges, is a bit broken and make-shift but I think that makes us relatable.
‘We’re not perfect. You can write your name in the dust in this house – but I’ve heard it stops accumulating after eight years.
‘When you talk to the older ones about their best Christmases, it’s never about some crummy game they got. It’s, “Do you remember when we ran out of fuel for the Rayburn and Mum had to spit-roast the turkey over the fire?” or, “Do you remember when Mum fed her sheep and got the 4×4 stuck in a bog and had to do the walk of shame home?” ’
I ask Amanda how many will sit down for Christmas dinner: ‘Goodness knows,’ she says airily, ‘but cooking for the masses is nothing out of the ordinary for me. We won’t have enough seats; someone will be sitting on an upturned washing basket; another on a milk churn. It won’t be fancy but it will be homely and welcoming.’
It will be a family affair, too: Mum, Dad and all the children with Reuben and Miles’s girlfriends included – although Clive’s won’t be coming ‘because we just want to focus on the kids’, he says.
Amanda will cook, as she always does, having bought a vast turkey at the last moment on Christmas Eve from a poultry auction.
‘I leave it to the end and get a massive bird for about £30 as no one wants the huge ones that take 13-hours to cook in a slow oven.’
I wonder who the children will stay with – Amanda or Clive – on Christmas Eve and she says: ‘They’ll go to whichever place suits them – and Father Christmas has any amount of chimneys to come down.’
They’ll have allocated jobs: ‘The boys will feed the cows, the sheep will be split between the older girls; the little ones will be on horse duty and Violet, who likes cooking, will do some prep in the kitchen.’
And will Amanda and Clive call a truce to the bickering?
‘No we won’t,’ she laughs. ‘We will go on bickering because something very weird will have happened when we stop.’
Christmas Tales From The Farm by Amanda Owen, is out now (£14.99, Puffin)
Source: Daily Mai