Collie champion
The five-mile track to Fallowlees Farm runs through dark plantations of sitka spruce. I stop the car to watch a red squirrel dart up a tree, its tail flicking in annoyance. Past an abandoned farmstead, two roe deer bound away through ochre grasses. Finally, above the trees, there’s the reassuring sight of a wind turbine.
It’s in this remote part of Northumberland that shepherd and border collie breeder Emma Gray runs a small upland farm. At 1,000 feet up, the old stone farmhouse of Fallowlees faces south-east in an open-fronted clearing in the trees.
“It’s always raw up here, but I can sometimes see the sea,” gestures Emma, taking in the wide landscape. “I’m aware people have always lived
