Our Yaorkshire Farm – Inside Amanda Owen’s Ravenseat Farm

The remote Yorkshire Dales farm provided the backdrop to Channel 5’s Our Yorkshire Farm, with cameras documenting everything from lambing and snowstorms to raising nine children miles from the nearest large town.

Amanda, the Yorkshire Shepherdess, and her former husband, Clive Owen, became household names, along with their nine children: Raven, Reuben, Miles, Edith, Violet, Sidney, Annas, Clementine and Nancy.

But what is the famous farm actually like away from the television cameras?

Ravenseat Farm (Image: CHANNEL4)

Ravenseat is a sprawling hill farm covering around 2,000 acres in Upper Swaledale, one of the most remote parts of the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

The traditional stone farmhouse is surrounded by fields, barns, dry-stone walls and open moorland.

It is not simply a picturesque television location.

Ravenseat remains a working sheep farm, with the seasons dictating the family’s routine.

Television viewers have seen the family lambing, shearing, making hay, feeding livestock and battling winter weather.

The isolation that viewers see on screen is also very real.

Ravenseat is around three-and-a-half miles west of the tiny village of Keld and is approached through miles of rural Upper Swaledale countryside.

Its remote position brings fast-changing weather, with snow and treacherous conditions repeatedly testing the Owen family on screen.

The old farmhouse has historic significance, too.

Ravenseat Farmhouse is a Grade II-listed stone building with a traditional stone-slate roof.

But for Amanda, the farm has always meant far more than its buildings.

The Owen children grew up there, surrounded by animals and helping with farm work from an early age.

That unconventional upbringing became one of Our Yorkshire Farm’s biggest attractions after its launch in 2018.

Viewers watched the children round up sheep, ride horses, operate machinery and head across the Dales.

As the children grew older, Ravenseat remained the link between their increasingly separate lives.

The Owen family from Our Yorkshire Farm and Our Farm Next Door (Image: CHANNEL4)

Raven has pursued a career in science but still returns to the farm.

Reuben turned his childhood love of machinery into a contracting business and television career, while Miles remains deeply involved in farming.

Sidney, too, has increasingly worked alongside his older brothers.

The younger children are now learning the farming skills viewers watched Raven, Reuben and Miles pick up years ago.

Ravenseat’s surroundings are familiar territory for walkers, too.

The Coast to Coast route passes nearby, while Keld and upper Swaledale offer waterfalls, moorland and traditional stone barns.

The landscape has become a character in the Owen family’s programmes in its own right.

Our Yorkshire Farm ended after five series, but Ravenseat stayed on television.

Amanda, Clive and their children returned in More4’s Our Farm Next Door: Amanda, Clive and Kids.

That programme centres on the restoration of neighbouring historic farmhouse Anty John’s, but everyday life at Ravenseat continues to feature alongside the building work.

The latest series shows the family juggling the renovation with livestock, sheepdog training and other farm work.

More than eight years after Our Yorkshire Farm began, Ravenseat remains at the heart of the family’s story.

Anty John’s may be the new project and the Owen children may be forging lives of their own, but Ravenseat is where the television phenomenon began.

Ravenseat was closed to public access in 2022 and now operates as a private family farm, although walkers can still use public footpaths in the surrounding area.