The Yorkshire Shepherdess has suggested that “gnarled old hill farmers” can be more open-minded about breastfeeding than city-dwellers.
Amanda Owen, who has breastfed her nine children over a period of 15 years, said people were wrong to make assumptions about country folk.
“The number of times I’ve been at the auction mart with a papoose on my back, breastfeeding a baby among all those gnarled old hill farmers, and no one bats an eyelid.
“And then you read about somebody being thrown out of a cafe for breastfeeding and you’re like, ‘Hang on, who’s the most open-minded?’ It’s maybe not who you think,” she said.
Owen, 48, also told the Radio Times that she had never encountered sexism among the farming community in the Yorkshire Dales.
“Personally, I’ve never experienced any sexism,” she said.
“I’ve always found agriculture, particularly working outdoors, very welcoming if you’ve got the enthusiasm, along with a certain amount of humility and an ability to look at how it’s being done.”
Owen made headlines last year when she split from her husband, Clive, with whom she appeared in Our Yorkshire Farm, their fly-on-the-wall series for Channel 5.
The break-up forced the end of the show and they now have separate projects: Clive and one of the couple’s children, Reuben, now star in a spin-off, Beyond the Yorkshire Farm; while Owen is presenting Farming Lives, a new documentary on Channel 4.
The pair continue to run their farm and raise their children together, and Owen joked that the new arrangement “just means we take it in turns to shout at the kids”.
While Owen visited farms across the UK for her new series, she was never away from home for more than three days.
“We go for the three-day rule: three days is the maximum number of sandwich boxes and stuff that we can get prepared and the maximum amount of carnage that I can cope with on my return,” she said.
In Farming Lives, which will air on More4, Owen meets farmers who are taking different approaches to making ends meet.
Owen said that her media career, which includes television series, books and an Instagram feed with more than 500,000 followers, was more lucrative than farming could ever be.
“The irony is not lost on me that taking pictures of sheep, writing about sheep and telling stories about sheep, absolutely is more profitable than doing anything with the sheep,” she said.
