Top Dog Design
Journalism Examples
NO SMALL ENDEAVOURMoira Linaker is no stranger to press interviews. Not only has she featured in virtually every UK national newspaper and appeared on numerous TV programmes, but pictures of her have been printed and broadcast around the world. This is perhaps one of the most famous smallholders around.
Exactly four years ago the British countryside was paralysed by the Foot and Mouth epidemic. Moira's campaign against the heavy-handed government approach to the disaster and to save her own healthy flock of rare breed sheep gained her worldwide recognition.
I meet her today to talk about the sale of her 13.5 acre smallholding above the village of Greenhead near Brampton on the Cumbria/Northumberland border, and as she shows me around, deftly vaulting gates and happily greeting her flock as she goes, it is clear Moira is completely at ease with her lifestyle. Her pedigree Ryeland sheep greet her equally enthusiastically. Their big woolly bodies easily surpass Moira's waist height - at five foot nothing she is a petite figure.
The sheep follow Moira around like puppies, led by the black sheep of the family, Topsy, a face which doesn't seem to fit with the other white fluffy ones. I am introduced to Mr Universe, a hulking 170 kilo ram with a penchant for digestive biscuits. The affection they have for each other is plain. But then Moira and her flock have been through a lot together.
A warm bottle of milk is thrust into my hand and Moira tells me to feed Annie. Annie? A young lamb waddles up to me bleating expectantly, one of two rejected by their mothers. Moira feeds the other - just three days old. It's wearing a jumper. Moira explains: "When they're first born I cut a sleeve off a jumper and make holes for their legs. It's still quite cold in March so it keeps them that bit warmer. I've hardly got any jumpers left though!"
After they greedily finish their bottles they wander back to their hay carpeted pen and retire for the afternoon under the specially positioned heat lamp.
One would imagine by the scene that Moira had been around sheep all her days, but actually she was only introduced to the world of smallholding in 1996. Up until then she was running a private nursing agency in Newcastle, dealing particularly with terminally ill patients, a job she describes as "soul destroying".
With four grown sons, Moira knew it was time to leave the fold and, though her family thought she was mad, she seized the opportunity to buy a run-down cottage on the outskirts of Carlisle with some land. In need of some "grass cutters" to peg back the sea of overgrown nettles and weeds, Moira learned of the "lamb bank", where day-old unwanted lambs are advertised by farmers.
The intention was to pick two lambs. Moira came back with 15. Each needed bottle fed every four hours. Well Moira does say she relishes a challenge.
Her reputation in the area began to forge, yet she feared she was becoming known as a soft-touch when a farmer turned up with three lambs in a sack asking if she wanted them. If not, they'd be destined for a "knock on the head". How could she refuse?
One of these was Topsy, a black Leicester lamb and Moira's first pedigree sheep.
When the first lot were older, she sold them on, keeping Topsy behind. Then a visit to a rare breeds auction introduced her to Ryelands. These fuzzy, teddy bear-like sheep are ideal for smallholders due to their placid nature yet were very uncommon. Moira fell in love, and so a smallholder was born.
The next year was a learning curve. Not only had Moira left family behind and moved from the city to the countryside, but she had no idea about land management, fencing, tractors, and especially not lambing. A combination of friends, which are most often easily found in the Cumbrian countryside, lambing night classes, a good vet, and her obvious caring attitude to all animals got her through. (Indeed, Moira tells me she has only this year lost her first lamb after almost a decade of smallholding.) She even began showing her Ryelands, winning prizes with Mr Universe.
But life was suddenly turned upside down. One of her sons, Stephen, was killed in a motorbike crash during the Isle of Man TT race. The bond Moira had with her sheep only got stronger. Many nights she would sit in their pens, sobbing, her heart broken, and they would gather round her comfortingly, knowing something was wrong.
Then Foot and Mouth came. We all saw the images of slaughtered livestock stacked onto smouldering pyres - images that will never leave many country folk, or the young army solders eventually brought in to help with the cull. Thousands of animals were infected but the government refused to vaccinate.
Moira was terrified. She gathered every piece of information she could about the disease. Following every guideline available she turned her smallholding into a fortress, no one was allowed in, even family. She penned her precious Ryedales safely inside and checked their feet daily.
Then the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF, later DEFRA), Nick Brown, announced that any livestock within a 3km radius of a confirmed outbreak would be slaughtered - whether they had the disease or not. Moira's smallholding was within this distance of an affected farm. One day the letter came to say her sheep would be slaughtered.
So began an amazing campaign which would see Moira battle head to head with the government and which would last almost a year. Though she admits she would have had to say goodbye to the animals she loved so much if they had caught the disease, her stringent checks ensured they were entirely healthy. She was not about to see them die in vain.
Moira sent hundreds of faxes and letters in support of her campaign and even retained the services of a solicitor. But it was getting the attention of the media that would have the greatest impact. Interviewers from local newspapers and radio arrived at the gates (but got no further!) to hear her story, and this exploded to a national level. Moira even had to keep a video diary for Trevor MacDonald's ITV programme.
Pictures of Moira clinging to a newly born lamb circulated around the world, capturing many hearts whilst raising awareness of the plight to places that would otherwise have been ignorant.
She even won Royal approval - a letter to Prince Charles, the President of the Rare Breeds Society, began a chain of events which would see Moira meeting with the future King. Moira said that if all went well, she would give Charles "Harry", the lamb from her famous photograph, to add to his farm at Highgrove.
It is thought that 8 million animals were killed, but Moira's flock were not among them. In the end her delay tactics won out. The worst of the outbreak past and the government relented.
Four years on Moira talks of that time, I think, half triumphantly because of the victory she won, but also with obvious torment at the pain and anguish which she had endured.
"Stephen being killed made me dig my heels in and not give up. I knew I couldn't cope with another bereavement.
"Man does such cruel things to animals. They don't ask to be born; they're at the mercy of humans and a lot of people don't have that mercy. I just don't understand it."
Unlike commercial farmers, some of whom view their sheep only as a commodity, smallholders have a real love for their animals. Moira explains how she hates the nickname "hobby farmers" that large-scale landowners give to people like her.
"This is really hard-work. The mucking out is never ending and I dread shearing time. If it's a 'hobby' it's the most expensive I've ever had! But I love the life.
"You learn so much from nature and wildlife. You take notice of things in the country that you wouldn't bother with in the city."
Unsurprisingly, she can no longer bring herself to eat lamb; just one of the sacrifices she's had to make! In fact, in common with most smallholders, her animals virtually never go for meat, rather to other smallholders with the same sentiments as her.
The once rare Ryeland breed has now become so popular, at least in part due to the publicity of Moira's campaign, that they are no longer classed as such, rather as a minority breed.
Moira sold her property outside Carlisle not long after the end of the Foot and Mouth epidemic and found Woodhouse Farm outside the rural village of Greenhead. But now it's time to downsize. The land is a bit more than Moira and the Ryelands need.
Ideal to anyone hankering to escape city life, the views over the South Tyne Valley are stunning (Moira describes it as real "Sound of Music country"), yet Newcastle is only 40 minutes away. The property itself dates from 1810 and has 4/5 bedrooms, whilst, of course, the 13.5 acres and numerous stables and buildings make Greenheads ideal for anyone wishing to keep animals.
And any advice for those pondering a smallholding of their own?
"Go for it...but read up on it first; it saves a lot of problems later. I spent a lot of time undoing mistakes I made. If you're interested it's not difficult. Get friendly with your local vet - you can't do without him!"
When I drive off, I leave her to see if a bright orange fleecy 'goat coat' fits one of her ewes who has lost clumps of wool due to a Penicilin injection. "Whatever will the farmers say when they see her in the field with that on?" Moira laughs.
In truth, she doesn't really care. Her interest is only in making sure that the sheep avoids sunburn.
Moira Linaker is, by her own admission, an eccentric. But it's people like Moira Linaker, people with kindness and compassion combined with herculean proportions of determination and persistence that make things happen and change things for the better in this world.
People told her that she could not fight the government, that she could not possibly win. But Moira has always championed the underdog. She pleaded for the lives of her animals, and gave them no choice but to listen.
By the way...Harry the lamb and a female companion moved to Highgrove where the Prince himself feeds him the occasional digestive biscuit. Moira has an open invitation to visit any time.