IT’S 11am when I telephone Amanda Owen at her home in a remote hill farm in the Yorkshire Dales.

It is good timing, as she is having a cup of tea after a busy morning.

Amanda says it’s a bit of a “yucky” day. “There is snow, there is mud. I’m thinking: ‘yuck’. And I’m taking solace in a cup of tea.”

It’s the closest you will hear to a negative beat from this self-styled Yorkshire Shepherdess, who has just written her second book about her extraordinary life.

As ever, she and husband Clive will have been up since six, on farm duties.

Clive will fodder the animals while Amanda feeds and waters her human brood and prepares packed lunches.

The couple have nine children: Raven, aged 15, Reuben, 14, Miles, ten, Edith, eight, Violet, six, Sidney, five, Annas, three, Clemmy, 20 months, and seven-month-old Nancy.

The older children pull on their wellies and waterproofs and help out with farm duties before heading off to school.

Raven cleans out and feeds the seven horses, while Reuben tends to the calves and Miles takes care of the chickens. Edith and little Violet bring logs and sticks from the woodshed to keep the home fires burning: the black range in the centre of the kitchen heats the water for baths and showers in the four-bedroom farmhouse.

Going to school involves a two-hour trip from the farm at Ravenseat, Swaledale, via taxi and bus.

Spending four hours a day getting to and from school has its plus points, says Amanda – they can get their homework done during this time.

Having three under-fives at home is no bar to getting work done on the farm.

Amanda uses a quad bike and trailer to get around the 2,000 acre site, the young ‘uns travelling with her, snug in the trailer within a cosy nest of hay.

She will strap the baby into a backpack and stride over the hills with her sheepdogs. She has never taken a maternity break.

Her family life today is a world away from her own childhood.

She grew up in a Kirklees suburb and was a teenage Goth.

She did her share of clubbing, drinking, partying and shopping, she says, but the lure of the Yorkshire landscape was more appealing.

“From my house I could walk 20 minutes into town or 20 minutes into the Moors. For some reason, I’d gravitate to going out to the Moors. I loved the freedom of it. It really struck a chord with me,” says Amanda, who grew up with a love of James Herriot novels.

One day she borrowed a book from the library – a photographic coffee-table book about a hill shepherd. Her fate was sealed.

“A picture does say one thousand words. That book altered my outlook. These were the places I had read about in my Herriot books.”

Her first memoir, The Yorkshire Shepherdess, describes her early career, establishing herself as a shepherdess.

The second book, just out in paperback, is called A Year In The Life of the Yorkshire Shepherdess, and recounts 12 months on the farm.

She wrote it while the children were in bed, often dictating notes into her mobile phone while she was out on the hills.

“One thing being out in the Yorkshire countryside is good for is giving you headspace. When I am out there, that is when I do my thinking.”

It’s an enjoyable and intriguing read, a glimpse into a life few of us could imagine for ourselves.

It’s a gruelling, hard existence, one without holidays and days off – but she wouldn’t have it any other way. She is living her dream.

Her children, she says, don’t know anything else, and she believes the farm lifestyle will stand them in good stead in the future. They have mobile phones and use the internet and social media like other children their age, but their lives have a different dimension too.

Holidays are spent on the farm, building dens, wild camping, horse riding and swimming and snorkelling in the tarn.

Amanda says: “They are getting a good foundation. They see life here and learn about responsibility and not being scared to get your hands dirty.

“It will make them into the kind of individual that will be able to do what they wish.”

As the Yorkshire Shepherdess, Amanda has attracted considerable media attention.

She has appeared on ITV’s The Dales, Ben Fogle’s New Lives in the Wild and Countrywise. She was voted Yorkshirewoman of the Year by the Dalesman magazine.

In many ways she remains that teenage rebel.

“I don’t see myself as a rebel, but I don’t want to conform 100 per cent. I wear my waterproof mascara and lipstick every morning.

“It’s important to me . I don’t care if nobody sees me. Even if it is only the sheep, I don’t care!”

The evening meal is sacrosanct: a time for all the family. “We always eat together at the evening meal. It is a time to catch up and make plans about what is going on next,” she says.

Food is simple and seasonal. With no shop or supermarket on the doorstep, dinners are basic and hearty, based around meat from the farm, seasonal veg, and a well-stocked larder.

Just now that means lots of potatoes, carrots and turnips. Tonight, it’s shepherd’s pie for tea.

“One thing I miss is fresh fruit salad, which is nice in summer. And we tend to only have tomatoes in summer.

“Living here, I feel we are in touch with the seasons. What’s going on outside touches your whole life.

“When it is cold and you are feeling cold you want to be warm and full of porridge. When it comes to summer, you want something lighter.

“The more you move away from that, the more trouble you make for yourself. It works for us.”

l A Year In The Life of the Yorkshire Shepherdess, by Amanda Owen, is published by Pan McMillan, priced £7.99