Jeremy Clarkson opens the gate to Diddly Squat, his Cotswolds farm

From The Weekend Australian magazine

June 12, 2021

June 12, 2021

9 minute examine

all over the centuries wherein sheep have occupied the geographical region, man has rounded them up by average strategies. The farmer enters the field with his dog and the sheep run to corner. The farmer whistles and the dog herds the sheep to where they're mandatory. It's always been completed like this and sheep have every right to predict it at all times could be. So when Jeremy Clarkson arrived of their container with a far flung-manage drone that made barking noises, who could blame them for ­scattering in all directions?

Flying the drone low, Clarkson chased them across the field towards the farm gate. For a long time the test appeared to be working and he imagined being able to sit indoors, out of the cold and wet, rounding up sheep in the manner that operators of Predator drones patrol the skies of Afghanistan from Nevada.

at once the animals realised that, in contrast to a sheepdog, the drone had no tooth. once they received used to the noise of the rotors they resumed munching without so a lot as a skywards glance. "They had been fully unfazed," says Clarkson. "They simply not noted it." No amount of dive-bombing or digital yapping from the airborne sheepdog would bother them. "They simply checked out me with gum-chewing insolence as if to assert, 'Why is that idiot flying that drone?'" It was one among many experiments Clarkson has tried so as to flip a loss-making farm right into a going issue.

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For more than three years he has worked the land in Oxfordshire, attempting to balance the books on a farm he renamed Diddly Squat as a result of "that's how a whole lot funds it makes". He has ploughed, sown and harvested in what he concedes isn't richly fertile soil. He has reared cattle and gathered eggs from free-range hens. He has planted cowl to attract video game birds and created ponds to breed fish. He has constructed a farm shop and a bottling plant for spring water.

things haven't gone to plot. some of his crops died from fungal disorder and insect infestations. He turned into informed his farm shop breached planning and Covid laws. His bottling plant grew to be contaminated. When pubs closed during lockdown, brewers stopped purchasing his barley. hundreds of trout he hoped to sell to restaurants had been eaten from his newly dug lake "via otters or cormorants or herons – or all three". He changed into chased through bees.

When he tried to clear woodland, his chainsaws jammed in the tree trunks ("At a tough wager I'd say that 20 per cent of the trees in my woods have chainsaws stuck in them"). He bought a brand new tractor – a Lamborghini – and managed to drive it "into six gates, a hedge, a telegraph pole, an additional tractor and a shipping container. I suppose I'm correct in asserting I have not completed a single job with out at least one crash." All of that while being squeezed via rising charges and weak food prices. as an instance the problems, on the day I visited a fox obtained into his henhouse and killed his 36 prize egg-layers.

The sheep have led to the most crisis. He all started with seventy five, together with two rams named Wayne Rooney and Leonardo DiCaprio, and the flock now has one hundred thirty lambs. He compares them to delinquent young adults; they broke via an electric fence right into a neighbour's field, so he changed it with wire mesh – and that they received tangled in that. When he tried final yr to shear the ewes, they put up this kind of combat "it become like attempting to turn Jean-Claude van Damme upside all the way down to cut off his mullet". He needed to herald professional shearers, who charged him £1.forty five [$2.66] per sheep. The wool offered for under 30p [55c] per fleece. "That's why the farm is known as Diddly Squat," he sighs.

once we sit down down in the sunshine backyard his barn he's wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt – "the only clean one I may discover". Ideally he'd like one that says "a foul day on the farm is improved than a superb day at the workplace". Even with all of the problems, he doesn't remorseful about relocating right here from London. "i love it for the stolen moments. summer season evenings on a tractor. Leaning on a fence looking on the lambs. within the first lockdown I'd open a bottle of rosé before mattress and take a seat listening to the wood pigeons. God, they have been awesome days."

He has divided the land beneath cultivation between usual staples – wheat, barley and oilseed rape. The biggest area – about 80ha out of 400 – is given over to wild meadows that run in strips through the middle of fields; they attract friendly bugs, and agricultural subsidies. He does his highest quality for conservation. "I planted turtle dove combine across the region because turtle doves are on the verge of extinction. There's a rare fowl harrier in a single of my owl containers. and i've acquired a superb grey shrike. it will probably now not sound much in world phrases but all i will do is take care of the postage stamp I've got here." When botanists visited they discovered the wild patches in his fields had been "chock-crammed with kidney vetch, green-winged orchids, yellow rattle and a number of other issues that sound as in the event that they've escaped from a Victorian book of ailments". He has created a wetland area for wildfowl and marsh flora (he might also also unlock a few alligators to cope with unwanted ramblers, he jests).

Following government assistance to farmers to diversify and count much less on handouts, he built the farm store. He proudly suggests me the fridge loaded with native cheeses and the cabinets groaning beneath the load of apple juice, honey, piccalillis and preserves with names like wintry weather Morning Ginger Marmalade. He sends wheat to a miller and makes use of the flour to bake and sell bread. There's a self-­service milk laptop and branded merchandise, together with hats and aprons embroidered with ­Diddly Squat. He has simply restocked after a bumper weekend through which he "bought out of every thing".

"That's the aspect about selling seasonal products on a small scale – it's inconvenient for the client. I make a brand new batch of honey and it sells in two hours. as soon as I've picked the rhubarb there's no possibility of a suitable-up. i used to be left with numerous chard as a result of individuals didn't know what it was, so I called it spinach and it flew off the cabinets."

he'll ought to close the store for two months to replace the metal roof with a slate one on account of a council decree he describes as "pettiness on an industrial scale". "That's adequate, notwithstanding. It makes excellent sense to shut down the business and lay off the individuals we employ."

After complaints from "a handful of sad locals" stopped him selling teas and coffees, he started a company' book to prove that almost all consumers are from a ways afield and don't seem to be being lured far from local shops. removed from stealing company, he's growing jobs, he says. He has employed contractors to dig ditches, repair farm buildings and rebuild walls. "We put 20 new hives in closing 12 months to make honey. Viktor the Ukrainian bee man is spectacular."

As you force south from the Oxfordshire ­markettown of Chipping Norton and climb to higher floor, the horizon opens as much as show far-achieving views of the Cotswolds. in the early days he shuttled between his farm right here and a penthouse flat in Kensington, west London. Then sooner or later he flew again to Heathrow from a holiday in Africa, drove out of the airport and needed to make a decision whether to show left to the Cotswolds or appropriate to London. He grew to become left and didn't look again. Now he devotes the time he might once have spent analyzing automobile magazines to Farmers Weekly.

London friends expected the thrill of metropolis lifestyles would soon draw him again, but it's convenient to see why he fell in love with this enviornment of relatively villages and rolling hills. Even earlier than #WFH become coined he became working from home. "All I have to do everyday is pull on a pair of denims and step out the door."

greater currently the work has come to him. Amazon leading commissioned an eight-part collection called Clarkson's Farm. The conception was to lay naked the realities of existence on the land, as different from the bucolic most excellent. The certainty is that the every day grind is often repetitive and bleak. He's embarrassed that his efforts have every now and then been so shambolic. "I've completed different indicates the place we've messed up for comedic effect. however this time I've in reality tried."

He vowed at first of filming he would keep away from the variety of sentimentality typified with the aid of ­bottle-feeding lambs, however he ended up bonding with the animals. He nurses a unwell lamb and learns a way to be a midwife to pregnant ewes ("the entire manner is particularly sweet and totally revolting simultaneously"). At one factor a gruff farmhand advises him to cull three ewes and he seems really upset. The digicam follows him as he drives the sheep off on their ultimate experience. "I don't understand what to claim about this mission this morning," he says. "I'm a sheep farmer and here's what sheep farmers do." He comes away with tears in his eyes. "here is a ­powerful advertisement for vegetarianism," he says later, even though he's no longer persuaded and publicizes his own mutton "scrumptious" after sampling it.

It's viable, he admits, that he's in love with a vanishing concept of farming – and can himself be an endangered species. Farmers are ruled through rules invented to thrill environmental lobbyists, he fumes. His pet hate is unique produce flown in to fulfill contemporary tastes. "in case you're trying to head for a 0-carbon nation, why fly avocados in from Peru?" a lot of what's imported may also be grown here, he argues. "Why take a seat on perfectly serviceable land and convey food in from New Zealand?" To show a point he recently planted durum wheat, a kind grown in the south of France. It prospers within the drier conditions that Britain now experiences. "If that's what we are going to have within the UK in the future, that's what we'll ought to grow."

If all this appears like Clarkson the local weather convert, there are nonetheless flashes of the petrolhead of ancient. Farming has allowed him to indulge his love of machines, such because the barking drone. He spends hours shopping the vigour tools in his native farm machine shop. He can't accept as true with he's managed to get in the course of the previous six many years devoid of possessing a telehandler, a heavy-lifting farm vehicle. He has a group of off-street motors that may be straight out of Thunderbirds. He makes use of a mechanical mole to put his personal water pipes and plans to get a flamethrower to take care of weeds.

The geographical region creed of make-do-and-mend appeals to his Yorkshire parsimony. however for all this, he nevertheless feels like an impostor subsequent to native ­countryfolk, even after three years.

On the hillside near his cottage he's constructing a celeb-sized house that may well be the ultimate one he ever lives in. It's made from Cotswold stone hung on a metal body, a construction method that makes it possible for rooms to be larger. It sounds hi-tech however inner it's a throwback to the times before digital home equipment. He's installing an Aga and a coal-fired range. "I managed to discover one from an historic Yorkshire mining condo," he says. He's repurposing his loss-making wool as loft insulation.

Does he omit anything else from his pre-farming days? He would like to have shown the farm to AA Gill, a chum and fellow columnist, he says eventually. Gill died 5 years ago from cancer, aged sixty two. Clarkson is silent for a moment, then his mobilephone buzzes with a message marked "urgent". It's the organisers of a approaching junket to promote the Amazon leading demonstrate. They want his signal-off for the catering preparations. He appears at the message with a pained expression. "'The particular person lunch packing containers may be Covid-compliant and eco-pleasant with bamboo cutlery,'" he reads aloud. He shakes his fist on the cell. "I don't need quinoa or hummus or avocados. The exhibit is ready ordinary farming. I need pork pies, Scotch eggs and pork sandwiches, with appropriate cutlery. Served from the back of a bloody latitude Rover."

Clarkson's Farm is on Amazon major Video

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