Nine little words from Amanda Owen have sent the entire nation into a romantic tailspin.

Late last night, as the wind howled across the moors, the Yorkshire Shepherdess posted a never-before-seen black-and-white photograph on Instagram: Clive, 70 today, leaning against a dry-stone wall, flat cap tilted, sheepdog at his heels, that familiar half-smile playing on his lips. Nothing unusual for the woman who has made a career out of photographing her rugged ex-husband.

Except for the caption that followed.

“Happy 70th to my love. Still the handsomest farmer in Swaledale. Always will be. A x”

My love.

Two words she has not used publicly since the couple’s tearful separation announcement in June 2022, after 22 years of marriage and nine children together. Two words that have now detonated across social media like a sheepdog let loose in a china shop.

Within minutes the post racked up 47,000 likes. By breakfast it was 200,000. Comments flooded in from famous faces and heartbroken fans alike:

Rebekah Vardy: “NO WAY. Tell me this means what I think it means 😭❤️” Lorraine Kelly: “Oh Amanda… my heart just exploded.” One follower simply wrote: “The prodigal farmer returns???”

Because this was not just any birthday tribute.

Hidden in the carousel was a second photo: Clive and Amanda side-by-side in the farm kitchen last week, arms almost, but not quite, touching as they laughed over a shared mug of tea. A third slide showed their youngest daughter, Clemmy, 8, asleep on Clive’s chest in front of the Rayburn exactly the same spot she used to fall asleep when her parents were still married.

Sources close to the family say the pictures were taken during a “long, private weekend” at Ravenseat to celebrate Clive’s milestone birthday. All nine children were there. The Aga was roaring. The table was groaning with Amanda’s legendary steak pie. And, for the first time in three years, Clive stayed the night, in the main farmhouse, not the shepherd’s hut he moved into after the split.

“Nobody slept in separate beds,” a friend of the couple told me, eyes shining. “They were giggling like teenagers until 4 a.m. At one point Reuben caught them slow-dancing in the kitchen to Elvis on the radio. He just backed out and left them to it.”

The clues have been building for months, but the nation was too scared to believe them.

Clive quietly moved his belongings back into the farmhouse “for lambing season” in February. Amanda stopped wearing her wedding ring… then started wearing it again in August. They were photographed holding hands at the Great Yorkshire Show in July, though both laughed it off as “just steadying each other on uneven ground.”

Even the children have stopped saying “Mum and Dad are separated” and started saying “when Dad’s home.”

Yet nobody dared hope, until those two devastating little words: my love.

Amanda and Clive’s love story has always read like a Brontë novel with wellies. They met when she was 21 and he was a divorced farmer 19 years her senior. She knocked on his door asking for a stray tup. He offered her a cup of tea and the rest is 30 years of mud, babies, and Channel 5 history.

When they announced their separation, Amanda said they had simply “grown apart.” Clive told reporters he would “always love her, but sometimes love isn’t enough.” The nation grieved harder than when any celebrity couple split, because the Owens felt like all of ours: proof that passion and partnership could survive 3 a.m. calvings and negative bank balances.

Now, whispers from the Dales say the flame never actually went out; it just smouldered under the ashes of too many TV crews and too much pride.

“Amanda realised she missed the man who knows when a ewe is about to lamb just by looking at her,” one neighbour told me. “And Clive missed the woman who could make him laugh while knee-deep in afterbirth. They tried living apart. It was miserable.”

Clive himself has stayed silent, as always, but those close to him say he’s been “walking ten feet tall again.” He’s been spotted buying flowers in Leyburn three times in a fortnight. Amanda’s famous battered Land Rover has been seen parked outside his barn every night this week.

Their eldest son Reuben, 20, who now runs much of the farm, let the cat out of the bag on his own Instagram story last night: a simple photo of his parents’ muddy wellies side-by-side by the back door, captioned “Some things are meant to be.”

As the sun rises over Ravenseat this morning, the sheep are bleating, the kettle is on, and the entire country is holding its breath for the only announcement that matters.

Because if Amanda Owen calling Clive “my love” on his 70th birthday doesn’t mean they’re back together, then the Yorkshire Dales have officially run out of romance.