Lake District farmer's wife Helen Rebanks on life in the fields and kitchen

The farmer's wife is traditionally seen as the supporting role, the woman in the background. But for Helen Rebanks, wife of celebrated shepherd James Rebanks, it is a badge of honour. The BBC joined her for a typical afternoon of sorting sheep and making the dinner.

Floss dozes on the carpet, her black and white fur warmed by the pool of September sun pouring in through the floor-length window.

She is 11 years old and enjoying another day of retirement, her duties roaming the surrounding fells to round up sheep now passed to her offspring and grandchildren.

She lies in the large kitchen-lounge that is the heart of the Rebanks home.

Helen, her husband James and their four children aged between five and 17 live in a converted barn enveloped by green hills reached by a snaking track.

At one end of the room is a large fireplace, the mantelpiece overflowing with red and blue rosettes and silver salvers and cups won at the summer's agricultural shows.

There are large comfy chairs, family pictures on the stone walls and shelves bursting with books.

At the other end is the kitchen, dominated by that most quintessential of farmhouse appliances - the Aga - and a large island where Helen is making sausage rolls.

She is working quickly because she is needed a few fields and a short quadbike ride away to help James sort through a couple of dozen of their Herdwick sheep.

They need to put them through a footbath and decide which should be entered in forthcoming shows - and then she will have to head off to collect their youngest son from school.

The pastry meanwhile has been laid out and washed with an egg from one of their chickens and Helen kneads beef sausage meat, butchered from one of their belted Galloways. It goes on to the pastry, readying them for going into the Aga for the family's tea.

"If I didn't do this no-one else would," she says with a laugh, adding: "I love putting a meal on the table and everyone getting together.

"All the conversations you have are brilliant, even if somebody is in a bad mood you usually get to the bottom of it over food."

She already has the evening meal sorted in her head, the sausage rolls to be accompanied by leftover baked potatoes, cut into wedges and fried to be served with a salad.

If there is a typical day for Helen this pretty much encompasses it, finding the balance between being the farmer and the wife.

This is one of the messages Helen wants to get across in her book The Farmer's Wife: My Life In Days - a mix of memoir, recipes and manifesto for farming, food and family - that is already a bestseller just days after its launch.

"Women have always worked on farms and done a variety of jobs," she says, adding: "I would argue we only focus on the outside work and almost make it more important whereas I don't think it is, what we do inside is equally important.

"I really just want to champion people doing the caring, the cooking, whoever it is in the household."

Helen never actually wanted to be a farmer's wife.

She and James, who has written several bestselling books about his agricultural life, are both from farming stock.

Their families have been Lake District fell farmers for generations, and Helen grew up on her grandparents' farm where her mother also ran a rustic bed and breakfast.

She saw her elders experiencing a "tough busy life that didn't give you much space to explore", adding: "I wanted out."

Helen had plans to study art, live a creative life far from the old stone walls and paddocks she had grown up surrounded by.

But then she met James, fell in love and, after stints baking cakes for a cafe in Oxford while James studied, the couple took on his family's farm in Matterdale having missed the community they had both been raised in.

They have some 700 Herdwicks, the grey-fleeced white-faced sheep the Lake District is world renowned for.

They also have 53 belted Galloways, a couple of which are owned by their friend Nick Offerman, the US comedian and carpenter having been a guest at the Rebanks' home.

They met the Parks and Recreation star and his wife Megan Mullally through a joint admiration of US agrarian writer Wendell Berry, and share a passion for what Helen called "old-fashioned farming" that's "in-tune with nature".

Though technologies have changed, the Rebanks still rely on the old "dog and stick" style of farming because, as Helen says, "there isn't a better way of doing it".

In the spring the ewes and their lambs go to Great Dodd, a domed fell that dominates the skyline on which the Rebanks and nine or so other farmers have ancient grazing rights

At the end of each summer there is a gathering day when, with the aid of their sheep dogs who often become distant dots, the shepherds bring their sheep back to the luscious green fields closer to the valley floor in preparation for winter.

Helen is a big advocate for this traditional method and also for teaching people about the importance of knowing where food comes from.

"You've got to be realistic," she says when discussing their animals and where they end up, adding: "But it's better we know it's had a good life from a good farm.

"From field to fork, if we know it's healthy it's good for us and for the environment."

With the sausage rolls ready for the oven, Helen swaps her sandals for her boots and heads to the pen to meet James, his two enthusiastic collies Tosh and Tig and the Herdwicks.

Helen wades through the waist-high mass of moving wool, feeling teeth and checking stances before selecting the ones she thinks should be entered into the forthcoming shows.

There is a lot of pride in having the best sheep, reputations are hard won and cherished, and one of these sheep in particular is an absolute champion.

She is large, thick and hardy and both Helen and James are obviously pleased with her.

They work as a team on the farm, the same way their parents, grandparents and so on did.

But traditionally their roles have been defined by their duties and gender, the farmer and the farmer's wife, with the latter dismissed into something of a supporting role.

"There's a lot of women working on these small farmsteads doing a lot of this sort of 'background' work," Helen says adding: "They are the ones raising the children, doing the domestic work.

"That doesn't get celebrated in modern life.

"I'm incredibly proud to be a farmer's wife, I think it doesn't get showcased very often, but I wanted to break down stereotypes too, to say I'm interested in art, literature and all sorts of things as well as doing the domestic stuff.

"I really, really wanted to shine a light on quiet lives well lived.

"I feel like I'm honouring a lot of women who have come before me and sharing stories that they didn't get a chance to because they were too busy."

With the sheep sorted, James disappears to a barn and Helen heads off in the family car to do the school run.

Floss continues to snooze.

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