MANY times during the writing of this column, I have come across ordinary Dales folk who have lived through periods of great distress and anxiety, only to overcome and thrive.

Never before, however, has the subject been an 11-year-old boy.

And despite his tender years, Josh Morphet is well worth writing about because he is something of a symbol for future hope in an industry which needs all the hope it can get: hill farming.

For although like thousands of Craven country people who suffered the torment of last year's catastrophic foot and mouth outbreak, young Josh is still farming mad: he cannot imagine any other future than working with sheep on the windswept fells of Ingleborough.

And this is a deeply significant stance when, according to figures published by the NFU before the FMD scourge, something like 40 per cent of British farmers' sons and daughters have no wish to take over the family business: they would rather go off to the towns and cities for better paid jobs and immeasurably less hard work.

This means nowt to Josh. "I love animals, I love the fresh air, I love being out in the countryside," he told me at his home by the beck in Clapham. "There's nothing else I could think of doing."

Now I admit that there must be hundreds of Dales youngsters who suffered during last year's tragedy. In some ways, he was luckier than many because he did not see killed the stock he has tended since he could walk.

But his extraordinary dedication to farming was officially recognised a year ago by teachers at Ingleton Middle School, who presented him with a special conservation award for his first efforts in breeding rare Herdwick sheep.

I wanted to interview him then but FMD struck days later and his mother, June, suggested quite rightly that it would be a bad idea to go into the countryside at that time. "We are just terrified that it will get here somehow."

June, mother of six boys and girls, comes from a family of farmers and blacksmiths who can trace their farming roots back at least six generations although, as she jokes: "We weren't always lily white: family legend has it that we are descended from a clan of Scottish sheep rustlers."

Her father, John, works some 200-plus acres at Holly Platt Farm on the outskirts of Ingleton, and has grazing rights on Ingleborough Fell. He raises between 600 and 700 ewes and grandson Josh has been working with him since he was not much higher than the lambs he helped birth.

When not helping his grandfather or playing soccer - he is goalie of his school team and trains with Craven Wanderers at Ingleton - he also found time to raise ducks, chickens and goats.

But that, he decided at the ripe old age of 10, was just hobby farming. One day, he spotted a flock of Herdwicks in a neighbour's field and was struck with how different they looked from the more usual Dalesbred raised locally.

"They looked so cute, so different, and I asked if I could have a couple."

So the family bought him two ewes in lamb and now he has five, two of them also in lamb: he will take their offspring to market later this year.

At the time he became a proud owner, Josh knew Herdwicks were a breed most common in Cumbria. What he did not know - and nor did anyone else - was that within months, FMD was to ravage the Cumbrian flocks so badly that some experts feared that the entire breed was headed for extinction.

Then the disease came to Craven.

"Granddad had about 500 sheep up on Ingleborough and a hundred or so on the farm," he says almost matter-of-factly. "We were all worried. And then the Ministry vets turned up to take blood samples.

"We went up to the fell to help the vets. It took all day. The next day, they came to the farm and took more tests.

"The worst thing was waiting for the results. That took a week or more and the whole family was on edge. It was pretty terrible. But when the results came through, and we were proved clear, it was the best day of my life."

He went quiet. Having watched my own kids waiting for their A-level results, I thought I might understand what a wait like that must have seemed to a 10-year-old lad. But could I? A-levels are important, no doubt, but this was literally a matter of life or death.

Now came the hard question, one that I would hesitate to put to a grown man, never mind a lad: "Didn't an experience like that put you off farming for life?"

"Nah," he growled. "Farming up here has always been a tough life. You just have to get on with it."

Not often during an interview do I feel the need to applaud. But I did then.

The future of farming in these Dales of ours is of vital interest to us all, because it is the farmers who tend the wonderful landscape on our behalf.

If there are a few more lads - and lasses - like Josh Morphet about, that future will be in safe hands.