“For us, Easter isn’t really about Easter eggs and holiday,” says Amanda Owen in the Channel 5 documentary series Our Yorkshire Farm. “Easter for us is all about lambing.” The series follows the Owen family—Amanda; her husband, Clive (alas, no resemblance to the other Clive); and their nine children—as they manage their 2,000-acre Ravenseat Farm in northern Yorkshire. Naturally, the kids, ranging from teen to toddler, all help.
Spring is delivery season for the farm’s thousand sheep, and it sees the older kids assisting in the births while the younger ones prepare pens for the growing flock. “Eight-year-old Violet is quick to avoid the messy farmyard chores,” says the show’s narrator, Ralf Little, while five-year-old Annie rescues a newborn lamb from a nearby stream. Close by, the 10-year-old schools the 3-year-old on the orphaned lambs’ mealtime regime, and shares tips such as tickling the lamb’s tail “because that’s what their mother does.” Summer turns the surrounding moors an electric green, while winter brings on freezing temperatures and harsh storms. “It looks gorgeous, but all the work still needs to be done,” says Amanda. “The worse the weather, the more the sheep need the shepherd.”
The U.K.’s answer to 2019’s The Biggest Little Farm—the surprisingly popular documentary about a couple who develop a sustainable farm outside of Los Angeles—Our Yorkshire Farm has been an unexpected hit for British TV. (The show is available in the U.K. only.) Its last two episodes were England’s most watched during their prime-time nine P.M. slot, edging out Hulu’s Line of Duty with more than two million viewers each. Whether this is all part of a larger trend—the return of All Creatures Great and Small, anyone?—only time will tell. —Julia Vitale
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