To be jealous of Amanda Owen (Yorkshire Shepherdess)

[AliceAbsolum]

Her life just looks amazing. Yes obviously hard at times and not perfect. But 9 lovely children, she's gorgeous, kind husband, successful career, meaningful job and being able to spend time outdoors with her family. All the animals and space.
What I'd give for that life!

Although other reports say they are all moving to the farm they bought and have been renovating. So who knows.

I’m pretty sure that producers and a camera crew highlighting the best parts of my life could make it look perfect and even envious.

The reality is far from that.

Also, whilst now a firm and long city dweller, I grew up in the country, and it is nothing like depicted in that programme. The wholesome, happy end to lambing season was almost laughable. Lambing is back breaking with no sleep for sooooo long and you’re practically dead by the end.

I would hate her life. The Dales are beautiful of course but for crying out loud, she's a two hour drive from the nearest hospital! I imagine that's all dependent on road conditions too. Two hours, that could be the difference between life and death.

@Cordeliathecat You're right, I live just off an inner city shopping street, in no way well off and sort out filthy clothes in a charity shop three days a week. I bet a camera crew could make me look like Lady Bountiful.

I love the programme but I don’t like the focus on Clemmie. Yes she is adorable but it seems so unfair on the other children.
If she’s genuinely working hard on the farm, there’s no way she’s got time to give the children individual attention, it’ll be older ones looking after younger ones.
Also find it sad that Clive seems to dote on his children but doesn’t see his older daughter or grandchildren.
I think Amanda is incredibly ambitious and making the most of the fame. It’s sad as she appeared to have it all and she can’t sell that if they split up.

9 kids??? Fuck that 🤣

I’m not envious at all I need central heating and 3 with big age gaps is enough for me so they all had one to one time before starting school.
However the children are lovely and that can’t be faked so they must be doing something right

We have thoroughly enjoyed the programmes and watching the children grow up. They seem utterly delightful; confident, happy and very competent at their tasks round the farm. A lovely life!

I don’t think I would be jealous of anyone who has courted the media in that way. All it means is you have to live a seemingly perfect life under intense scrutiny. Real life is never what we see and the low moments must be really lovely if you’re living like that.

So what actually is the deal with their relationship?!

There’s been lots of cryptic ‘if you know, you know ’ type responses from ‘locals’ but no one has specifically said what’s going on, why not? It’s an anonymous forum! Is she having an affair with a camera man and moved out and left the kids then? Because that’s what’s been implied?

I love the early programmes because they seemed genuinely happy and it felt unscripted. The latest programmes seem a bit more staged and there is definite distance between the husband and wife. I really like them, I'd love a life like that but maybe the fame has cone between them.

15 years on a remote upland sheep farm here.

You see the edited highlights in the show. It’s not really like that.

The bit they miss is the sheer drudgery, especially for the women. The tedium & monotony. But that wouldn’t make good TV.

Lambing is hard work but pretty good fun actually, at least for the first 2 weeks if the weather’s good, Everyone knackered and bad tempered by the end though.

And for not making money….well it really depends. For many, the reason why the income is so low on the tax return is that as soon as there looks like being profit, they go out and buy machinery. Which brings the profit right back so we can all breathe easily again 😀

@MrsPelligrinoPetrichor

I love the language they all use, it's so positive, they praise constantly.

Yes, it's called TV editing. I agree, they do show it a lot, but it won't be 24 hours a day, like we see it on the screen.

My cynical friend once said thst they only make the Yorkshire Farm programme to make women feel bad about themselves and now I can't unsee it.

@venusmay

I love the early programmes because they seemed genuinely happy and it felt unscripted. The latest programmes seem a bit more staged and there is definite distance between the husband and wife. I really like them, I'd love a life like that but maybe the fame has cone between them.

I agree. As time has gone on Amanda has become more and more centre stage. She's started to dress in a different way and wear a lot more make up. She's away a lot promoting her books and the show. She spends a lot of time on social media. I think it's made her fame hungry and perhaps she's become dissatisfied with her lot. Not in the case of the farm but maybe with her relationship. He is a lot older than her and I think a lot more private and quiet. It must be hard to have your whole life on TV. I often think the poor kids must have an awful time at school with the teasing. Who wants ever detail of their private home lives broadcast publicly for anyone to see?

I did read somewhere that Amanda goes out with her friends a lot in town, leaving Clive on his own. Don't know if that's true, and I don't know where she finds the time if so.

I think the whole fame thing has taken them over and now literally runs their lives. They can't survive without the publicity because they need the money. They have a new farmhouse to renovate and all those kids to pay for. It's a catch 22. They may have sold their soul to the devil.

I do notice that Clive hardly features on the programme now, apparently by his own choice. She is a really stunning woman who is obviously extremely capable and she appears to run everything. He has become a bit of a side show. They have been together all her adult life virtually and she's now heading towards menopause. Her children have been her life, and perhaps she now thinks if she can't have more kids, she needs to do something else entirely.

It’s not for me, that life. Cold, hard and relentless.

I'm not a fan but she can handle a sheep

Moon you better tell the farmers around here. Two of the farms are where the father is still working at 80 + and a son on one farm and the other run by the father 79 and his daughter. No help whatsoever ever. From early morning until late at night. They were still bringing hay and straw in around 11pm a few months ago. Lamb early one January and other February /March. Sheep and beef cattle. Grow crops as well.
Larger farms are dairy and father semi retired and son with two farm hands and the other son with a two cow hands.
My friend’s husband has gone back to working for one family and he starts early and finishes at 8pm.
I see them all the time because we are surround by four farms and another 3/4 mile away. They have time for a quick chat sometimes about 15 minutes at the most.
Ravenseat is a beautiful part of the country but very cold even in spring. Snow on the tops in spring.

I worked on a stud farm when I was young. I absolutely loved it. We worked twelve hours a day minimum and had about 1/2 hour for lunch. Rarely had a coffee break because the vet/visitors/owners often turned up then so our coffee mugs sat on the AGA lid and were often still there at lunchtime. I helped with the sheep too. We also went showing which was up until 11pm then up at 5am, long day at the show or sometimes staying for a few days sleeping in the horsebox then back home late and bedding them done before going to sleep and up to start at 7am. Up during the night for foaling, lambing.There were three of us and the owner. The farm had one person and sometimes the owner. Sheep, cattle( beef) horses, chickens. Some a few miles away.

I was the fittest I have ever been in my life.
It is a hard life and they will show the best bits but I do love to watch it. I love that part of the country and we go around there ( Yorkshire Moors and Dales)quite a bit as we are not far from there.

What sort of utter dope thinks her kids don't go to school? Half the show is the kids piling off to school, doing their schoolwork during lockdown and taking GCSEs.

I don't begrudge her the influence side of things. She's made enough money to buy them two properties, removing the risk of being turfed off a tenanted farm. She has to play the game. She wouldn't have bought a house selling cream tea.

Shame if it's an affair, though. That's sad.

@Kikkomam

My cynical friend once said thst they only make the Yorkshire Farm programme to make women feel bad about themselves and now I can't unsee it.

Interesting perspective… I have heard a lot of men praising her as the perfect woman, and making the rest of us with merely 2-3 children, job, home and hospital births feel like lazy snowflakes. Although to be fair, this isn’t Amanda’s fault or intention.

And don’t get me started about how clients rave about Noel Fitzpatrick…. Generally waxing lyrical to the overworked vet who has squeezed them in on their non existent lunch break then complains about the bill which is a tiny fraction of what he would have charged.

It’s all media spin

@Pawprintpaper, Noel the ‘super vet’ gets right on my pip. Quite the combination of martyr and God complex.

@FutureHope

15 years on a remote upland sheep farm here.

You see the edited highlights in the show. It’s not really like that.

The bit they miss is the sheer drudgery, especially for the women. The tedium & monotony. But that wouldn’t make good TV.

Lambing is hard work but pretty good fun actually, at least for the first 2 weeks if the weather’s good, Everyone knackered and bad tempered by the end though.

And for not making money….well it really depends. For many, the reason why the income is so low on the tax return is that as soon as there looks like being profit, they go out and buy machinery. Which brings the profit right back so we can all breathe easily again 😀

That's made me laugh.

Purely because every year we start lambing with a "this year it'll be different and lovely and actually I like sheep attitude" and by the end of lambing, we're always utterly knackered, grumpy and surviving on copious amounts of red wine, chocolate and no sleep and vowing that we'll be getting rid of all the sheep and moving to the Bahamas for next year.

And also because we had that exact conversation about machinery with our accountant yesterday!

There's no question the life is hard work. DH was out at 5am this morning, like he is every morning to scrape out the cattle, and then we've got to go and move sheep. But actually I wouldn't change it. We're very privileged to be able to live it. But having said that, we're also on a lowland farm, 10 minutes from a lovely major city in a nice part of the world. We're not 2 hours away from the nearest town in an upland location with all the stressors that brings.

I'm not sure what to make of Amanda Owen. I think the images she portrays of "free-range" kids is actually neglectful parenting if you're living on a farm and is an accident waiting to happen. But that's just me. I think she's a very good self publicist and I would find it interesting to hear the views of women farmers who live their own farming lives, and compare what they think about it to women who don't live a farming life at all and have no experience of it.

All I see is (like a PP said) my Farm health and safety radar going utterly mad when I see her free range children.

[quote BalladOfBarryAndFreda]@Pawprintpaper, Noel the ‘super vet’ gets right on my pip. Quite the combination of martyr and God complex.[/quote]
And encouraging owners to believe that a good vet is one who puts an animal through extreme surgery.

@BalladOfBarryAndFreda thanks for that (and love the username by the way )

[quote BalladOfBarryAndFreda]@Pawprintpaper, Noel the ‘super vet’ gets right on my pip. Quite the combination of martyr and God complex.[/quote]
I agree. Plus some of those animals should have been pts.

[quote BalladOfBarryAndFreda]@Pawprintpaper, Noel the ‘super vet’ gets right on my pip. Quite the combination of martyr and God complex.[/quote]
I can't bear to watch him. Half those animals he saves should be put down imo!