Working with the Curlew: A Farmhand’s Life

An intimate and evocative account of an era when farmers worked closely with nature and the rhythm of the seasons.

In Working with the Curlew, Trevor Robinson tells the story of his life as a shepherd on the moor at Great Whernside in Yorkshire and later as a farmhand near Leominster in Hereford. Trevor celebrates the intricate details of traditional farm life, from the village hop, cheese and bread making and trout-tickling, to muck spreading, lambing and sheep shearing.

During one severe Yorkshire winter six hundred sheep were lost, and he had to leave the job he loved; ''the call of the curlew was still over two months away, when it came I was not there to hear it''. His new job in Herefordshire brought different skills: hedge laying, ploughing matches, haymaking, chain harrowing and crop rotation, and inevitably, the arrival of tractor and combine harvester.

Before factory farming, smallholdings sustained entire families and there were enough small farms for a shepherd to climb the ladder to ownership. Working with the Curlew beautifully honours those peaceful yet lively times.