Far from The Madding Crowd...

...and other sheep shearing tales.

‘The Shearing of the Rams’ by Tom Roberts 1856-1931 (National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne)

'It was the first day of June, and the sheep-shearing season culminated, the landscape, even to the leanest pasture, being all health and colour. Every green was young, every pore was open, and every stalk was swollen with racing currents of juice...'

Thomas Hardy (1840-1926) ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’

Late May to early June is sheep shearing season in Europe and I picked up ‘Far From The Madding Crowd’ this week just to re-read the sheep shearing scenes.

I have a love-hate relationship with Thomas Hardy novels. I feel weak spirited that I can’t stomach the darker stories like Tess and Jude but I love the some of the others; ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’ and ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ in particular. Hardy was born on 2 June 1840, so we can wish him a slightly belated 185th birthday.

It gives me more pleasure than I can express when my lovely niece Lulu, who has just left university, reads one of my favourite books for the first time. She’s in Australia at the moment where, as the Tom Roberts painting above shows, they really know about sheep. I sent her FFTMC as an Easter gift and she loved it. I also love what she said about it:

“I love old books because as you say, they are foundational…they make me feel nostalgic (?) for experiences I have never and will never have. I also love physical books because I can’t stand to look at my screen and I always feel mysterious when I have a book in my hand!

I finished Bathsheba’s story - it did take me a while to get into it and I only really became enthusiastic about it once Troy was in the picture (which I realise was Bathsheba’s whole problem haha!) Great ending though and I’m glad I stuck with it.”

Lulu is part of the generation that now thinks reading is cool…hurrah for that.

There’s a great poem by the Australian Bush poet Banjo Paterson about sheep shearing. Here’s the beginning of it.

The bell is set a-ringing, and the engine gives a toot,

There's five-and-thirty shearers here a-shearing for the loot,

So stir yourselves, you penners-up, and shove the sheep along —

The musterers are fetching them a hundred thousand strong…

‘Shearing at Castlereagh’ A.B Banjo Paterson (1864-1941)

Thomas Hardy is really good at reminding us of the cycle of the rural year before the industrial revolution. Sheep shearing was a communal activity and an opportunity for neighbours to get together after a lot of hard work. In FFTMC on the first day of June, after the shearing is done, Bathsheba Everdene and her workers have supper together.

As the illustration shows, Bathsheba is inside the house and shares in the event through the window. Farmer Boldwood turns up and Gabriel Oak is moved from his seat at the other end of the table to make way for him. This is just after the touching episode when Gabriel tries to teach Bathsheba how to hold the sheep shears by holding her hands in his own. She rebuffed him then - and again now when she makes him give up his seat to Farmer Boldwood. We want her to marry Gabriel all along (especially if he looks like Alan Bates in the 1967 film) but we have to wait until the end of the novel for a resolution.

FFTMC was first published in instalments in 1874 in The Cornhill Magazine. It was a huge success. It was accompanied by twelve beautiful engravings by the 26 year old Helen Paterson - she who later became famous as Helen Allingham for the watercolours of idealised country cottages that she painted after her marriage.

I read James Rebank’s wonderful book ‘The Shepherd’s Life’ not long after it came out. It kept me company on a flight and stopped me obsessively listening to the sound of the engines. Towards the end of the book Rebanks writes ‘Ours is a rooted and local kind of freedom tied to working the common land - the freedom of the commoner, a community based relationship with the land. By remaining in place, working on it and paying my dues, I am entitled to a share of its commonwealth.’

There aren’t many places left you can say that.

The Sheepshearer (After Millet) by Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)

Shearing is back breaking work. The Tom Roberts painting really shows the physical effort involved. Van Gogh’s female shearer has a helper and her sheep prostrated over a barrel to enable her to shear its under side.

Ted Hughes’ poem ‘A Memory’ also reminds us of the sheer (!) physical effort involved. The poem is about Hughes’ father in law, Jack Orchard. He remembers him shearing in a freezing cold shed on Dartmoor.

“…You were like a collier - a face worker

In a a dark hole of obstacle

Heedless of your own surfaces

Inching by main strength into the solid hour…”

That’s chilling.

On a lighter note there’s also a shepherd in a Shakespeare’s ‘Winters Tale’. Shakespeare calls him ‘an old and honourable tender of sheep’. This is his son the clown talking about the same sort of feast that Hardy mentions.

‘I cannot do't without counters. Let me see; what am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? Three pound of sugar, five pound of currants, rice, - what will this sister of mine do with rice? But my father hath made her mistress of the feast, and she lays it on.......I must have saffron to colour the warden pies; mace; dates?--none, that's out of my note; nutmegs, seven; a race or two of ginger, but that I may beg; four pound of prunes, and as many of raisins o' the sun.

Warden pies eh ? The Warden Pear takes its name from the Cistercian Abbey at Warden in Bedfordshire. It’s a small cooking pear, but in its absence I used small Conference pears.

Warden Pie

I bought a sheet of all butter puff pastry. You don’t even have to roll it.

4 firm pears peeled

2 oz caster sugar

Good pinch saffron threads

Squeeze of lemon juice

1⁄2 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp nutmeg

Handful raisins or sultanas

2 tablespoons of soft brown sugar

1 oz butter

Core and quarter the pears lengthways. Put the saffron into about half a pint of hot water and add 2 oz sugar and the lemon juice. Simmer until the saffron has coloured the syrup and the sugar has dissolved. Add the pears and simmer them long enough to soften them up a bit - how long depends on how large and ripe the pears are. Let the pears cool in the syrup then take them out (keep the syrup) and set the pears into the pie dish. Scatter the brown sugar over the pears, and sprinkle spices and raisins on top (and a few slivers of unsalted butter). Lay the pastry over, cut to size, and crimp the edges. Brush with egg and bake in a preheated oven at 200c until the crust is golden - 25 minutes or so. Strain out the saffron threads from the syrup and boil it down until it is really syrupy and serve with the pie and lots of cream.

PS. If you can’t be fussed to make a pie, the pears simmered in the saffron syrup are delicious just as they are (or with ice cream).

'Our sheep-shear is over and supper is past

Here's an health to our mistresse all in a full glasse

For she is a goode 'ooman and provides us with cheere

Here's an health to our mistress, so drink up your beere!'

Anonymous 16c Ballad