Clarkson's Farm (2021) s01e01 Episode Script
Tractoring
Sideways in linen.
For many years, this has been my day job.
Going in hard and hot! But when the important work was over I've lost one of my nose tampons! I came home to this.
It's my farm in the Cotswolds.
Nestling among the ancient stone villages, it's a peaceful, 1,000-acre haven of wide open fields, brooks, waterfalls, woods, and wild flower meadows.
It stretches from those trees over there on the far horizon, then it goes behind that big wood, down into the valley and then up past here to a point a couple of miles over there.
And ever since I bought it back in 2008, it's been run by a chap from the village.
However, he told me a couple of months ago that he is retiring, so I've come up with a plan.
I shall farm it myself.
I've never done this.
Ooh! Farming happening.
That's as straight as a roundabout! That sign of me going up there is not happening.
We're gonna have a sign saying, "Guess who drilled this? Jeremy, Kaleb?" Take off! Right.
Let's go round up some sheep.
Jeremy, you're going too fast.
Shit.
Please stop.
Come on, don't rain.
Don't rain.
This is global warming.
And you racing about all your life in vehicles.
Just unbelievable horseshit.
See them? They're goldfinches.
Really? It actually makes me really happy.
Behold! I am Moses.
And what the fuck are you doing up here? Who's Moses? It's a baby.
Ooh.
Jeez.
Have you looked after sheep before? I think I've got in its anus.
No.
Yes! This is my wilding project.
- My God! - No, no, no.
This is not wilding.
That's damage.
It's like Fortnum & Masons.
It's what? My God.
What have I done? Whoa! Stay in your vehicle please.
Stay in your vehicle.
I'm pushing 60.
I've smoked three quarters of a million cigarettes.
I've had pneumonia.
If I get it Yeah, there's not a lot of hope.
Shit.
Shit, shit.
Wayne Rooney's dead.
And this is the moment.
You missed a bit.
- Where? - In the mirror.
- No, I didn't.
- You did.
- I didn't.
- You did.
All that is to come, but right now, it's time to start my first job.
The biggest, most important job of them all.
Planting wheat and barley in all the big fields like this one.
And how do you do that? No idea.
Literally, honestly, I have absolutely no clue.
All I do know is it's going to involve some tractoring.
Obviously, to do tractoring I need a tractor.
So, on day one, I set off to my local dealership.
Quite like this one.
Look, the Super Major.
There are worse names.
As I'm familiar with stuff that has four wheels and an engine, I should have been at home here, but I wasn't.
So I sought advice from the dealership's owner, Patrick Edwards.
How much is this? 7,500.
That is what we specialize in.
- You've got an engine at the front.
- Yeah.
You've got a gear box, and a back axle.
No suspension.
No fancy electronics.
There's nothing to go wrong that we can't mend.
- What horsepower has that got? - 45 horsepower.
It's a bit feeble.
Well, it fed the country.
I know but people didn't eat very much in those days.
Um What's the most power, what's that got horsepower-wise? Well, that would be about 65 horsepower.
And is that the most powerful one here? Yes, yeah.
- 65 Horse-power? - Yes.
I then took one of his restored tractors for a test drive.
It begins.
Let's open it up.
Having finished my test drive, I made a decision, and bought this.
This is a Lamborghini R8.
My God, this thing is enormous! Everything about it is just large.
Weighs ten tons.
I have 40 forwards gears, and 40 reverse gears.
And I know that little Massey Ferguson was very sweet, but come on! Okay, and here we are at the farm.
Ooh, hello.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Shit.
Right.
First up with an opinion was my girlfriend, Lisa.
That is, that's too big.
It isn't.
It isn't, the shed's too Enormous.
Little.
Here's someone who does know about farming.
It's Charlie Ireland.
Now he's my, sort of, land agent.
He knows what's needed and when it's needed.
He'll be guiding me over the coming year.
- Jeremy, hello.
- Charlie, how are you? Very well thanks.
How are you? It's quite large.
Um Come on, it's a good tractor.
It's got the wrong hitch on.
What? That's a European hitch.
What's I got it from Germany.
You may well have done.
So I can't attach anything to the back of this? Not at the moment.
But it is a big tractor.
I think it's a vast tractor up here.
Too big? Yes.
Charlie then sat me down to explain just how expensive it would be to get my crops in the ground.
So you've got a tractor.
- Yeah.
- Albeit too big.
You then need some implements to go on the back of it.
So the tractor at 40.
What else do you need? A cultivator, 20-25,000.
A new drill, probably 40-50,000.
60,000 for a sprayer.
And you haven't got a trailer.
10,000.
Blades are 62,000.
About 35,000.
Same in fertilizer.
So we're about two we're a quarter of a million.
Quarter of a million pounds.
And that's just the, you know, sort of the backbone of the equipment you want.
No, no, I'm sorry, I'm just going to say it again.
- Quarter of a million pounds.
- A quarter of a million pounds.
So we can either do it two ways.
Either get some new equipment, or we can probably do it the sensible way and get some good secondhand machinery that's lower value.
- Yeah.
- There's a couple of farm sales coming up.
Okay, so we'll go to a farm sale.
Yeah.
So, a few days later, on a beautiful Cotswolds' morning, I fired up the checkbook and went shopping.
Charlie had provided me with a list of what to buy, but it might as well have been in Arabic.
No idea what that is.
No idea.
What the hell is that? I mean, what is everything? Like a medieval funfair, this.
Hundreds of different ways of killing yourself.
There are apparently 20 times more deaths among people working in agriculture than there are in all the other sectors combined.
20 times more.
And when you see equipment like this, you can see why.
You're alone, you're in a field, you fall in there and then you're just sort of fed into your own field.
I see, right, I think I've worked this one out.
You attach it to the tractor here, and then you slip and that scrapes your arm off, and then the other one scrapes your arm into the ground.
Greetings.
Are you a farmer? No, no, I'm a forester.
Really good way of chopping your arm off in forestry.
You actually haven't got any fingers.
Unbelievable.
Have you seen this? - Works in forestry.
- Yeah.
This is a thing of beauty.
Button-back Dralon three-piece suite.
Yes.
Soon, the fields started to fill up.
And the auction buzz was building.
He's just showing off.
Look at me, still got an arm.
Amazon have said they want as much diversity in this show as we can possibly manage, and I think we're doing well because if you look, there's every different type of white 60-year-old man here.
Right, we have a great line-up of arable kit, and grassland kit.
To make sure I didn't rip myself off, Charlie had also provided a handy price guide for each bit of kit.
I need lot three here.
Good price would be six and a half.
Bad price would be 13.
Vernon C&M cultivator.
At £1,000 just to your left.
At £1,000 I'm bid.
At £1,000.
At £1,000.
Under the watchful gaze of a man who seemed to have had an argument with a threshing machine, I started bidding.
14.
16.
1800, I'm bid.
2,000 I'm bid.
Two-two.
Two-four.
At two-six.
Three-two.
At three-three.
At three-eight.
Your bid, sir.
Six-double one.
- Six double one.
Thank you.
- Thank you.
That was good.
See, we were told six and a half thousand was a good price.
We've just got that for 3950.
Yes! On we go, lot 33.
It's a Bomford double-seven hedge cutter.
2,000 I'm bid.
I did go a bit over on some of my other purchases.
- Your bid, sir.
- Dear.
So, I was told not to go above 3,600 and I've gone to 5,100.
Here we go then.
Bid's on there.
But, at the end of the sale At four-two I'm bid.
At 2006.
I had everything I needed.
Your bid, sir.
Six-eleven.
The buyer.
Having spent £82,000 on equipment, and £2 on office furniture, my next job, according to Charlie, was to go through the timetable for getting the crops in the ground.
So I've worked out a cropping plan.
And this is what we're putting in this year then.
This is what I think we should put in.
This is, we've got to get the winter barley in So the winter barley, that's all the way along here.
Well, that's got to be done now and the wheat here, - it's got to be done now.
- Yeah.
So it's 235 acres.
We've got all this to And then we've got the 200 acres of spring barley to prepare for.
So we've got to get cultivation, get spraying off, cultivations and drilling.
- In - In under two weeks.
Okay.
Yeah, the problem is if we don't drill the winter barley then, the yield will start dropping off.
We need lots of seeds in the ground to get those going, so we've got quite a lot to do.
Okay.
And then there's the biggest challenge is you've got, we've got to learn how to, you know, you've got to learn how to do it.
- Yeah, I know, but, I mean - 'Cause, you know, there's an old saying, that I've got, you know, "Well sown is half grown.
" So if the crop is planted well, then actually you're halfway there.
So the biggest risk factor is - Not planting properly.
- Not planting it properly.
Right.
And we haven't mentioned the other factor.
We all get weather.
If the weather is rubbish, we just have to sit there.
So the soil needs to be dry.
The soil needs to be, you know, in good condition.
- Lorry.
- There's a lorry arrived.
- What have we got? - We've got fertilizer - Yeah.
- Coming here.
And seed in this one.
So - So I need to - We need to move the tractor.
- Yeah.
- Then the forklift's in here.
- Yeah.
- So we'll get that going.
Should have got a smaller tractor.
I reckon these guys are gonna get itchy in a minute.
Just as I was about to get started, cheerful Charlie delivered a little bundle of government red tape.
- We've got some hay in there.
- Yeah.
So we need to move the hay, so you can't store a combustible such as hay, straw, or anything like that with fertilizer.
The two mix quite well, so you've got an oxidizing agent.
- Why not, why not? - Well because Hay doesn't spontaneously combust.
Well, it might do in the presence of fertilizer.
- Why might really? - Just we're not allowed to.
It's breaching the fertilizer industry assurance standard rules.
So the government has an opinion on what I store my fertilizer next to? In fairness, it's quite a sensible one.
Within our working week, we've got to build in, you know, the regulations and rules that we have to comply by.
Some of those rules are a little bit challenging but, you know, they're there for a reason.
Farming's a patient game, and given that he's, you know, not the world's most patient man Fucking useless.
You know, that will be a real test.
Up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up.
Fuck's sake.
Eventually, the hay, and everything else that might suddenly explode, was taken out of the shed.
And much to the relief of the delivery drivers, I could finally start unloading.
Look at this.
Look at this.
Ha-ha.
Backwards.
Excellent.
Cheers, mate.
That's brilliant.
Do you want to pull forwards so I can get the seed off? There's, 46 more bags on here for you.
What? Yeah.
It's all for you.
All the way back.
You're kidding! This is all for you.
I know, he just said.
Despite a couple of small accidents Shit.
I had all the fertilizer and the seed unloaded in just five hours.
- This was it? - Yeah.
One of those, and one of those.
- Sixteen and a half tons.
- That's right.
There you go, and many thanks for your patience.
- No problem.
- It was my first day, so I wasn't quite as quick as I perhaps will be one day.
Now, I had the seed and fertilizer, I was finally ready to start farming.
And with Charlie's tight timetable looming over me, I had to learn my way around the equipment quickly.
So once the correct hitch had been fitted to the tractor, I sprang into action.
I assumed the answer to the question of how I join everything together lay in the cab.
However Three buttons there.
I don't know what they do.
No, no, don't know.
No.
No.
Buttons here, don't know.
No.
And then God, look.
There was only one thing for it.
Call my local branch of the National Farmers' Union and ask for help.
No, that would be prefect.
Thanks.
That's good.
My union representative's coming over to give me some help.
I'll go and light the brazier.
Instead of Arthur Scargill, however they sent Georgia Craig.
I'll be honest, I'm not the most practical man.
- Are you good with tractors? - Yeah.
But this is the only tractor you've got? - Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Okay.
- Well, what's wrong with it? It's just a bit it's quite big for what you've got.
Everyone keeps saying it's too everyone says it's too big.
- What made you choose it? - It's a Lamborghini.
- I'll get it done more quickly.
- Right, okay.
So what's the problem? Honestly, truthfully, I don't really know how the tractor works.
I can drive it but I can't operate it.
- But it's got three gear levers.
- Yeah.
Two brake pedals and 8,000 buttons.
- Okay.
- Some of which are in German.
Okey-doke.
Lesson one was learning how to attach the tractor to something called a cultivator.
That's it.
Hold it there.
Who put a door catch there? It's the last time I'm coming out of there forwards.
The first thing I've noticed is that pin is down, so you want to have both pins up.
Can I go in there? I would turn the engine off, and then pull the pin up, - to be safe, as it's your first time.
- Back up the ladder? Yeah.
- Right.
- Right so Pull that pin up.
So what we're gonna do is, lift the link arms up.
- Right, so I start the engine? - Yeah.
Back up the ladder.
Don't do that.
Sit in it.
- Right.
- No, can I kick that one? It's just slight look.
No.
no, no.
Don't kick it.
Do it inside.
Back up the ladder.
That's it.
Hold it there.
Can I operate it from in here and see if that works? No, because they might come flying up.
For Christ's sake.
Okay, so you're nearly on.
You just need to come back a tiny little bit and then they'll go on.
Yeah, but it's literally a millimeter.
Yeah.
You only need a little bit.
Back up the ladder again.
Fucking hell.
That's it.
Right.
Turn the engine off and then we'll do it from out here.
I'm going to operate it from in here.
I don't care what she says.
Ha, ha! No.
Shit.
Yes! I did it.
I just couldn't be bothered to come down the ladder again.
With the cultivator attached, we headed out to a nearby field so Georgia could teach me how to use it, and what it did.
The idea is that we're just loosening the top, the sort of friable surface of the soil.
So we loosen it up now, jiggle it up a bit.
- Yeah.
- So when we put the seeds in - using the driller - Yeah.
- They're into good, loosened-up soil.
- Yeah.
And so began my first driving lesson for 42 years.
- First gear? - Yeah.
- Low? - Yeah.
Let's farm.
Look at that, I'm farming.
I'm doing it! Look at the difference already.
You can see where you've cultivated.
Right, let's go a little bit faster 'cause we always want to get that soil to bubble up.
Speed up a bit.
And that soil is, like, boiling, isn't it? Like a soil boil.
It's amazing.
So before you turn, lift up, then we're gonna do a three-point turn.
Lifting.
Little turn.
Going down.
Do you like cruising in your Lambo? Come on, it's a pretty good tractor.
Too big.
Isn't too big.
It is.
I was very much enjoying farming, so I decided to pull over and enjoy it some more with a ploughman's.
- What cheese is this? - Cheddar.
Do you want some piccalilli? I think you're ready to go on your own.
Cultivating.
Really? Yeah, 'cause you'll get your own feel for it.
Flying solo on day one.
I'm actually doing farming.
- Which is what I - That's what you wanted to do.
I've never I know.
And Howard, the previous farmer, said I'm jacking it in and I just thought I'll do it.
And everybody said you're stupid, you're literally that's the stupidest thing ever.
You'll never be able to do it.
- And now you are.
- I'm actually doing farming.
Look at that now.
That's beautiful, isn't it? Perfect.
I like that tractor.
I like that tractor.
I shouldn't have been mean about it to start with.
- No.
- I was probably just jealous.
The next morning, I was up early.
Excited about going solo.
This is not a bad commute, you know, this isn't.
Forging a path through the dew on a beautiful, beautiful autumn morning.
Look at that view.
Lower cultivator.
Cultivator lowered.
Farming happening.
Look at my seagulls.
There are thousands of 'em.
Ha.
I wonder if seagulls can hear tractors from 70 miles away.
They must be able to.
It was a wonderful happy day.
Third gear.
Nice.
In fact, the only irritation was having to faff about turning round at the end of every run.
So I came up with a better idea.
Right, here's my plan, it's a good one.
I'm not gonna one of those three point turns, then come back alongside the bit I've just done.
I'm gonna do a series of U-turns like that, and then come back on the bits I haven't done and it'll all fit together.
All right, ready? Up she comes.
Go on full lock.
And then drop it back down.
Yeah.
I just have to stay parallel with that bit I've already done over there and then I'll, yes.
Sadly, though, this turned out to be harder than I thought.
God, I've not done this right.
Yeah, look what I've done.
I've made a mess.
I'm gonna have to come up it again.
Jeremy Clarkson, he can't even drive in a straight line.
There's a bit over there as well.
Jesus wept.
I was wasting a lot of fuel doing unnecessary runs, and time.
Time which I couldn't afford.
I had to get this field done, and all the others.
That's 435 acres in less than 14 days.
And all I'd managed to do on the first day was ten acres.
Now I've made a total Horlicks of this.
I realized that I needed help.
- Kaleb, nice to meet you.
- How are you So I called Kaleb Cooper.
The tractor driver who'd worked for the previous farmer.
I'm in a muddle.
I'm in a proper, proper muddle because, well, I mean you've farmed this farm, haven't you for Yeah, I've farmed this farm for three years.
- Three years is it? - Yeah.
Well I've been nearly 24 hours and all I've managed to do is cultivate ten acres of, is that Bury Hill South? Ten acres? And some of it went a bit wrong.
Um When you've done it in the past, how long did it take to cultivate? So that would probably take me a good week, but that's long hours to do the whole farm.
Never mind long hours, but a week? Yeah.
A week.
And that was just the cultivating.
We'd then have to plant the seeds using something called a drill.
And how long would that take? A bit longer because, A what drill have you got? A a red one.
A red one? It's colored red.
It's re or is it orange? It's reddy-orange.
Reddy orange? So what else do you do apart from this? So I've got my own contracting business on the side, Kaleb Cooper Contracting Services.
I've also got a 1.
5-ton digger.
I do general digger work, such as burying pipes, water pipes, digging footings.
So you're quite practical.
- Yeah.
I've also - Animals? I've also got 50 head of sheep.
I normally try and do five pigs a year to fatten up for sausages, pork chops.
I've also got about 120 chickens at the minute on the farm.
I sell the eggs locally.
How old are you? I'm 21.
- What? - This year.
21.
You're making me feel pathetic.
I'm 59.
I haven't done any of that.
So what's your plan? So we've got This has been drawn up by Charlie Ireland.
- Yeah.
- We've got winter wheat in Bury Hill South and - Yes.
- Do you know what that one's called? Laus.
You do.
What's this one called then? Near Brossola.
- Yeah.
This one.
- Deadman.
- Do you know the names of all the fields? - Yeah, I know the names of all the fields.
Heredrone, coming down is Downs Ground.
Coming down after that is Big Ground, coming after that is Banks, and then Spittaway, Taylor's.
Down on the road here is Near Bossola.
Far Brossola.
How do you know this? Well I spent three years in each field spraying, drilling, cultivating.
- You're a local man then? - Yeah.
Chippy born and bred.
- Chipping Norton School? - Never left the place.
You've never left it? - No.
- Been to London? No.
Once on an art trip.
I stayed in the coach.
- Didn't like it.
- What you Too many people.
Banbury? Banbury at a push.
That's if I need something desperately.
But otherwise you're happy, Chipping Norton.
Chippy Norton, Chadlington, Heythrop.
That's pretty much, yeah, that's me.
You sound like just the saving grace.
It's almost as though God himself has beamed you down.
Good.
Let's go see the tractor.
Wow.
Lamborghini! I know.
With Kaleb and I operating in shifts, the pace picked up.
And it needed to because, as Charlie kept reminding me, time was money.
If I can get all my winter barley planted by October the 7th, I can expect next year a yield of around about three and a half tons an acre.
But if it rains, or the tractor breaks down and I'm late, even by so much as a few days, that yield would drop to perhaps two tons an acre.
Ton and a half down per acre, and each ton is £120.
So over a hundred acres, I'd be losing £18,000.
Kaleb reckoned however, that if we kept up this pace, we could have all 435 acres planted by the deadline of October the 7th.
Bottom field is complete.
Yes, you mighty tractor.
However, just three days into our labors When the rain did eventually slacken 48 frustrating hours later, I ventured out again.
But I didn't get far.
Right.
The bolt has come out of there and that bolt's come out and turned the other way round, which means these discs aren't turning, which means, look, I'm just creating a little mud mountain.
Fucking hell.
Come on.
That's just jammed.
- Good.
- Got the new bolt? Right, so the leg's done.
That's done, that's so this is working again now.
Yeah, it's all back up together.
But it's raining.
The roller on the back here will pack up with mud and then you'd just be skimming on the top and hard work to get it unblocked.
Of the 400 acres we needed to tackle, we'd only managed 150.
Right, well that's alarming because I now have I've got nine days.
I've got nine days to do all those fields down there, and that means I've got to cultivate them, and drill it, and I've got nine days and the weather forecast says it's going to be raining for the next seven of them.
Why don't farmers all have coronaries? As predicted, the rain continued to fall for the rest of the week.
But eventually the sun did come out.
So, finally, we can start cultivating again.
Map of where I'm going.
Not going.
Why am I not moving? Come on.
I've got no drive.
Right.
What have I forgotten? Let's have a look.
What's going on? All in fucking German.
Got no book with that, have we? It's all right.
Google translate.
Page not found.
Is there anyone we can call? I'm trying to find our dealer, the nearest one, to call them.
- Hello.
- Hi, Peter.
Hello.
Hi, it's Jeremy Clarkson over in Chipping Norton.
Starts, put it in gear and then let the clutch in and I would start with your brake fluid reservoir so it's either low or having a hissy fit with the level sensor.
Right, reservoirs.
This is now Italian.
Now, wait, wait, wait.
Good news, this is in French.
Never been to France.
That can't be brakes.
No, that's all to do with the hydraulics on this.
No.
We need a book, don't we? Yes, but we haven't got one.
I mean I've got thousands of books, have you got a book? No.
- Any books? - No.
- Have you not got a book? - No.
I've got hundreds and hundreds of books but Yeah, but how do you read hundreds and hundreds of books? - What? - How do you read them all? If you've got hundreds of them, you can't read all of them surely? - Yes, no, I've read thousands of books.
- I don't do that.
Have you had a haircut? Yeah, I have.
Trying 'em all.
- What? - I'm trying all different haircuts.
- Why? - Until I get older, you know, 'cause I'm going to lose all my hair.
- Are you? - The next thing I'm gonna perm it.
Good luck with that.
How many hairstyles have you had? Went from long, top and side, top, about five in the last, what, probably Have you had a Phil Oakey? What's that? Human League.
Long on one side, short on the other.
No, no, not about that.
- Okay.
Anyway, could we just get back - Yeah.
Can we just stop talking about your hairdressing? - You brought it up! - Concentrate I just wanted to know 'cause I was making conversation - while you found the brake reservoir.
- Why? Fucking buy a tractor in the UK, not in Germany, you'd be all right.
Despite much ferreting, we couldn't find the source of the problem.
Fuck! Right.
That's it.
- Cup of tea then.
- Yet another day of no farming.
Yeah.
We could grease up.
Don't look at me like that.
You mean grease all the nipples.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Grease the nipples.
Right.
We've got an hour, we can grease nipples.
The following day, mercifully, we were able to get back to work.
I am slightly embarrassed this morning because the tractor wasn't actually broken.
There's a lever down here which had got knocked somehow into neutral, which is why it wouldn't set off, and that means I lost an entire afternoon's farming because this tractor is complicated.
As a result of everything, there was now no hope of hitting Charlie's deadlines.
We were miles behind with the cultivating, and we hadn't even started planting the seeds.
The situation now, I'd call it desperate.
Please don't rain.
Please don't rain.
And back at base, an even bigger issue was developing.
Shit, that is a really big problem isn't it? Yeah.
See what's happened is, it's the bag of seed.
We've had it for such a long time now, not being able to get it in the ground because of the rain, which has been going underneath the well, the wall of the barn and the seed has actually started to grow in the bag so you can't feed that into the drill, can we? No.
If you look underneath, it's just a carpet of roots.
Fuck.
We needed to get the remaining seeds in the ground as quickly as possible.
Right, ho! Even if that meant planting them in fields that hadn't been cultivated.
First, though, I had to get to grips with the fearsomely complicated seed drill, which turned out to be neither red nor orange.
So as we go along, there are nine of these on the - Yeah.
- That splits, it creates a little mound.
- That's it, yeah.
Creates - And then the seed comes down here, two seeds, one goes to the left-hand side.
- That's it.
- And one goes to the right, and it's planted - Like that.
- A couple of inches down.
Yeah, apart, yeah.
- It's machine gunning the ground.
- Yeah.
With goodness and nutrients.
A lot to take in, so are you listening? Are you ready? - Yeah.
- Yeah? Main menu.
Yeah.
Rate.
Yeah, so our rate, we're going on at 220 per kg per hectare.
This is your fan speed, all right.
So in a minute when I turn the fan on, that's gonna come with a number.
You want it running about 4,000.
This is your tram.
So every eighth time you pick it up, it's going to put a tram line in.
So we're off the tram line.
- What do you mean, off the tram line? - We're starting a field.
From the last field, we're set at eight, so this field - Eight what? - Eighth tram line.
- So what that means - Kaleb, I've lost complete I don't know what you were doing 30 seconds ago.
- All right.
- I reckon you could drop a cruise missile on Damascus more easily than you could get that drill to plant some seeds along there.
After baffling me for a bit longer, Kaleb and I switched seats and we got cracking.
Here we go, and drilling.
Drilling an uncultivated field like this would mean less yield and, therefore, less profit at the end of the year.
But, for complicated reasons to do with carbon in the soil, it is kinder to the environment.
Greta Thunberg likes this.
Yeah.
I don't know who that is, but yeah.
Keep going, keep going, keep going.
Got to be dead straight because when they start growing, you're going to have lines like this if you're not careful.
And people driving up and down the main road will see it and think Exactly.
I'm gonna have a big sign at the end saying: "Kaleb did this.
" Whoa.
You missed a bit.
- Where? - In the mirror.
- No, I didn't.
- You did.
They're not gonna see that from the main road, are they? Most probably.
Everyone will pick up on everything.
Guaranteed.
If you make a cock-up in the middle of nowhere, someone's gonna see it.
They'll go into the pub and go, "Did you see that bit he missed over in coordinates of this, this, this?" They will, they'll get the coordinates of that place and they'll tell everyone.
I do it.
Once he thought I'd got the hang of it, Kaleb went off to look after his own farming stuff, leaving me all alone.
I'm solo, solo drilling.
So Jeremy's out drilling, which is actually one of the most complicated parts of getting crops established.
So what he's doing is going up and down the field, so the seed is being planted in rows behind the seed drill.
And then the drill will shut off.
It will leave two un-drilled sections which are called tram lines.
We use those tram lines as a guide so that when the sprayer goes up between them, we're putting on the right amount of spray, putting on the right amount of fertilizer and hence it's all mathematically laid out so it's a pretty critical part of the operation.
Shit.
Wrong button.
That's the problem.
There it is and there we are.
A lot more complicated than cultivating, this is.
A lot more.
Soon I wanted to sit in the sun having another picnic, but I was beginning to understand that in farming you really do have to make hay while the sun shines.
How many more ups and downs have I got to do in this field, and will I get it done before the sunset? What have we got? One, two about 30 more, perhaps.
Yeah.
If I've got to do 30 more ups and downs, but it's now quarter to five, I'm gonna be doing this with my headlights on.
In order to speed things up I, once again, decided to replace the annoying three point turns with my much faster sweeping manoeuvre.
And here we go.
Yes, look at that.
It's just me and my drill and my Lamborghini.
Dropping, and seeding.
What a beautiful evening, in the Cotswolds.
However, when Kaleb came back, the evening mood took a bit of a downturn.
What have you been doing? What? What do you mean? What have you been doing? Going up and down.
Going up and down like this? No.
I went up and then went across like that.
What did I say at the start? You said don't do that but I couldn't see why.
That sign of me going up there is not happening.
We're gonna have a sign saying, "Guess who drilled this? Jeremy, Kaleb?" Well, what's the matter with that? I said every eighth time you're putting a tram line in.
Your tram lines are gonna be everywhere.
Down here you're gonna have tram line, tram line, tram line, tram line, every three meters.
On this bit here, you're gonna have no tram lines.
When I come to spray it and fertilize it, how do I know where to drive? Guess.
I don't know.
I don't know what I'm doing in there.
I'll do it properly now or is it too late? It's too late.
You're pretty much screwed.
And you haven't even drilled it straight.
What do you mean I haven't drilled it straight? That's as straight as a roundabout.
Well it's 'cause it started off bent there by the hedge so it's still bent here.
It wasn't that bent though, was it? I didn't know about the eighth thing, you didn't say you must do that because if you don't I did tell you that.
I couldn't understand what you were on about.
It was country speak.
Everyone is gonna see this.
That's a main road there.
Yes, I know, but I've learned my lesson now and I won't do it again.
Have you not seen TV episodes on stuff like that, on people drilling, he's going up and down.
No.
no, I didn't watch that.
I'll buy you a drink later and you'll feel better.
I'm in so much trouble.
The next day, there was even more trouble.
Most of the oilseed rape fields planted earlier by the previous farmer were fine.
So we've got nice rows of rape, which has come up really well.
Yeah.
But in one Why isn't it growing? The flea beetle got hold of it, so - What? - Whereas the further up there I'm sorry, this has been planted? This has been planted.
- Where's the rape gone? - Well, it's failed.
It's gone.
We might find the odd plant in the middle, but I'll show you what's happened.
The whole field's failed? Yeah.
Just the little black beetle have come in and they've just foraged it.
- The whole bloody lot? - Yeah.
All four hectares.
Ten acres of it.
You know, there comes a point that, you know There is no There's I just Because of a beetle? Yeah.
Well, why can't we kill it? Well, neonicotinoids are you know, the seed coatings were banned in Europe.
- What, so we can't use them? - We can't use them.
I mean this is What's the typical yield? So there's about 12 tons, so there's about £4,000 worth of loss.
- £4,000 just gone because of the beetle.
- Just gone, yeah.
And the EU won't let me kill the beetle.
Well, you know, we've just got to work within the rules.
We are working within the rules and an entire field is dead.
Yeah.
I figured, as I climbed back on my tractor, that things couldn't get any worse, but I was wrong.
Very wrong.
The next day it started to rain again, and this time it didn't really stop for the next six weeks.
Across the country, warnings remain in place for severe weather.
Risk of flooding, risk of transport disruption.
Torrential rain, a month's worth in a day.
The Wye here at its highest level since records began, clearly unprecedented.
The Met office says "presents a danger to life.
" has caused havoc not seen for almost a century.
For British farmers, the autumn of 2019 was Armageddon.
My farm is 700 feet above sea level, and the brashy soil drains well, but even it had become a quagmire.
And planting seeds in ground like this is impossible.
I used to while away my evening hours reading car magazines, but not anymore.
Nowadays it's Farmer's Weekly and it's Farmer's Guardian and all they're talking about is the rain.
The unbelievable levels of rain that we've been having.
Look, "Deluge Disaster," "Biblical," and inside that's the only topic of conversation as far as I can work out.
That's all there is, just rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain.
"Farms sacrificed to protect homes from rising floodwater.
" "Worst autumn leaves winter crops un-drilled.
" This poor guy hasn't planted a single thing, can't plant anything, it's too wet.
Look at that poor sod.
Look at that for a farm.
What's he gonna do? Everyone is saying to me you couldn't have picked a worse year to start farming.
You couldn't.
This is unbelievable weather.
Unbelievable.
God.
You So have you looked after sheep before? No.
Here they come.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
For many years, this has been my day job.
Going in hard and hot! But when the important work was over I've lost one of my nose tampons! I came home to this.
It's my farm in the Cotswolds.
Nestling among the ancient stone villages, it's a peaceful, 1,000-acre haven of wide open fields, brooks, waterfalls, woods, and wild flower meadows.
It stretches from those trees over there on the far horizon, then it goes behind that big wood, down into the valley and then up past here to a point a couple of miles over there.
And ever since I bought it back in 2008, it's been run by a chap from the village.
However, he told me a couple of months ago that he is retiring, so I've come up with a plan.
I shall farm it myself.
I've never done this.
Ooh! Farming happening.
That's as straight as a roundabout! That sign of me going up there is not happening.
We're gonna have a sign saying, "Guess who drilled this? Jeremy, Kaleb?" Take off! Right.
Let's go round up some sheep.
Jeremy, you're going too fast.
Shit.
Please stop.
Come on, don't rain.
Don't rain.
This is global warming.
And you racing about all your life in vehicles.
Just unbelievable horseshit.
See them? They're goldfinches.
Really? It actually makes me really happy.
Behold! I am Moses.
And what the fuck are you doing up here? Who's Moses? It's a baby.
Ooh.
Jeez.
Have you looked after sheep before? I think I've got in its anus.
No.
Yes! This is my wilding project.
- My God! - No, no, no.
This is not wilding.
That's damage.
It's like Fortnum & Masons.
It's what? My God.
What have I done? Whoa! Stay in your vehicle please.
Stay in your vehicle.
I'm pushing 60.
I've smoked three quarters of a million cigarettes.
I've had pneumonia.
If I get it Yeah, there's not a lot of hope.
Shit.
Shit, shit.
Wayne Rooney's dead.
And this is the moment.
You missed a bit.
- Where? - In the mirror.
- No, I didn't.
- You did.
- I didn't.
- You did.
All that is to come, but right now, it's time to start my first job.
The biggest, most important job of them all.
Planting wheat and barley in all the big fields like this one.
And how do you do that? No idea.
Literally, honestly, I have absolutely no clue.
All I do know is it's going to involve some tractoring.
Obviously, to do tractoring I need a tractor.
So, on day one, I set off to my local dealership.
Quite like this one.
Look, the Super Major.
There are worse names.
As I'm familiar with stuff that has four wheels and an engine, I should have been at home here, but I wasn't.
So I sought advice from the dealership's owner, Patrick Edwards.
How much is this? 7,500.
That is what we specialize in.
- You've got an engine at the front.
- Yeah.
You've got a gear box, and a back axle.
No suspension.
No fancy electronics.
There's nothing to go wrong that we can't mend.
- What horsepower has that got? - 45 horsepower.
It's a bit feeble.
Well, it fed the country.
I know but people didn't eat very much in those days.
Um What's the most power, what's that got horsepower-wise? Well, that would be about 65 horsepower.
And is that the most powerful one here? Yes, yeah.
- 65 Horse-power? - Yes.
I then took one of his restored tractors for a test drive.
It begins.
Let's open it up.
Having finished my test drive, I made a decision, and bought this.
This is a Lamborghini R8.
My God, this thing is enormous! Everything about it is just large.
Weighs ten tons.
I have 40 forwards gears, and 40 reverse gears.
And I know that little Massey Ferguson was very sweet, but come on! Okay, and here we are at the farm.
Ooh, hello.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Shit.
Right.
First up with an opinion was my girlfriend, Lisa.
That is, that's too big.
It isn't.
It isn't, the shed's too Enormous.
Little.
Here's someone who does know about farming.
It's Charlie Ireland.
Now he's my, sort of, land agent.
He knows what's needed and when it's needed.
He'll be guiding me over the coming year.
- Jeremy, hello.
- Charlie, how are you? Very well thanks.
How are you? It's quite large.
Um Come on, it's a good tractor.
It's got the wrong hitch on.
What? That's a European hitch.
What's I got it from Germany.
You may well have done.
So I can't attach anything to the back of this? Not at the moment.
But it is a big tractor.
I think it's a vast tractor up here.
Too big? Yes.
Charlie then sat me down to explain just how expensive it would be to get my crops in the ground.
So you've got a tractor.
- Yeah.
- Albeit too big.
You then need some implements to go on the back of it.
So the tractor at 40.
What else do you need? A cultivator, 20-25,000.
A new drill, probably 40-50,000.
60,000 for a sprayer.
And you haven't got a trailer.
10,000.
Blades are 62,000.
About 35,000.
Same in fertilizer.
So we're about two we're a quarter of a million.
Quarter of a million pounds.
And that's just the, you know, sort of the backbone of the equipment you want.
No, no, I'm sorry, I'm just going to say it again.
- Quarter of a million pounds.
- A quarter of a million pounds.
So we can either do it two ways.
Either get some new equipment, or we can probably do it the sensible way and get some good secondhand machinery that's lower value.
- Yeah.
- There's a couple of farm sales coming up.
Okay, so we'll go to a farm sale.
Yeah.
So, a few days later, on a beautiful Cotswolds' morning, I fired up the checkbook and went shopping.
Charlie had provided me with a list of what to buy, but it might as well have been in Arabic.
No idea what that is.
No idea.
What the hell is that? I mean, what is everything? Like a medieval funfair, this.
Hundreds of different ways of killing yourself.
There are apparently 20 times more deaths among people working in agriculture than there are in all the other sectors combined.
20 times more.
And when you see equipment like this, you can see why.
You're alone, you're in a field, you fall in there and then you're just sort of fed into your own field.
I see, right, I think I've worked this one out.
You attach it to the tractor here, and then you slip and that scrapes your arm off, and then the other one scrapes your arm into the ground.
Greetings.
Are you a farmer? No, no, I'm a forester.
Really good way of chopping your arm off in forestry.
You actually haven't got any fingers.
Unbelievable.
Have you seen this? - Works in forestry.
- Yeah.
This is a thing of beauty.
Button-back Dralon three-piece suite.
Yes.
Soon, the fields started to fill up.
And the auction buzz was building.
He's just showing off.
Look at me, still got an arm.
Amazon have said they want as much diversity in this show as we can possibly manage, and I think we're doing well because if you look, there's every different type of white 60-year-old man here.
Right, we have a great line-up of arable kit, and grassland kit.
To make sure I didn't rip myself off, Charlie had also provided a handy price guide for each bit of kit.
I need lot three here.
Good price would be six and a half.
Bad price would be 13.
Vernon C&M cultivator.
At £1,000 just to your left.
At £1,000 I'm bid.
At £1,000.
At £1,000.
Under the watchful gaze of a man who seemed to have had an argument with a threshing machine, I started bidding.
14.
16.
1800, I'm bid.
2,000 I'm bid.
Two-two.
Two-four.
At two-six.
Three-two.
At three-three.
At three-eight.
Your bid, sir.
Six-double one.
- Six double one.
Thank you.
- Thank you.
That was good.
See, we were told six and a half thousand was a good price.
We've just got that for 3950.
Yes! On we go, lot 33.
It's a Bomford double-seven hedge cutter.
2,000 I'm bid.
I did go a bit over on some of my other purchases.
- Your bid, sir.
- Dear.
So, I was told not to go above 3,600 and I've gone to 5,100.
Here we go then.
Bid's on there.
But, at the end of the sale At four-two I'm bid.
At 2006.
I had everything I needed.
Your bid, sir.
Six-eleven.
The buyer.
Having spent £82,000 on equipment, and £2 on office furniture, my next job, according to Charlie, was to go through the timetable for getting the crops in the ground.
So I've worked out a cropping plan.
And this is what we're putting in this year then.
This is what I think we should put in.
This is, we've got to get the winter barley in So the winter barley, that's all the way along here.
Well, that's got to be done now and the wheat here, - it's got to be done now.
- Yeah.
So it's 235 acres.
We've got all this to And then we've got the 200 acres of spring barley to prepare for.
So we've got to get cultivation, get spraying off, cultivations and drilling.
- In - In under two weeks.
Okay.
Yeah, the problem is if we don't drill the winter barley then, the yield will start dropping off.
We need lots of seeds in the ground to get those going, so we've got quite a lot to do.
Okay.
And then there's the biggest challenge is you've got, we've got to learn how to, you know, you've got to learn how to do it.
- Yeah, I know, but, I mean - 'Cause, you know, there's an old saying, that I've got, you know, "Well sown is half grown.
" So if the crop is planted well, then actually you're halfway there.
So the biggest risk factor is - Not planting properly.
- Not planting it properly.
Right.
And we haven't mentioned the other factor.
We all get weather.
If the weather is rubbish, we just have to sit there.
So the soil needs to be dry.
The soil needs to be, you know, in good condition.
- Lorry.
- There's a lorry arrived.
- What have we got? - We've got fertilizer - Yeah.
- Coming here.
And seed in this one.
So - So I need to - We need to move the tractor.
- Yeah.
- Then the forklift's in here.
- Yeah.
- So we'll get that going.
Should have got a smaller tractor.
I reckon these guys are gonna get itchy in a minute.
Just as I was about to get started, cheerful Charlie delivered a little bundle of government red tape.
- We've got some hay in there.
- Yeah.
So we need to move the hay, so you can't store a combustible such as hay, straw, or anything like that with fertilizer.
The two mix quite well, so you've got an oxidizing agent.
- Why not, why not? - Well because Hay doesn't spontaneously combust.
Well, it might do in the presence of fertilizer.
- Why might really? - Just we're not allowed to.
It's breaching the fertilizer industry assurance standard rules.
So the government has an opinion on what I store my fertilizer next to? In fairness, it's quite a sensible one.
Within our working week, we've got to build in, you know, the regulations and rules that we have to comply by.
Some of those rules are a little bit challenging but, you know, they're there for a reason.
Farming's a patient game, and given that he's, you know, not the world's most patient man Fucking useless.
You know, that will be a real test.
Up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up.
Fuck's sake.
Eventually, the hay, and everything else that might suddenly explode, was taken out of the shed.
And much to the relief of the delivery drivers, I could finally start unloading.
Look at this.
Look at this.
Ha-ha.
Backwards.
Excellent.
Cheers, mate.
That's brilliant.
Do you want to pull forwards so I can get the seed off? There's, 46 more bags on here for you.
What? Yeah.
It's all for you.
All the way back.
You're kidding! This is all for you.
I know, he just said.
Despite a couple of small accidents Shit.
I had all the fertilizer and the seed unloaded in just five hours.
- This was it? - Yeah.
One of those, and one of those.
- Sixteen and a half tons.
- That's right.
There you go, and many thanks for your patience.
- No problem.
- It was my first day, so I wasn't quite as quick as I perhaps will be one day.
Now, I had the seed and fertilizer, I was finally ready to start farming.
And with Charlie's tight timetable looming over me, I had to learn my way around the equipment quickly.
So once the correct hitch had been fitted to the tractor, I sprang into action.
I assumed the answer to the question of how I join everything together lay in the cab.
However Three buttons there.
I don't know what they do.
No, no, don't know.
No.
No.
Buttons here, don't know.
No.
And then God, look.
There was only one thing for it.
Call my local branch of the National Farmers' Union and ask for help.
No, that would be prefect.
Thanks.
That's good.
My union representative's coming over to give me some help.
I'll go and light the brazier.
Instead of Arthur Scargill, however they sent Georgia Craig.
I'll be honest, I'm not the most practical man.
- Are you good with tractors? - Yeah.
But this is the only tractor you've got? - Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Okay.
- Well, what's wrong with it? It's just a bit it's quite big for what you've got.
Everyone keeps saying it's too everyone says it's too big.
- What made you choose it? - It's a Lamborghini.
- I'll get it done more quickly.
- Right, okay.
So what's the problem? Honestly, truthfully, I don't really know how the tractor works.
I can drive it but I can't operate it.
- But it's got three gear levers.
- Yeah.
Two brake pedals and 8,000 buttons.
- Okay.
- Some of which are in German.
Okey-doke.
Lesson one was learning how to attach the tractor to something called a cultivator.
That's it.
Hold it there.
Who put a door catch there? It's the last time I'm coming out of there forwards.
The first thing I've noticed is that pin is down, so you want to have both pins up.
Can I go in there? I would turn the engine off, and then pull the pin up, - to be safe, as it's your first time.
- Back up the ladder? Yeah.
- Right.
- Right so Pull that pin up.
So what we're gonna do is, lift the link arms up.
- Right, so I start the engine? - Yeah.
Back up the ladder.
Don't do that.
Sit in it.
- Right.
- No, can I kick that one? It's just slight look.
No.
no, no.
Don't kick it.
Do it inside.
Back up the ladder.
That's it.
Hold it there.
Can I operate it from in here and see if that works? No, because they might come flying up.
For Christ's sake.
Okay, so you're nearly on.
You just need to come back a tiny little bit and then they'll go on.
Yeah, but it's literally a millimeter.
Yeah.
You only need a little bit.
Back up the ladder again.
Fucking hell.
That's it.
Right.
Turn the engine off and then we'll do it from out here.
I'm going to operate it from in here.
I don't care what she says.
Ha, ha! No.
Shit.
Yes! I did it.
I just couldn't be bothered to come down the ladder again.
With the cultivator attached, we headed out to a nearby field so Georgia could teach me how to use it, and what it did.
The idea is that we're just loosening the top, the sort of friable surface of the soil.
So we loosen it up now, jiggle it up a bit.
- Yeah.
- So when we put the seeds in - using the driller - Yeah.
- They're into good, loosened-up soil.
- Yeah.
And so began my first driving lesson for 42 years.
- First gear? - Yeah.
- Low? - Yeah.
Let's farm.
Look at that, I'm farming.
I'm doing it! Look at the difference already.
You can see where you've cultivated.
Right, let's go a little bit faster 'cause we always want to get that soil to bubble up.
Speed up a bit.
And that soil is, like, boiling, isn't it? Like a soil boil.
It's amazing.
So before you turn, lift up, then we're gonna do a three-point turn.
Lifting.
Little turn.
Going down.
Do you like cruising in your Lambo? Come on, it's a pretty good tractor.
Too big.
Isn't too big.
It is.
I was very much enjoying farming, so I decided to pull over and enjoy it some more with a ploughman's.
- What cheese is this? - Cheddar.
Do you want some piccalilli? I think you're ready to go on your own.
Cultivating.
Really? Yeah, 'cause you'll get your own feel for it.
Flying solo on day one.
I'm actually doing farming.
- Which is what I - That's what you wanted to do.
I've never I know.
And Howard, the previous farmer, said I'm jacking it in and I just thought I'll do it.
And everybody said you're stupid, you're literally that's the stupidest thing ever.
You'll never be able to do it.
- And now you are.
- I'm actually doing farming.
Look at that now.
That's beautiful, isn't it? Perfect.
I like that tractor.
I like that tractor.
I shouldn't have been mean about it to start with.
- No.
- I was probably just jealous.
The next morning, I was up early.
Excited about going solo.
This is not a bad commute, you know, this isn't.
Forging a path through the dew on a beautiful, beautiful autumn morning.
Look at that view.
Lower cultivator.
Cultivator lowered.
Farming happening.
Look at my seagulls.
There are thousands of 'em.
Ha.
I wonder if seagulls can hear tractors from 70 miles away.
They must be able to.
It was a wonderful happy day.
Third gear.
Nice.
In fact, the only irritation was having to faff about turning round at the end of every run.
So I came up with a better idea.
Right, here's my plan, it's a good one.
I'm not gonna one of those three point turns, then come back alongside the bit I've just done.
I'm gonna do a series of U-turns like that, and then come back on the bits I haven't done and it'll all fit together.
All right, ready? Up she comes.
Go on full lock.
And then drop it back down.
Yeah.
I just have to stay parallel with that bit I've already done over there and then I'll, yes.
Sadly, though, this turned out to be harder than I thought.
God, I've not done this right.
Yeah, look what I've done.
I've made a mess.
I'm gonna have to come up it again.
Jeremy Clarkson, he can't even drive in a straight line.
There's a bit over there as well.
Jesus wept.
I was wasting a lot of fuel doing unnecessary runs, and time.
Time which I couldn't afford.
I had to get this field done, and all the others.
That's 435 acres in less than 14 days.
And all I'd managed to do on the first day was ten acres.
Now I've made a total Horlicks of this.
I realized that I needed help.
- Kaleb, nice to meet you.
- How are you So I called Kaleb Cooper.
The tractor driver who'd worked for the previous farmer.
I'm in a muddle.
I'm in a proper, proper muddle because, well, I mean you've farmed this farm, haven't you for Yeah, I've farmed this farm for three years.
- Three years is it? - Yeah.
Well I've been nearly 24 hours and all I've managed to do is cultivate ten acres of, is that Bury Hill South? Ten acres? And some of it went a bit wrong.
Um When you've done it in the past, how long did it take to cultivate? So that would probably take me a good week, but that's long hours to do the whole farm.
Never mind long hours, but a week? Yeah.
A week.
And that was just the cultivating.
We'd then have to plant the seeds using something called a drill.
And how long would that take? A bit longer because, A what drill have you got? A a red one.
A red one? It's colored red.
It's re or is it orange? It's reddy-orange.
Reddy orange? So what else do you do apart from this? So I've got my own contracting business on the side, Kaleb Cooper Contracting Services.
I've also got a 1.
5-ton digger.
I do general digger work, such as burying pipes, water pipes, digging footings.
So you're quite practical.
- Yeah.
I've also - Animals? I've also got 50 head of sheep.
I normally try and do five pigs a year to fatten up for sausages, pork chops.
I've also got about 120 chickens at the minute on the farm.
I sell the eggs locally.
How old are you? I'm 21.
- What? - This year.
21.
You're making me feel pathetic.
I'm 59.
I haven't done any of that.
So what's your plan? So we've got This has been drawn up by Charlie Ireland.
- Yeah.
- We've got winter wheat in Bury Hill South and - Yes.
- Do you know what that one's called? Laus.
You do.
What's this one called then? Near Brossola.
- Yeah.
This one.
- Deadman.
- Do you know the names of all the fields? - Yeah, I know the names of all the fields.
Heredrone, coming down is Downs Ground.
Coming down after that is Big Ground, coming after that is Banks, and then Spittaway, Taylor's.
Down on the road here is Near Bossola.
Far Brossola.
How do you know this? Well I spent three years in each field spraying, drilling, cultivating.
- You're a local man then? - Yeah.
Chippy born and bred.
- Chipping Norton School? - Never left the place.
You've never left it? - No.
- Been to London? No.
Once on an art trip.
I stayed in the coach.
- Didn't like it.
- What you Too many people.
Banbury? Banbury at a push.
That's if I need something desperately.
But otherwise you're happy, Chipping Norton.
Chippy Norton, Chadlington, Heythrop.
That's pretty much, yeah, that's me.
You sound like just the saving grace.
It's almost as though God himself has beamed you down.
Good.
Let's go see the tractor.
Wow.
Lamborghini! I know.
With Kaleb and I operating in shifts, the pace picked up.
And it needed to because, as Charlie kept reminding me, time was money.
If I can get all my winter barley planted by October the 7th, I can expect next year a yield of around about three and a half tons an acre.
But if it rains, or the tractor breaks down and I'm late, even by so much as a few days, that yield would drop to perhaps two tons an acre.
Ton and a half down per acre, and each ton is £120.
So over a hundred acres, I'd be losing £18,000.
Kaleb reckoned however, that if we kept up this pace, we could have all 435 acres planted by the deadline of October the 7th.
Bottom field is complete.
Yes, you mighty tractor.
However, just three days into our labors When the rain did eventually slacken 48 frustrating hours later, I ventured out again.
But I didn't get far.
Right.
The bolt has come out of there and that bolt's come out and turned the other way round, which means these discs aren't turning, which means, look, I'm just creating a little mud mountain.
Fucking hell.
Come on.
That's just jammed.
- Good.
- Got the new bolt? Right, so the leg's done.
That's done, that's so this is working again now.
Yeah, it's all back up together.
But it's raining.
The roller on the back here will pack up with mud and then you'd just be skimming on the top and hard work to get it unblocked.
Of the 400 acres we needed to tackle, we'd only managed 150.
Right, well that's alarming because I now have I've got nine days.
I've got nine days to do all those fields down there, and that means I've got to cultivate them, and drill it, and I've got nine days and the weather forecast says it's going to be raining for the next seven of them.
Why don't farmers all have coronaries? As predicted, the rain continued to fall for the rest of the week.
But eventually the sun did come out.
So, finally, we can start cultivating again.
Map of where I'm going.
Not going.
Why am I not moving? Come on.
I've got no drive.
Right.
What have I forgotten? Let's have a look.
What's going on? All in fucking German.
Got no book with that, have we? It's all right.
Google translate.
Page not found.
Is there anyone we can call? I'm trying to find our dealer, the nearest one, to call them.
- Hello.
- Hi, Peter.
Hello.
Hi, it's Jeremy Clarkson over in Chipping Norton.
Starts, put it in gear and then let the clutch in and I would start with your brake fluid reservoir so it's either low or having a hissy fit with the level sensor.
Right, reservoirs.
This is now Italian.
Now, wait, wait, wait.
Good news, this is in French.
Never been to France.
That can't be brakes.
No, that's all to do with the hydraulics on this.
No.
We need a book, don't we? Yes, but we haven't got one.
I mean I've got thousands of books, have you got a book? No.
- Any books? - No.
- Have you not got a book? - No.
I've got hundreds and hundreds of books but Yeah, but how do you read hundreds and hundreds of books? - What? - How do you read them all? If you've got hundreds of them, you can't read all of them surely? - Yes, no, I've read thousands of books.
- I don't do that.
Have you had a haircut? Yeah, I have.
Trying 'em all.
- What? - I'm trying all different haircuts.
- Why? - Until I get older, you know, 'cause I'm going to lose all my hair.
- Are you? - The next thing I'm gonna perm it.
Good luck with that.
How many hairstyles have you had? Went from long, top and side, top, about five in the last, what, probably Have you had a Phil Oakey? What's that? Human League.
Long on one side, short on the other.
No, no, not about that.
- Okay.
Anyway, could we just get back - Yeah.
Can we just stop talking about your hairdressing? - You brought it up! - Concentrate I just wanted to know 'cause I was making conversation - while you found the brake reservoir.
- Why? Fucking buy a tractor in the UK, not in Germany, you'd be all right.
Despite much ferreting, we couldn't find the source of the problem.
Fuck! Right.
That's it.
- Cup of tea then.
- Yet another day of no farming.
Yeah.
We could grease up.
Don't look at me like that.
You mean grease all the nipples.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Grease the nipples.
Right.
We've got an hour, we can grease nipples.
The following day, mercifully, we were able to get back to work.
I am slightly embarrassed this morning because the tractor wasn't actually broken.
There's a lever down here which had got knocked somehow into neutral, which is why it wouldn't set off, and that means I lost an entire afternoon's farming because this tractor is complicated.
As a result of everything, there was now no hope of hitting Charlie's deadlines.
We were miles behind with the cultivating, and we hadn't even started planting the seeds.
The situation now, I'd call it desperate.
Please don't rain.
Please don't rain.
And back at base, an even bigger issue was developing.
Shit, that is a really big problem isn't it? Yeah.
See what's happened is, it's the bag of seed.
We've had it for such a long time now, not being able to get it in the ground because of the rain, which has been going underneath the well, the wall of the barn and the seed has actually started to grow in the bag so you can't feed that into the drill, can we? No.
If you look underneath, it's just a carpet of roots.
Fuck.
We needed to get the remaining seeds in the ground as quickly as possible.
Right, ho! Even if that meant planting them in fields that hadn't been cultivated.
First, though, I had to get to grips with the fearsomely complicated seed drill, which turned out to be neither red nor orange.
So as we go along, there are nine of these on the - Yeah.
- That splits, it creates a little mound.
- That's it, yeah.
Creates - And then the seed comes down here, two seeds, one goes to the left-hand side.
- That's it.
- And one goes to the right, and it's planted - Like that.
- A couple of inches down.
Yeah, apart, yeah.
- It's machine gunning the ground.
- Yeah.
With goodness and nutrients.
A lot to take in, so are you listening? Are you ready? - Yeah.
- Yeah? Main menu.
Yeah.
Rate.
Yeah, so our rate, we're going on at 220 per kg per hectare.
This is your fan speed, all right.
So in a minute when I turn the fan on, that's gonna come with a number.
You want it running about 4,000.
This is your tram.
So every eighth time you pick it up, it's going to put a tram line in.
So we're off the tram line.
- What do you mean, off the tram line? - We're starting a field.
From the last field, we're set at eight, so this field - Eight what? - Eighth tram line.
- So what that means - Kaleb, I've lost complete I don't know what you were doing 30 seconds ago.
- All right.
- I reckon you could drop a cruise missile on Damascus more easily than you could get that drill to plant some seeds along there.
After baffling me for a bit longer, Kaleb and I switched seats and we got cracking.
Here we go, and drilling.
Drilling an uncultivated field like this would mean less yield and, therefore, less profit at the end of the year.
But, for complicated reasons to do with carbon in the soil, it is kinder to the environment.
Greta Thunberg likes this.
Yeah.
I don't know who that is, but yeah.
Keep going, keep going, keep going.
Got to be dead straight because when they start growing, you're going to have lines like this if you're not careful.
And people driving up and down the main road will see it and think Exactly.
I'm gonna have a big sign at the end saying: "Kaleb did this.
" Whoa.
You missed a bit.
- Where? - In the mirror.
- No, I didn't.
- You did.
They're not gonna see that from the main road, are they? Most probably.
Everyone will pick up on everything.
Guaranteed.
If you make a cock-up in the middle of nowhere, someone's gonna see it.
They'll go into the pub and go, "Did you see that bit he missed over in coordinates of this, this, this?" They will, they'll get the coordinates of that place and they'll tell everyone.
I do it.
Once he thought I'd got the hang of it, Kaleb went off to look after his own farming stuff, leaving me all alone.
I'm solo, solo drilling.
So Jeremy's out drilling, which is actually one of the most complicated parts of getting crops established.
So what he's doing is going up and down the field, so the seed is being planted in rows behind the seed drill.
And then the drill will shut off.
It will leave two un-drilled sections which are called tram lines.
We use those tram lines as a guide so that when the sprayer goes up between them, we're putting on the right amount of spray, putting on the right amount of fertilizer and hence it's all mathematically laid out so it's a pretty critical part of the operation.
Shit.
Wrong button.
That's the problem.
There it is and there we are.
A lot more complicated than cultivating, this is.
A lot more.
Soon I wanted to sit in the sun having another picnic, but I was beginning to understand that in farming you really do have to make hay while the sun shines.
How many more ups and downs have I got to do in this field, and will I get it done before the sunset? What have we got? One, two about 30 more, perhaps.
Yeah.
If I've got to do 30 more ups and downs, but it's now quarter to five, I'm gonna be doing this with my headlights on.
In order to speed things up I, once again, decided to replace the annoying three point turns with my much faster sweeping manoeuvre.
And here we go.
Yes, look at that.
It's just me and my drill and my Lamborghini.
Dropping, and seeding.
What a beautiful evening, in the Cotswolds.
However, when Kaleb came back, the evening mood took a bit of a downturn.
What have you been doing? What? What do you mean? What have you been doing? Going up and down.
Going up and down like this? No.
I went up and then went across like that.
What did I say at the start? You said don't do that but I couldn't see why.
That sign of me going up there is not happening.
We're gonna have a sign saying, "Guess who drilled this? Jeremy, Kaleb?" Well, what's the matter with that? I said every eighth time you're putting a tram line in.
Your tram lines are gonna be everywhere.
Down here you're gonna have tram line, tram line, tram line, tram line, every three meters.
On this bit here, you're gonna have no tram lines.
When I come to spray it and fertilize it, how do I know where to drive? Guess.
I don't know.
I don't know what I'm doing in there.
I'll do it properly now or is it too late? It's too late.
You're pretty much screwed.
And you haven't even drilled it straight.
What do you mean I haven't drilled it straight? That's as straight as a roundabout.
Well it's 'cause it started off bent there by the hedge so it's still bent here.
It wasn't that bent though, was it? I didn't know about the eighth thing, you didn't say you must do that because if you don't I did tell you that.
I couldn't understand what you were on about.
It was country speak.
Everyone is gonna see this.
That's a main road there.
Yes, I know, but I've learned my lesson now and I won't do it again.
Have you not seen TV episodes on stuff like that, on people drilling, he's going up and down.
No.
no, I didn't watch that.
I'll buy you a drink later and you'll feel better.
I'm in so much trouble.
The next day, there was even more trouble.
Most of the oilseed rape fields planted earlier by the previous farmer were fine.
So we've got nice rows of rape, which has come up really well.
Yeah.
But in one Why isn't it growing? The flea beetle got hold of it, so - What? - Whereas the further up there I'm sorry, this has been planted? This has been planted.
- Where's the rape gone? - Well, it's failed.
It's gone.
We might find the odd plant in the middle, but I'll show you what's happened.
The whole field's failed? Yeah.
Just the little black beetle have come in and they've just foraged it.
- The whole bloody lot? - Yeah.
All four hectares.
Ten acres of it.
You know, there comes a point that, you know There is no There's I just Because of a beetle? Yeah.
Well, why can't we kill it? Well, neonicotinoids are you know, the seed coatings were banned in Europe.
- What, so we can't use them? - We can't use them.
I mean this is What's the typical yield? So there's about 12 tons, so there's about £4,000 worth of loss.
- £4,000 just gone because of the beetle.
- Just gone, yeah.
And the EU won't let me kill the beetle.
Well, you know, we've just got to work within the rules.
We are working within the rules and an entire field is dead.
Yeah.
I figured, as I climbed back on my tractor, that things couldn't get any worse, but I was wrong.
Very wrong.
The next day it started to rain again, and this time it didn't really stop for the next six weeks.
Across the country, warnings remain in place for severe weather.
Risk of flooding, risk of transport disruption.
Torrential rain, a month's worth in a day.
The Wye here at its highest level since records began, clearly unprecedented.
The Met office says "presents a danger to life.
" has caused havoc not seen for almost a century.
For British farmers, the autumn of 2019 was Armageddon.
My farm is 700 feet above sea level, and the brashy soil drains well, but even it had become a quagmire.
And planting seeds in ground like this is impossible.
I used to while away my evening hours reading car magazines, but not anymore.
Nowadays it's Farmer's Weekly and it's Farmer's Guardian and all they're talking about is the rain.
The unbelievable levels of rain that we've been having.
Look, "Deluge Disaster," "Biblical," and inside that's the only topic of conversation as far as I can work out.
That's all there is, just rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain.
"Farms sacrificed to protect homes from rising floodwater.
" "Worst autumn leaves winter crops un-drilled.
" This poor guy hasn't planted a single thing, can't plant anything, it's too wet.
Look at that poor sod.
Look at that for a farm.
What's he gonna do? Everyone is saying to me you couldn't have picked a worse year to start farming.
You couldn't.
This is unbelievable weather.
Unbelievable.
God.
You So have you looked after sheep before? No.
Here they come.
No, no, no, no, no, no.