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Chapter 3

Flat Broke

During those first years in Greatwood we had about twenty horses to keep, along with goats, dogs and chickens, and our money was dwindling fast. I took a part-time job as a dinner lady at the local school, where I was shocked to find they never cooked any fresh produce – it was all ready-made meals straight from the freezer. Years before Jamie Oliver came on the scene, I battled the system and managed to get some local suppliers to deliver seasonal fruit and veg for the children, although it didn’t do me any favours with my supervisors.

My paltry earnings weren’t enough to keep us afloat, though, and gradually Michael and I began to sell off any possessions that could raise money. We got to know an antique dealer in Taunton who bought some pieces from us, including a gold bracelet my grandma had given me just before she died, and Michael’s father’s watch – both of which were very hard to part with. Even the dealer had tears in his eyes as we handed them over.

We had some inherited family silver and Michael decided to travel up to London in the hope of getting a better price for it there. He set off on the train, clutching a large holdall full of silver salvers, bowls and goblets, and made his way to a smart shop in Bond Street that we’d read about in the newspapers. He straightened his tie and brushed down his collar before walking in and placing the holdall on a counter.

‘Are you interested in buying some silver?’ he asked, unwrapping a couple of the items on top.

‘Plate,’ the man said, after a quick glance.

‘Pardon?’

‘They’re silver plate. Not solid silver.’ He picked them up and turned them over. ‘Not inscribed either. They’d have been worth more if they were.’

He made an offer for the lot that was only a fraction of what we’d thought they were worth, but with the rent overdue, and having come all that way, Michael felt he had no choice but to accept.

We didn’t tell our families about the trouble we were having but they must have realised, because every time they visited us another antique chair would be missing from the sitting room or there would be a rectangular space on the wall where a picture used to hang. My father dealt with the problem in a typical brusque farmer’s style: he gave us forty of his ewes and bought us a couple of Sussex rams to go with them.

‘Thanks, Dad,’ I said doubtfully.

He meant well, but it was then that our nightmare with sheep began. The soft, wet ground at Greatwood meant they kept getting sores and infections in their feet and needed to be rounded up daily for treatment. Some silly blighter would get its head stuck in a fence the minute you turned your back, while another would roll over and be unable to get up again. The rams were even worse. As soon as we set foot in their field they would charge at us full pelt and we had to hurl ourselves out of the way at the last minute to avoid being sent flying. Despite being a farmer’s daughter, I’d had no idea how high-maintenance sheep were. They really did seem to have a death wish, getting themselves into life-threatening situations on a daily basis.

The next money-making scheme was suggested by a chap called Stan in the local pub, who persuaded us to buy thirty goslings from the market, raise them, and sell them just before Christmas. We put them in a field to graze, not realising that they would have to be brought indoors and fattened to get them to the size customers expect of their Christmas roast. When I eventually tried to feed them up, too late in the day, they turned up their beaks and refused to eat anything at all. I had to cancel our Christmas orders and eventually passed most of them on to the Goose Rescue Centre, apart from five that we kept.

Amongst those five was Horrible Horace, a deformed goose my brother had dumped on us. Horace may have been crooked and bent, but his disability didn’t stop him flying at any children who came nearby. He thought he was a dog and would rush up to greet visitors, honk whenever the dogs barked and accompany us on walks. All our attempts to pass Horace on to other people failed, so we were stuck with yet another difficult, eccentric, bloody-minded animal to care for.

As if our financial troubles weren’t enough, word began to spread that we were prepared to step in and help with sick, temperamental or abandoned ex-racehorses. It seemed there were lots of people out there desperately trying to find a home for horses that were too old, past their prime or that hadn’t ever fulfilled their potential. Thoroughbreds need experienced handlers because many of them are unused to being ridden by anyone but a professional jockey and, what’s more, they are expensive to keep. Many of them need to be reschooled if they are ever to have a second career, but this took time, money and expertise.

Michael and I couldn’t possibly accommodate every single horse that was offered to us, but we spent hours on the telephone giving advice and trying to find potential owners for each animal, because the alternative was too awful to contemplate. For such beautiful, intelligent animals to be discarded simply because they couldn’t run fast enough was not morally acceptable.

As a farmer’s daughter I know there are hard realities to be faced in livestock breeding. My blunt Yorkshire father once said, ‘The very word “livestock” implies “deadstock” and if you can’t handle it, you’d better do something else with your life.’ But my heart always melted when a seriously ill or badly treated horse was brought to us. I could never turn them away.

In the first year at Greatwood, there was a mare called Kay whose owner hadn’t been able to afford proper medical care for her. Kay was in a lot of pain when she came to us and kept trying to kick up at her stomach. The owner said she’d tried to train her out of kicking herself but to no avail. But why was she doing it? What was the problem? I called the vet, who detected a sizeable growth in her stomach, and told me that sadly it was inoperable. There was nothing he could do. It was a horrible night, with rain lashing down and gale-force winds ripping around the barn. We had no alternative but to have Kay put down, with the other horses standing round watching. There was a collective whinny as she fell to the floor and a few came over to sniff her but most carried on eating their hay. They didn’t know her, so weren’t directly affected. As we left the barn, I felt unutterably sad for that poor horse, who’d obviously been suffering for some time. Vets’ bills are expensive. That’s why we had to be sure that when we rehomed horses, we only did so with people who could afford to keep them properly. We couldn’t risk any horses that passed through our hands ending up like Kay, or Betty, or Charlie.

Our own financial situation went from bad to worse. Each new bill was greeted with much head-scratching and the scribbling of frantic sums on the backs of envelopes, and every month rent day loomed like a sick headache. How had we got ourselves into such a pickle? The inheritance from Michael’s aunt and the money from the sale of our house had long gone, and we had very few, tiny sources of income. Then one day, I got a phone call that gave us a glimmer of hope.

‘My name’s Vivien McIrvine,’ the voice said. ‘I’m Vice President of the International League for the Protection of Horses. I’ve been hearing a lot about you and everything you are trying to do for racehorses and I wanted to tell you that I’m full of admiration for the work you’re doing.’

‘Thank you. That’s good to hear. But I’m afraid it’s just a drop in the ocean.’

We chatted for a while about the horses we had at that time, the ones looking for new homes and the ones we’d managed to rehome already, then she got to the purpose of her call.

‘The work you are doing with racehorse welfare is invaluable and rare. You must carry on and, as I see it, the only way that you can do that is if you put it on a firm footing and become a registered charity.’

Michael and I had already been considering this option but the call from an icon of horse welfare pushed us into thinking about it more seriously. It was a great compliment to hear of her admiration for our work and for a few days afterwards we mulled it all over. We knew there was a chance our application wouldn’t be successful anyway, but if it were, we’d become accountable to the charity commissioners and would have to be much more professional about the way we managed what had been, until then, an instinctive kind of operation. But we really had no choice. We had already become heavily involved in not-for-profit work on behalf of ex-racehorses by funding it all ourselves, but we couldn’t go on like that because our funds were rapidly evaporating and we would have become insolvent. That would have brought an end to our work and most certainly an end to the lives of the horses in our care.

Decision made, we started the lengthy process of applying to be a charity, which initially involved filling out an extraordinary number of forms. We were warned that the granting of charitable status could take a while – always assuming our application was approved – but it felt like a step in the right direction.

We had decided some months before this to stop breeding horses. We had only bred a dozen or so before we realised there were too many being bred that didn’t ever reach the race course, either because they weren’t fast enough or for some other reason. There was no organisation in place to care for these unwanted horses and, at that time, no one was encouraging ordinary horse owners to take on a Thoroughbred. By breeding horses, we were contributing to the problem and as soon as we became aware of this, we stopped.

In the meantime, we had four mares that were all due to foal around the same time, and umpteen ewes that were due to lamb, which meant a couple of months at least when Michael and I would have to survive on very little sleep. Fortunately we have entirely different sleep patterns. I rise early and go to bed early, while he’s the opposite, so we agreed that he would sit up with them until 2am then I’d take over from 2 until morning.

Sometimes foaling was reasonably straightforward, but when it came to Chic we were in for a marathon. She was in labour for hours, the foal wasn’t in the correct position and we had to call the vet to come and turn it. Out it came, tiny and weak, but Chic was still in labour and we realised she had a twin in there, which was eventually born dead, about the size of a cat. The first foal was very weak and didn’t have a sucking reflex so we had to tube-feed him. He was shivering with cold, so I got one of my jumpers and threaded his tiny front legs through the sleeves, then I wrapped tinfoil round his back legs to try to retain the heat. He was a poor little creature. Chic licked him gently, every ounce the loving mother.

For three days we nursed that foal day and night, and on the third day we were heartened when he managed to get to his feet and stagger a few steps on what were impossibly long legs for such a tiny chap. Chic stayed very close, watching what we were doing and letting us milk her, but she didn’t try to intervene. She knew we were doing our best. Then on the fourth day, the foal’s breathing became laboured. I sat down beside him, put his head on my lap and whispered to him gently as he passed away in my arms. There was a huge lump in my throat. He’d struggled valiantly but was just too weak to live.

I felt so sorry for Chic. She’d been good and patient, and we’d all tried our hardest, but it wasn’t to be. She kept nudging the foal’s body, trying to get it to move, so we left her with it for a few hours so she could understand he had gone.

It would have been a crying shame if no good had come out of the experience so we asked around and found out about a local foal that had lost its mother, and we took Chic over to see if she would adopt it. We used that classic country trick of skinning Chic’s dead foal and placing the skin over the live one so that Chic would believe it was her own. Chic took to the new foal with alacrity, proving to be a most diligent mother, but Michael and I were pretty sure she wasn’t fooled. She knew her foal was dead and that this was a new one, but she made the decision to adopt it anyway.

No sooner was this drama over than the sheep started lambing and we had to sit up all night long to make sure the lambs emerged safely and weren’t then attacked by rats. It brought back many memories for me of watching my father presiding over lambing at the farm where I grew up. Once when I was just three years old, I watched him pulling out a lamb that wasn’t moving and he smacked it hard several times until it began to bleat. It obviously made an impression on me because at dinner that night, I told my mum: ‘That was a naughty lamb that crawled into its mummy’s bottom and Daddy did smack it hard.’

As soon as the lambs were big enough, we sold them, along with the rest of the flock (bar two), and, unlike the horses, I was glad to see the back of them. Sheep are a law unto themselves, with very few brain cells to rub together. Give me horses every time!

All the time we were firming up and clarifying the plans for our charity. There were already organisations out there dealing with poorly treated welfare horses. We wanted to focus on horses that were retired from racing while fit in body and mind, horses that we could retrain and pass on to good homes. The charity would retain ownership of each horse so we could check up on them and bring them back if the new owners were no longer able to keep them. We chose some trustees – Father Jeremy, the vicar at St Michael’s church just four miles away from Greatwood, and Alison Cocks, the woman whose orphan foal had been adopted by Chic. She had a profound knowledge of racing and horses, and we sang from the same hymn sheet when it came to horse welfare.

Next, we had a visit from two charity commissioners – men in suits who delicately picked their way over our cobblestones trying not to get anything nasty on their highly polished leather shoes. They interviewed Michael and me at length, being particularly concerned to establish that we were in it for the long haul. We knew this was serious. The charity would have to be run properly, with full annual accounts, and we would be guardians to all of the horses that passed through our care. When the commissioners finally left, they gave us no clue either way as to whether our application would be successful.

It was several months later, in August 1998, that we finally received a letter saying that we were now a registered charity, and giving us our charity number. It was just over three years since our move to Greatwood and it seemed somehow fitting that we should name the charity after this farm, where our work with ex-racehorses really started, and where we had already achieved some notable successes.

Vivien came to help us design all the forms we would need, such as the gifting forms that would have to be filled in by anyone who sent us a horse. This was designed to avoid a scam whereby someone could bring us a horse in very poor condition, let us pay all the vet’s bills and nurse it back to health, then return to claim it back again. With our contracts, we took on a duty of care for life, and even after we rehomed a horse we had the right to check up on it at any time to inspect its living conditions and general health. If a home check didn’t come up to scratch, we’d take the horse back again. It was our responsibility.

We wanted a Greatwood logo and were delighted when a funding trust gave us a grant that allowed us to employ a marketing company to design one for us. They came up with all sorts of ideas before a chance photograph taken by a local reporter provided the inspiration. A girl called Jodie had come to us for work experience and the photo caught her in silhouette as she looked up at a Thoroughbred. The image seemed perfect and worked well for the farm sign, letterheads and business cards. Little did we suspect at the time how relevant the juxta-position of a horse and a young person would turn out to be.

Soon horses started arriving thick and fast. Sometimes the RSPCA or another official charity asked us to step in, but on other occasions individuals just arrived on our doorstep with a horse in their trailer. Once we were brought nine horses in one delivery, all of them collected from an owner who hadn’t been taking proper care of them. We had to divide up our barns with partitions to keep the mares separate from the geldings, and our workload increased all the time.

It was a life I loved, but some family members found it difficult to comprehend. My father had only recently retired from a career as a very successful farmer and he thought we were mad. ‘You’ll never get rich like that,’ was his attitude. ‘So why give yourself all that work?’

On one visit he watched me nuzzling the horses as I walked through the stable and looked thoughtful.

‘Did I ever tell you that your grandfather used to train horses for the army during the First World War?’

I vaguely remembered hearing about this, and asked for more details.

‘He was awarded a medal for bravery. Once a cart carrying munitions was hit and your grandfather wriggled out to unharness the horses pulling it, despite the fact that he was under fire.’ Dad nodded. ‘I suppose your love of horses might have come from him. That might explain it.’

I liked that thought, but in fact I think it was all the horses I grew up around that gave me love and respect for these intelligent, sensitive creatures that all have unique personalities. I learned to ride when I was four, on a pony called Tam O’Shanter, but the horse I was most in love with as a child was called Shadow. She was an exracehorse, very feisty and wilful, but such a gorgeous animal that I fell madly in love with her with all the passion of youth. I poured my heart out to her on our long rides round the estate where my family lived. There was a big ornamental lake there and Shadow loved the water, so in summer I used to let her trot in and I’d slide down off her back and hold onto her tail as she pulled me along, deeper and deeper across to the other side. She was my best friend from the age of about seven to ten. I was closer to her than to anyone else, and I have wonderful memories of our adventures together.

Michael’s elder daughter Kate has two boys, Will and Alex, and they used to come and stay with us during their school summer holidays. It was lovely to see them bonding with our horses and I always encouraged it because I wanted them to experience some of the magic I’d had as a child. If there were any foals, we let the boys name them, and they opted for several non-traditional horse names, such as Miriam, Marcus, Wilbur and Doris. No matter. I loved seeing them having fun and learning to love horses as I did.

The family complained about conditions in winter, though. It was a particularly wet part of Devon and it always seemed to be raining, meaning the yard became a sea of mud. Inside the house it was bitterly cold and hurricane drafts swept through the ill-fitting windows. Fireplaces smoked, the walls were damp, and the only way to survive was to wear umpteen woollen sweaters one on top of the other.

One year, the family came for Christmas with us and got a taste of our lifestyle that they didn’t much appreciate after a bay mare called Nellie fell ill on Christmas Eve. I knew at a glance that it was colic so we called the vet, who came out to treat her and told us to keep an eye on her overnight. Colic is a nasty thing, sometimes caused by an impaction in the gut. It can either be cured more or less instantly, or it can develop into something much more sinister. It’s important to make sure the horse doesn’t roll over, resulting in the further complication of a twisted gut. All night I walked poor Nellie up and down the lane in front of the house to try to distract her from the pain and stop her rolling but her whinnying kept everyone awake. Towards dawn, her condition deteriorated and I had to call the vet out again. We rigged up a drip to treat her in one of the stables but, despite our best efforts, she became toxic and had to be put to sleep. I was completely distraught, as well as shattered from lack of sleep.

When the children woke on Christmas morning, we had to break the news to them. I went into their room and was surprised to see clingfilm all over the windows.

‘What’s that doing there?’ I asked.

Kate explained that the bitter north-easterly wind had made temperatures drop to sub-zero and it was like trying to sleep in a draughty igloo. They didn’t want to disturb us and clingfilm was the only thing they could think of to provide a modicum of insulation.

I told them about Nellie and comforted the boys as best I could, then it was time to rush outdoors again for the morning routine of feeding and mucking out. Animals don’t know that it’s Christmas, after all. Late morning, I was sweeping the yard, trying to keep busy to stop myself brooding about Nellie, when Kate popped her head out the door.

‘Erm, Helen …?’ she asked. ‘Any idea when you’re coming in? The kids are all waiting for you so they can open their presents.’

I’d become so one-track-minded, I’d forgotten about Santa Claus and turkey and mince pies. It was a reality check. Horses are wonderful, but so are my family and it was time to find a balance between the two again.