AMANDA Owen left city life behind to become a shepherdess on a remote farm in the wilds of Yorkshire. Her mother had her down for a career at Marks & Spencer – but feisty teenager Amanda Owen had other ideas.

Today, she runs a 2,000-acre hill farm in the unforgiving outreaches of Swaledale in north Yorkshire, tending 1,000 sheep and looking after her own brood of seven children with her farmer husband, Clive.

So how did she go from Goth teenager with nose piercing to Wellie-wearing mum-of-seven, who hasn’t had a haircut for 27 years but endeavours to wear lipstick and waterproof mascara every day, so she doesn’t lose her femininity?

Owen’s story is charted in her memoir, The Yorkshire Shepherdess, from her upbringing in the industrial town of Huddersfield to working on a farm for her work experience, then becoming a farm worker, shepherdess and unwitting television celebrity on the ITV series The Dales.

Inspired by the James Herriot books she had read as a child and her love of the great outdoors, the Yorkshire lass has never wavered or thought of giving up the life she has chosen at the remote Ravenseat farm.

The 39-year-old 6ft 2in shepherdess is up at 5am, her day ends at 9pm, but she never longs for an easier life.

We meet in the lambing season, when Owen is at her busiest, making sure her sheep give birth safely, dealing with complications and often assisting with the delivery.

And it hasn’t been textbook deliveries with her own family of seven children, as Owen has a tendency for extremely quick labours. Being two hours from the nearest hospital, she’s given birth three times in a layby, once in an army barracks and once at home.

The children, she says, speak their own language to each other and a speech therapist visits the school to help them pronounce words so others can understand them.

The children, she says, have an incredibly healthy lifestyle. As newborns, each one has been strapped on to her front in a waterproof onesie as she heads up the hill to tend her sheep, waking and sleeping with the rhythm of the farm.