‘It would save you digging a hole for her in another week or two and you’d get a bit of something for her. Those down in t’mill towns of Lancashire don’t know she’s not fit to eat. Because that’s where she’d end up, on their dinner tables.’ Archie shook his head. His lad was too soft, he’d never make a millionaire.

‘Grandfather, I really do not like to eat lamb and mutton, as it is, without you reminding me where a lot of these are going. I’m helping to send them to their deaths.’ Rosie quickly shut the fell gate, letting another sheep get a reprieve from the butcher’s knife.

‘That’s what farming’s about, lass. I don’t see you complaining on a Sunday lunchtime when you are tucking into your mother’s best roast beef. That’s just the same. We butchered that beef, and you saw that calf growing up, but you were still licking your lips after your meal.’ Archie grinned.

‘No, but it’s different with sheep. Some of these I’ve fed with a bottle of milk when they were first born. Like that big tup lamb over there, with the black-striped face and horns, just coming through. I couldn’t eat him,’ shouted Rosie to her grandfather over the bleating.

‘Well, I can tell you now, he’s one to go,’ Danny shouted. ‘He’s become a bloody nuisance; you’ve fed him so well he expects something from you every time you go near him. He’s getting to be dangerous now because he’s such a size. Plus, he nearly stabbed me the other day with them horns, tore a bit out of my trousers with his bullying tactics.’ Danny looked at his daughter. He hadn’t wanted to tell her, but there was no other way – the tup lamb was beginning to make a pest of himself and was one that had to go to market.

‘No, you can’t sell my Billy, I won’t let you.’ Rosie climbed the fence of the enclosure and made her way through the rest of the sheep to her favourite lamb of the last spring. ‘Look at him, Father, he’s such a grand, big ram. He’ll breed well next year, you’ve got to keep him.’ She folded her arms round the ram’s neck and hugged him, burying her face in his fleece, smelling the lanolin in his coat.

‘He’s a bloody nuisance; he’s off to market, so leave him be, and you mind what you are doing.’ Danny looked at Archie as he sorted another sheep from being sold, and his father opened the gate to give it its freedom.