All Creatures Great and Small (All Creatures Great and Small, #1)

by James Herriot

Dennaby Close was not just a substantial farm, it was a monument to a man’s endurance and skill. The fine old house, the extensive buildings, the great sweep of lush grass land along the lower slopes of the fell were all proof that old John Skipton had achieved the impossible; he had started as an uneducated farm labourer and he was now a wealthy landowner. The miracle hadn’t happened easily; old John had a lifetime of grinding toil behind him that would have killed most men, a lifetime with no room for a wife or family or creature comforts, but there was more to it than that; there was a brilliant acumen in agricultural matters that had made the old man a legend in the district. “When all t’world goes one road, I go t’other” was one of his quoted sayings and it is true that the Skipton farms had made money in the hard times when others were going bankrupt. Dennaby was only one of John’s farms; he had two large arable places of about four hundred acres each lower down the Dale. He had conquered, but to some people it seemed that he had himself been conquered in the process. He had battled against the odds for so many years and driven himself so fiercely that he couldn’t stop. He could be enjoying all kinds of luxuries now but he just hadn’t the time; they said that the poorest of his workers lived in better style than he did.