A Hefted Life

A rooted life in a rootless age - wisdom from the fells

Heft: verb. To become accustomed and attached to an area of upland pasture.¹

Up on the windswept mountainsides the sheep roam free. Up here, there are no fences to limit the potential to roam wild and only a few long drystone walls (with plenty of gaps) transect the landscape — no match for a determined sheep. To the naked, untrained eye, one may assume these sheep are completely wild, owned by no one, even lost perhaps. But the sheep on this particular fellside will be here tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that. This is their fellside, their allotted place. They know this fell intimately and will not stray from it. They have been hefted.

‘Heft’ appears on first glance to be one of those rural phrases whose meaning has become redundant in modern society, the stuff of history books read by those with eccentric and archaic interests. But this is far from the truth. As is the case with most traditional rural words, heft is rich with meaning and an essential part of the vernacular of upland folk to this day. It describes a concept that without which, upland rural shepherding life would be nigh on impossible.

The land in these parts is common land, available for all to graze, use, and explore. It is the reason why we can enjoy roaming free over the Lakeland fells, the rights of which are grounded in ancient (and modern) law. These rights also permit the common grazing of these fells by the rural communities that border them. The abundant, though rough grass is free to be used by all who make their living from the nutrients these hardy plants contain via the sheep who graze them.

Thus, the sheep populating the rugged fells all over the Lake District are owned by many and are allowed to roam free. But therein lies a problem. If sheep are known for anything, it is for their habit of wandering. These common lands are vast, covering many fells and valleys and are unfenced. A nightmarish situation one might think. But that is where hefting comes in.

To prevent the sheep from wandering off onto neighbouring fellsides, and thus mixing with other communities’ sheep, or to prevent them from getting lost on the scree slopes and rocky crevices, the sheep need to be hefted to their place. That is done by acquainting the sheep with the area they are allotted to so well and so intimately that they will instinctively refrain from straying from it. An invisible barrier seems to hem them in. Originally this would have been done through intensive shepherding, but now thanks to centuries of practice, hefting is now instinctive behaviour taught by mothers to their lambs.² A form of generational rootedness that without which, farming in the Lake District would unravel at the seams.

When the time for ‘gathering’ comes (the time in the rural calendar when the sheep on the uplands are taken down to the barns for shearing), the sheep who are found to have perished on the hills, or those which cause the shepherd and his dogs the most grief in the gathering, are the ones who have transgressed the boundaries of the heft and have wandered off into danger. To be hefted, therefore, is necessary. It is not restrictive; rather it is for the flourishing and safety of the sheep. Within these ancient limits the sheep can feed, grow, and breed. To transgress them is to risk harm or death.

Wisdom for a modern rootless age

We live in a rootless age. Most of us move from place to place, seeking the greener pastures that always happen to be elsewhere. We are told by businessmen in suits and politicians from their ivory towers that significance, meaning, and purpose can be found in the hustle and bustle of the cities and most certainly not in backward rural places. So we move, breaking the ties to the land and communities we leave behind, uprooting ourselves from the places that have nurtured us, and in turn, benefited from our presence. Grace Olmstead documents this very same process in her book Uprooted. She states she “used to be surrounded by folks who committed themselves to place[s] for the long haul. They served and loved them, year after year.” But these folk are now a rare and dying breed. Instead, we now have “a boom-and-bust cycle and the exodus of the young from our rural places, which has worn down the threads of community and belonging.”³

The rural places we leave behind leave are hurting and struggling, neglected and isolated. Their local shops are shutting; their village halls and greens remain eerily silent on the days which used to be times of celebration and festivities; and the laughter of the young no longer can be heard from inside the hedges, the out in the fields, and from up in the trees. Our rural economies are collapsing, and the ecosystems they depend on are suffering from abuse and deterioration, wrought by the agricultural intensification many farmers have switched to in order to survive in perilous and volatile financial climates. Rich traditions that have defined our villages, counties, and indeed countries, for centuries are disappearing into the history books contained only in the local, seldom visited (and hanging on by a thread) libraries. We risk losing much in letting this rich rural heritage go — yet we don’t seem to mind. “Should have moved on with the times,” we tell ourselves. “Nothing worth much there anyway” we kid each other.

It doesn’t have to be his way. Indeed, it shouldn’t be this way. Once again, we all must take up responsibility for our local communities, the places that have nurtured us, formed us, and provide our daily bread. We must realise our responsibilities are not only to ourselves and our families but also to our neighbours and members of our communities. The centripetal force⁴ that draws our most talented constantly into the cities ought to be resisted. We need more people to be what Carr & Kefalas term the “Rooted — those who have the resources to move but prefer to stay where they are” and the “Returners, who build up financial capital elsewhere but then return and invest that capital in their home communities.”⁵. And I would add we need the “reinvigorators” — those who leave behind city life to move into new and struggling rural communities, investing their life, money, and talents there, planting deep roots and helping rural communities to get back on their feet.

Once we are present again in rural places, we need to “heft” ourselves to our communities, allowing deep roots and connections to form with the assurance that these relationships and endeavours won’t be severed again in a few years time by the arrival of moving lorries. And then this is vital: rather than coming just to “fix” these places, we need to implant ourselves into the rhythms, traditions, cultures, and institutions that already exist, seeking to humbly learn from those who have been rooted and hefted into these places long before us⁶. They can teach us what it means to live well in these local communities for their flourishing; they can teach us how to love and cherish these neglected places that others simply drive through to get to elsewhere.

An illustration for the pastor

As well as being a concept that sheds a corrective light on the rootlessness of our modern societies, the concept of hefting is also instructive for the minister and Christian; for herein lies an analogy rich in meaning and wisdom for the minister, the pastor-shepherd of his congregation. Like the upland shepherd, the pastor is to heft his flock, only not to a place, but to the truth. His flock must become hefted to the ancient truths of the gospel and to the creeds of the historic Church passed down through the centuries. It is within these truths that the boundaries of orthodoxy lie and the flock must learn to instinctively discern when they are approaching the boundaries of the truth. More importantly, the pastor is to heft his flock to a person — to the great Good Shepherd — the One who on an upland pasture in ancient Israel expounded and taught the truth about Himself to the flock that sat under His teaching.

A congregation thus hefted to the good news of Jesus, and the ancient truths concerning His being and life, will be richly fed on the nutritious food of His words and will grow into strong and hardy sheep — able to withstand the howling winds of the relentless pressures and changing cultures around them. What’s more, when hefted to the truth, they will be kept safe from wandering off into places and doctrines where the wolves dwell, poisonous plants of vice tempt, and the thieves that kill and destroy lurk.

But for those of His sheep who do wander, to those who stray to the deceptively “greener” grass on the next hill and thus find themselves stranded on the rocky precipice or lost within the valley of the shadow of death, the Good Shepherd will seek and find the one who is lost — and will carry His wayward sheep, back to their heft, back to safety, back to their home.

1. James Rebanks, The Shepherd’s Life. Allen Lane.

2. Lake District National Park, Hefted Flocks and Herds. https://www.lakedistrict.gov.uk/caringfor/farming/hefted-flocks-and-herds and James Rebanks, The Shepherd’s Life, Allen Lane.

3. Grace Olmstead, Uprooted, Sentinel Press.

4. Wendell Berry, The Work of A Local Culture.

5. Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas, Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What it Means for America. Beacon Press.

6. Wendell Berry, The Work of A Local Culture.