When in Rome, do as the locals do. The old saying is brilliant advice to any traveler in any city, and I embodied it with genuine enthusiasm when I accepted an offer to work on a sheep farm for a week in the little village of Hooke, England.

Through my old friend Harry, former sheep farmer turned geography teacher, I had an opportunity to work on his uncle’s farm since they were a couple of hands short. Harry’s uncle was out of the country for a few weeks, leaving the business of running the farm of 200 odd sheep and a household of 4 odd children in the hands of his wife Bridget and his young niece, Monica.

Understandably, looking after the house and the children consumed the vast majority of Bridget’s time, meaning Monica was primarily handling all the daily chores on the farm herself. It was with Monica that I spent most of my time, and although she had only been sheep farming for a mere three and a half months, it was thanks to her knowledge and understanding of how everything worked that I learned everything I now know about sheep farming.

I was given a roof over my head in the form of a caravan out on the farm, that while humble in appearence, had heat, electricity, running water, and even the occasional wifi signal. It was my little home away from home.

Each day starts at a decidedly indecisive 8am, when the sun has not decided yet if it feels like coming out from behind the clouds and the morning dew is still contemplating freezing to the ground. Indeed, the first morning I was not sure if dawning overalls and rubber boots at such an hour and marching into the cold was what I wanted to do. But the first chore of the day, the stock check, is a crucial one. It involves a complete tour of the farm’s many fields to make sure no sheep have keeled over from exposure to the cold or gotten dragged off by foxes in the night. So with a bucket of feed in my gloved hand and a radio clipped to my overalls, I set out with Monica and her anxious black sheepdog, Pipper, to count some sheep.

Now counting sheep may sound like an astoundingly boring thing to do, so much so that many people fall asleep just imagining it, but on a misty morning in the English countryside with the cool wind in your hair, I assure you it is an invigorating, nearly spiritual start to the day. The farm is seperated into a series of sprawling meadows and hills in a low lying valley surrounded by even more meadows and hills. The lush green views of meadows and forests were unspoilt, with only the occasional windmill and light peppering of sheep and cows in distant fields. Hiking through that kind of scenary with only the objective of counting and playing with playful sheep was quite the transcendental experience.

I tried my best over the course of my time on the farm to learn the logic behind seperating and mixing different groups of sheep around the farm. I had come during mating season, an important but thankfully low maintenance time of year. So the youngest males (ram lambs) and females (ewe lambs) each got their own meadow to run around, graze, and socialize in. Their fields neighbored each other and I was reminded of grade school when I saw the way the young sheep clandestinely flirted with each other over the fence when they thought no one was looking.

I actually had a favorite sheep among the lambs, little 174. 174 was fearless and friendly, not jumpy and nervous like most of the other young ones. She would walk right up to you and push her face into your leg until you gave her a good scratching behind the ears. She was also a greedy sheep and would sneakily run up from behind and steal the feed bucket away , which usually resulted in her getting it stuck over her face and would run around in gluttonously gleeful circles as Monica and I chased her trying to get it back. Good times.

The next two fields were a hedonist sheep’s dream. Each held one strong and shining example of male fertility, their names being Ceaser and Brutus respectively. Each had his own personal flock of lady sheep that he was responsible for mating with that season. Ceaser and Brutus each had sporty looking harnesses on, which held either a big red or blue crayon the size of a deck of cards to their chests. The crayons would mark the rear of the ewes they had most recently mated with, which we were responsible for noting during the stock checks. The crayon color would periodically be switched to see who the males were mating with repeatedly. It is difficult to tell early on whether a ewe has become pregnant, but the farmer’s trick is to keep track of which ones are still being mated with since the pheromones put off by the not pregnant ewes will keep the rams coming until the job is done. Clever really. While I never actually saw any mating take place, it was often pretty obvious who most recently had because they would be flanking either side of the proud looking ram, nuzzling their faces into his wool affectionately.

The daily chores on a sheep farm vary, and more often than not, you are just tackling unexpected scenarios as they come. For instance, while there was a large amount of firewood to be split by ax during the day, we had to put it off because some of the larger drainage trenches alongside the fields were backing up after a recent storm. So for a couple of days, I found myself knee deep in clay that was aspiring to be concrete, pulling tree branches and small boulders out of the way so that I could shovel out a season’s worth of sheep shit backed up in the trenches. But put on some music, get into a rhythym, and the hilarity of the whole situation is enough to keep you motivated. At the end of the day, when Monica and I literally had to dig each other out of the muck (she actually lost a boot to the clay), we could see the fruits of our labor in the glorious flowing water (and sheep shit) coming down the trenches.

Without a doubt though, my favorite part of working on the farm was the zebra striped Landrover. You read that right, I said zebra striped Landrover. An all purpose, all-terrain vehicle that can simultaneously herd sheep and scare the neighbors. It was an absolutely brilliant way of getting around the farm in a hurry. Monica, who at the time was preparing to take her first driving test, expertly navigated the mountainous gravel roads as I clung to the outside of the zebra tank (as I called it) ready to jump off and unlock the numerous gates that we had to drive through. I myself drove the zebra tank around the farm a bit, which was very entertaining since the low gears growled and roared in such a satisfying way. But as fun as it was to drive, I much preferred hanging off the side of it as Monica punched it into high gear and sped through the lush green fields.

One of the most exciting scenarios that we quickly had to adapt to came right in the middle of our lunch break. Sitting in the little caravan, eating our well-earned sandwiches, Monica looked out the window and noticed sheep where there should not have been sheep up the mountain. One of the gates without a lock on it must have been blown open by the strong winds, and without missing a beat the two of us bolted for the Landrover. I hastily filled a feed bucket as Monica gunned the engine, and I lept onto the side of the Landrover as it was already pulling away at speed. Upon reaching the field that the sheep had broken into, we realized how lucky we were that they had just wandered into an empty field rather than mingled with a part of the flock that they were not supposed to. I jumped off the zebra tank and shouted at Monica to pull around and scare them from behind as I baited them back toward their proper field. I shook the feed bucket vigorously to get the sheep’s attention, which worked surprisingly well. I then trumpeted my whole range of sheep noises and made a mad dash through the middle of the flock back toward the open gate. I effectively started a stampede. With Monica urging them from behind with lots of honking and intimidating low gear growls and me running at full speed with a bucket of feed over my head bleeting like a sheep, we managed to get every last lamb that had gone astray back through the gate in under five minutes. “Not bad for a rookie,” Monica told me afterward.

There was a lot more to sheep farming than I ever originally thought–not that I had really given sheep farming much thought before that week. It is not just a monotonous list of daily chores or dull standing around watching the flock. In a week, I axed through a season’s worth of firewood, collected and burned a bonfire’s worth of leftover construction materials, dug out four field drains big enough to wage trench warfare from, herded lost sheep with a landrover, played fetch with an excitable sheep dog, and followed a trail of wool to the fox-dragged bones of a sheep to collect a skull for a gruesome halloween project. But most of all, I enjoyed every second of breathing in that amazing countryside air. There are so many little challenges and tasks that come up throughout the course of the day out on the farm and tackling them all as they come leaves you feeling excited, accomplished, and overwhelmingly exhausted! It is a humble living, but ultimately a satisfying one that I might consider revisiting someday.