Original subtitles

Here we go.

No, cows, don't do that!

Get back, get back!

Do you understand?

Get back.

I'm on my own, here.

Morning, pigs.

Stop!

I want to make it absolutely plain

that I'm absolutely thrilled to bits for Kaleb.

I'm not a socialist.

I want him to do well, I want him to make money,

I want him, one day, to be able to buy his own farm.

But...

he has left me just a little bit in the lurch.

Good evening, Coventry!

Please give a huge agricultural welcome

to the farmer on tour.

All the way from Chipping Norton,

Kaleb Cooper!

Stop, no! Get off.

Welcome back to Clarkson's Farm,

where things have gone a bit topsy-turvy.

How are you doing, mate? You all right?

- There we go. - There we go. Pleasure.

Kaleb is now in the spotlight.

There we go, look.

And I'm in the winter.

Outside, on the farm...

Doing all the jobs,

on my own.

Come on, rise and shine. If I can get up, you can.

Come on.

Yeah, I know it's raining. Come on.

Please, come on. Please. It's freezing cold and soaking wet.

Come on!

Come on, out!

They say that one man

should be able to run

anything up to a thousand-acre farm on his own, and that's probably true,

if the man is competent and practical.

It's also probably true if the farm is arable.

But this is mixed. I've got all the crops.

And I've got pigs,

and cows,

and sheep,

and goats,

and the hens.

Egg.

Good.

Yes, I'm shovelling shit.

What's this?

Two and half tons of wild bird feed.

Why have... Why is it...

Charlie Ireland here.

Sorry, I can't get to the phone right now, but I'll call you back.

Here we go, goats.

Ah, ah, ah!

No, fuck! One's escaped!

Two's escaped.

For fuck's sake.

Back, otherwise you're gonna be in an Indian restaurant.

Ah, ah, ah!

And sadly, Lisa wasn't around to share the workload

because she was away on one of her thin blonde Oxfordshire women projects,

learning how to make scent.

So you've got your top notes,

like oranges, like the bergamot, like the lemons.

And the middles are like the roses, the jasmins, the lavenders.

And then, you've got your patchouli, you've got your...

You've got your musks, which are much deeper...

Come on, pigs!

Oh no! Oh, God, no!

Oh, shit. Fuck.

Fuck.

Fucking hell.

Oh, God.

♪ They've got 20 acres ♪

♪ And you've got 43 ♪

♪ Now I've got a brand-new combine harvester ♪

♪ And I'll give you the key ♪

♪ Come on now, let's get together in perfect harmony ♪

♪ I've got 20 acres and you've got 43... ♪

No.

Shit.

And there is my quest,

clearing away Kaleb's soggy hay.

Up you come.

Oh, shit...

No!

For fuck's sake.

Bollocks.

Hi, Charlie.

Yeah. I was just wondering why we've got five bags of wild bird seed.

Ah! Erm...

We've got to do some supplementary feeding

under the Countryside Stewardship Scheme.

- So... - What? Feeding the birds?

Yeah.

What do I put it into to make it bird feed?

Hello?

Hello?

- Hello, can you hear me? - Yeah?

Not really...

So, the rest of the day, I've got to muck out the cows,

and in a little bit time,

I've got to collect more eggs.

And feed the goats, and feed the pigs again.

And then...

Guess what I'm doing.

I'm gonna feed the pigs, feed the goats, collect the eggs.

And on top of all the animal husbandry,

we were now getting to that time of year

when I'd have to start thinking about planting the crops.

- This is winter wheat. - Yeah.

- The durum wheat needs doing. - Yeah.

- Spring barley, that needs doing. - Spring barley.

And it wasn't just the wheat and barley that needed sorting,

because the government had just announced all the exciting new schemes

that would replace the old EU subsidies.

And as Charlie explained,

this meant I'd have to plant new crops

whose names were a blizzard of Whitehall gobbledygook.

This,

which is all the land around the farm shop...

Yeah.

Is Herbal Ley SAM3.

- Which sounds like a missile. - Correct.

What's a herbal ley?

- A herbal ley is a GS4. - What?

Herbal ley is GS4.

- The sustainable farming incentive. - That's the SFI.

- Yes. - That covers the GS4.

That covers... No. That...

The SFI has a code of SAM3 for the herbal ley,

but Countryside Stewardship, which is another scheme...

- That's CSS HT. - Yes, the higher tier,

which covers this.

So... But I'm planting...

It's a SAM3, but it's also a GS4.

And it's a herbal ley.

It is a herbal ley.

How many fucking meetings have Defra had to come up with this?

The bottom line was that the government would give me money

so long as I didn't grow food,

only stuff that would make the soil healthier.

So, herbal ley is a mix of three kinda key different species.

You've got grasses, herbs and some legumes.

The point is, they all root at different depths.

They create a different sort of soil.

- This is "soil action", hence SAM. - It makes the soil better.

Yeah. Invest in the soil,

take it out of the rotation for a couple of years...

- Yeah. - And then you can also graze it.

I was about to say, we can put sheep and cows on it?

- Yeah. - So they get free food.

- Yeah. - And the government guarantees

- £160 an acre. - Correct.

And there was more good news,

because the government had also upped the amount they were paying me

to look after my wildflower meadows.

So they were giving us £100.

Pretty much. Just under £100 an acre, and now,

you're gonna get £240 an acre.

Bloody hell!

They're paying you properly now for the environmental value of those.

There's loads of stats about the reduction in area

of what are proper wildflower meadows.

Is it 80%?

In the last 100 years, 80% of Britain's wild...

99%.

But we have had two wars in that time, proper wars,

where...

"Korea wasn't a proper war.

Argentina wasn't a proper war.

Not until you're fighting Jerry are you having a proper war."

Erm...

That's exactly what I didn't mean.

Now, this is, I must be honest, from my point of view, good news,

'cause this takes all the risk out of farming.

Weather can do what it likes,

there can be a war and it won't make any difference.

We know how much we're going to earn, which is brilliant.

But here's the thing,

because Kaleb is presently in York, I believe,

- on his tour... - Mm-hmm.

I've got to drill this.

- Yes, you've got to get on and drill it. - I've got to drill it.

So, the next morning...

Right...

After getting up in the dark to feed all the animals...

Here you go, cow.

I loaded the hopper

with the GS4 SAM3 SFI herbal ley

and set off.

Good to be back doing tractoring.

But I do feel a bit like the pilot's out

for their first ever solo flight.

They have an engine failure,

they radio the tower, and there's always an instructor there

who can talk them in.

I don't have an instructor in the tower today.

It's just me.

But as a bonus,

I'd no longer have to deal with my most hated tractoring issue,

the stupid and useless scratch marker.

Absolutely no idea, here.

Simply not visible.

Because I'd come up with a new invention.

I'm so happy about this.

It's a water-based paint, so it's not gonna harm the earth.

Thicken it up with flour.

Gordon Ramsay would call that lumpy.

And I'd have to agree with him, but...

Here we go.

Look at that. Look at it!

It's already started to come out.

Can you see it just dribbling out gently, exactly as I planned?

The paint will dribble down over the brush.

The brush will then distribute that paint onto the tyre,

which will leave a mark that I can follow

in the field.

I'm not actually gonna do any drilling. I just want to see if this works.

Okey-dokey.

Here we go.

Oh, my God! I've done something properly and well!

I'm leaving a mark,

a mark that can actually be seen.

Yes, yes, yes.

Every farmer, I was gonna say in Britain, but in the world

is going to look at this now and say,

"I must have that on my farm."

I am the new Jethro Tull,

and I don't mean the Jethro Tull

where he stands on one leg and plays the flute,

that's Ian Anderson, I mean the other Jethro Tull,

who revolutionised British agriculture in the 18th century.

That's me now.

21st century Jethro Tull.

Now, what I'm gonna do is stick out the traditional farming marker...

Bollocks.

Which is on the other side, for the round back...

You can see how useless that is. Ready?

Where's my white line?

No.

Where the bloody hell has it gone?

Where's the bloody...

I could see the paint going on the field but it's not there now.

Oh, there it is! There it is, I can see it,

here, when I started.

So it worked for about 40 yards.

And then it sort of didn't.

And to rub salt in the wound,

the stupid metal scratcher thing had chosen this day

to suddenly start working.

For fuck's sake.

This is irritating, 'cause you can see. Look.

The metal disk has made a very, very clear mark.

Oh, shit. What's it doing?

Why is that beeping? Oh, God.

Fuse's gone.

This tractor is getting Alzheimer's, I fear.

Where... The fuse's gone.

Because the fuse's blown, I can't fold the flaps in.

But I can't drive back to the farm with the flaps out,

because I can't get through a gate or go down the road.

What I'd normally do at a time like this is phone Kaleb

and ask him to bring the fuse up here.

Kaleb isn't here.

Bollocks.

New fuse.

So get that in... No, wait, hang on. Oh, God...

The old-fashioned disk that I need to put back on is back at the farm.

Fuse in, fold it up, back to the farm.

Take that off, put the old one back on.

It's twenty past one.

Turns out, I'm not Jethro Tull.

I'm just a hapless fuckwit.

Come on! There...

By the time I'd removed my new invention...

There we go.

Rolled around in the dirt to calibrate the drill...

14, 13, 12...

And got back to the field, it was almost 4 o'clock.

I'm drilling.

Totally solo drilling.

No, I need my glasses to see the speed.

That's only 11 km/h.

Oh, I haven't put my thing out. Oh, shit!

I forgot my thing. Shit, shit, shit.

I forgot to put my marker thing out, after all that.

Oh, it's beeping. What the hell?

And I haven't got my markers out.

Do I have to go out to put them out? Oh no...

And then... Oh, I'm rolling backwards, now. Wait.

Do I put... "Markers"?

No, that's the wrong one!

Oh, come on!

Right, I've got that out, good.

Third gear.

I think I'm good.

Oh, I put...

Shit, I forgot to lower the drill!

It won't lower.

Yes, down.

There we go, I'm drilling.

No.

Erm...

What?

I've got stuck.

Ah, there's the problem.

White box has come down.

God...

Yeah, get that up.

Right, now I'm going to drill it. Now I'm drilling.

Oh, shit, the fan's not on.

Fucking hell.

God, there's a lot to think about!

According to Charlie, the government have satellites

that will be used to make sure I've done a good enough job here.

Well, the government satellite is going to look down on this field

and just go, "He was drunk."

I'd hardly done any drilling before the winter darkness descended.

And then, the ageing Lambo went wrong... again.

Where's my dashboard lights gone? Oh no. That's not it.

So I've no dashboard lights now.

That's the new problem, that's good.

That is pure guesswork.

I can't see the marker.

I don't know how fast I'm going

and I don't know what gear I'm in.

Right...

The next thing, of course, is how much seed have I got, because...

Was it one bag a hectare or a bag an acre?

Oh, I don't even know. I don't know, I'm just guessing.

This meant I didn't know that my hopper had become empty

and that I was now driving up and down planting nothing at all.

And when I discovered this and was filling it up again,

His cheerfulness arrived.

Hi.

How's it going?

I'm gonna be honest, I'm having a tottering time.

- A tottering time? - A tottering time.

The fuses keep blowing in the tractor.

And I don't know how...

I don't know when... I don't know anything.

Literally, I was thinking, well, a fuse has blown,

Lisa's in London,

Kaleb's wherever the bloody hell he is,

it's now coming up for six o'clock,

and all I've drilled in a whole day...

a tenth of the field?

So after four years of farming?

Yes, but critically, only four spells of drilling.

I've only done drilling four times.

I'm not saying.

It's quite exposing being on your own. This isolation is kinda...

I'm thinking, while Kaleb's away, I'm going to need a hand.

That's probably a sensible...

- Particularly with... - What I'm really worried...

The cash crop, the barley.

I can cock this up, it doesn't matter,

- ultimately, really. - As much. No.

- But if I cock the barley up... - Yeah?

Would it possible for you

to go away...

- Just go away? - Just go away.

And see if you can find somebody to come and give me a hand?

'Cause I'm properly struggling.

There's a couple of good agencies. We can find temporary staff.

- Happens all the time. - Perfect.

- Okay. - All right?

- All right, see you later. - Cheerio.

A couple of days later, there was good news,

because Charlie called to say that a stand-in for Kaleb

would be arriving at lunchtime.

Sansa?

You've been at school, haven't you? You've been learning how to be a dog!

She went away for a month to be trained.

Total transformation.

A month at school and she's mended.

Sansa!

Heel.

Heel, Sansa. Heel.

Heel.

No, Sansa.

You've been trained now, come on.

Heel, Sansa...

Sansa!

Heel. No!

Sansa, heel.

I give in.

Later, after I had fed the animals,

finished off the GS4 drilling

and gone back to the office to deal with the daily government paperwork,

my new helper arrived,

a young farmer called Harriet.

Hello.

- Hi, Jeremy. How are you? Have a seat. - I'm all right. Are you?

- Thank you. - Oh, brilliant.

Did you have a good trip? A good journey?

Well, kind of.

But I turned all the motorways and toll roads off on my sat nav

so I ended up coming on B roads.

- Where have you come from? - Derbyshire.

- Flat country. - It's not flat at all.

It is flat. Do you want coffee?

No, thanks. I don't like coffee. Have you got tea?

No.

- I'll be all right, then. - Honestly, I haven't got any tea.

Sorry.

No, it's so good...

- So you can come and give me a hand. - Yeah.

- Charlie says you are from a farm. - Yeah.

It is your mum and dad's farm?

It was me grandad's farm and then now my dad has it, yeah.

That's fantastic. I should explain. You've seen Clarkson's Farm?

Yeah.

- Yeah... Have you? - No.

Well, I've seen... You know, on YouTube, you get them, like, short bits,

where it's, like, funny moments.

- Yeah. - I've seen them.

The short...

- I ain't got time to watch all that. - Well, anyway,

- we've got this guy called Kaleb. - Yeah.

- Kaleb has been the farm manager. - Okay.

And now, he's gone off to be Julian Clary, or Lenny Henry, he's gone...

Do you know who Julian Clary is?

- No. - Lenny Henry?

He's the bed man.

- What? - The bed man.

- Bed? - Lenny Henry does the bed advert.

Don't he?

I thought he did... Doesn't he do hotels?

Where he's laying on a bed?

I don't think he's advertising the beds, he's advertising the hotel.

Oh.

Anyway, he's doing a tour around so he's disappeared for two months.

- Who? Lenny Henry? Oh, Kaleb! - No, Kaleb.

- Kaleb's disappeared. - Oh. Okay.

- Yeah. - And I thought, "Well, I can manage."

- Okay. - And I'm not. I'm properly struggling.

- With what? - Everything.

I've got myself in such a pickle 'cause I've been not making a very good job

of drilling GS4.

- Yeah. - You know what GS4 is?

- Yeah. - And then when I got...

It's just... Don't ask. But I don't trust myself to do the barley.

Okay.

- Would you be okay to drill it? - Yeah.

I then took Harriet for a Diddly Squat tour.

That's the tractor shed.

- That's full of seed and fert. - Yeah.

Sounds like your cow brush could do with some WD. It's a bit squeaky.

- The what? - The cow brush.

- Can you hear it squeaking? - Is that what that is?

Yeah.

- Could you also oil the cow brush? - Yeah, I can oil the cow brush.

- Erm... There's your house. - My house!

It's a house on wheels, nice!

- There's the mighty Lamborghini. - Yeah.

It's... big.

Oh...

- It's not! It's powerful is what it is. - Yeah.

And there's the drill on the back of it that I keep breaking.

Oh, you're breaking?

- That's why I need you to get out there. - Why is the drill covered in paint?

Paint? Ah. There's a story behind that.

And the floor is covered in paint.

Yeah, there is.

Right, let's go for a spin around the farm.

- Oh! Look at that hedge! - That isn't mine.

- This is my hedge. - Yes.

It's like...

five-star, one-star.

- That is, I admit... - If this was a Lenny Henry hotel.

They're a bit wild.

- Have you not hedge-cut them recently? - I don't like to hedge-cut,

because it makes more space for the birds to live in.

I don't like neatly trimmed hedges, it looks like Surrey.

So, if you thin out your hedges,

big birds can get in and eat little birds,

whereas if your hedges are nice and shaped and thick...

Mm?

The big birds can't get in to eat the little birds' eggs.

- So what you're doing is allowing... - I didn't know that.

Come on, look at them.

- Look where they live. - Nice piggies.

Your electric fence is arcing out, so your batteries will be dying.

- What? - It's arcing out, look.

- What do you mean? - When it's touching grass,

or shit, in that instance,

it will arc out and it will kill your battery.

Oh...

Oh, look at your screen saver. Just...

Come here.

Tell me you're a farmer without telling me you're a farmer.

Ready?

- That's my tractor. - Is that yours?

Yeah! That is a 6490.

- So have you got a boyfriend? - Yeah.

- And he's not on there. - No...

Next stop was one of the woods,

which I was interested in seeing

because Charlie had recently arranged

for some of its trees to be removed.

Yeah? Nice little track.

I might have a quick look at that. Do you mind? Sorry.

- No. - I've not seen this.

Bleeding hell.

Christ on a bike, that's a lot of wood.

That's astounding, isn't it?

Anyone would think he'd not seen trees before.

Do you see how many trees have gone? Look. One, two, three, four.

Five, six, seven...

Fucking trees!

Eight.

I'm gonna do something with this.

Right, now, this... You see this mound here?

- It goes all the way around. - Yeah.

That is a Neolithic fort.

What's a "Neolithic"?

- 4,000 years old. - Oh!

- So when the baby Jesus... - That's almost as old as you.

Yeah. When the baby Jesus came along,

that had already been there for 2,000 years.

So it's really old.

Lenny Henry.

Yeah. And that's the end of my history lesson.

- Lenny Henry. - We're back to Lenny Henry.

"Lenny Henry advert"?

The following day, Harriet said she wanted to get cracking

with planting the barley.

- I'll load you up. - Yeah.

Which meant I had to attach the forks to the telehandler

so I could fetch the seed bags.

Drive forward.

- Is that right? - No.

Up a little bit. Come forward... Woah!

Too much! Down.

Forward.

Up a little bit! Up...

Put your boom up a tiny bit,

a tiny bit.

A bit more.

Right, stop. Drive forward.

Tilt back a bit.

- Back? - Tilt back.

Those eyelashes and what she's doing

don't necessarily go together, do they?

Is that it?

Yeah, go get a bag.

Once she loaded the seed...

Right.

And calibrated the drill without rolling around in the dirt...

Okay, 220.

She was ready for her maiden voyage in the Lambo.

- Have fun. - Yeah.

You're in a proper tractor for the first time in your life.

Definitely not.

I'll change down a gear and give her some power.

It's got a turning point of a fucking aircraft.

She's round.

So fucking big. Why do you need anything this big?

Okey-dokey.

Seed in, 4 K.

Sick.

Happy days!

And then film this way.

- Hi. - All right, Charlie?

How is it going?

- Well, she's brilliant, I think. - Good.

- I mean, well found. - Good.

I don't know what I'm looking for to see whether she's doing it properly.

We'll go and have a look out there.

There you go, that's good.

- Look at that! - Oh yeah!

- Good depth. - So that's well drilled?

Perfect.

- I'm bloody glad we've got her. - Yeah.

Also, do you know what TikTok is?

What? TikTok? I've heard of it.

- Is she... - She's a TikToker.

Wait a minute.

Oh God, she's already been TikToking.

There's you! You're here!

That's Diddly Squat, so she's already... Yeah.

What?

I don't really understand TikTok.

Over the next few days,

TikTok Harriet worked like a Trojan.

Okay.

I hate it when hedges haven't been cut, 'cause they never look neat.

And while she was trimming the hedges,

she got to meet another member of the Diddly Squat family.

- Hiya. - Hi there.

- Harriet. - Nice to meet you, Harriet.

You too.

He said he could get another one on the top of there if he wanted to.

It's too fast. The tractor doesn't go slow enough for me to cut hedges.

No, it wants a higher gear.

Yeah, I was saying do the sides right, bear down tight on top on there,

just be narrow when going over these ones as well.

There's no chance in the world, is there?

- No. - No.

No.

Whoo!

With Harriet now doing all the usual jobs,

and a few we hadn't even thought of...

A few more rows and we'll have a clean yard.

I was made redundant

from the grind of day-to-day farming duties.

This meant I had the brain space to address the problem of overcrowding

at the farm shop.

Thank you.

Its popularity continued to annoy both the council and the locals.

So I needed something that would tempt some of the customers away.

With my thinking cap on,

I noodled away at the issue.

Ah-ah.

And eventually,

I had a eureka moment.

So I called Charlie in for one of those meetings

which began with the words he'd come to dread.

I've had a brilliant idea.

Gonna buy a pub.

But it's... Like a... You're gonna buy a pub?

Yeah.

- But... - Hear me out, here.

I've been thinking. I don't want to buy a village pub.

Yeah.

Because the farm shop is nowhere near a village

and the village went berserk because of the traffic.

Don't want to have that anymore.

Don't want to fall out with any more villagers.

Town centre pub?

Not really the farm vibe I'm looking for.

Main road pub.

- But... - Coaching inn.

What... Well...

Then we can take all the produce from Diddly Squat...

- Yeah. - And sell it all in a pub.

Which...

How do I phrase this?

"Brilliant idea, Jeremy. Well done."

- Almost. I get the theory. - Yeah.

'Cause in theory, it sounds like a really good idea.

- Yeah. - But the reality is very different.

Do you know how many pubs have closed since 2000?

- No. - A third of them.

20,000 pubs.

- Since 2000? - Since 2000.

- That is... - 20,000?

Yes.

That's a thousand a year.

So, you can see how tough it is as a business.

The only pubs around here that seem to be opening are the ones

where, frankly, nobody can afford to eat.

I've got a plan, I'm not gonna do that. I'm going to make affordable food.

How are you going to staff it? Staffing's a massive problem.

Yeah, plenty of those.

If all the pubs are closing, think of how many people are out of work.

But you're going to sign up to more HR.

- What's HR? - Human resources.

Oh, I don't have that.

You need to, to manage all those people.

We didn't have HR when I was on the Rotherham Advertiser,

which was the last time I was employed.

So you're gonna have to... "Aw, Jeremy, I've got a problem with..."

I'll tell them to pull themselves together!

I can't... How hard can it be?

If you think about it, we've got a great many pigs, now.

Yeah.

We're really good on hens and eggs.

We've got all the usual:

bread, pasta, we've got all of the things we need.

I mean, I cannot think of a single reason to not do it.

It's farm to fork, it's exactly what everyone wants.

Can British farming save itself

by saving the British pub?

Oh...

You wait till you see this place.

It'll blow your mind.

Oh, man!

It stinks!

Right, stand very still.

Is this manscaping?

Look at that!

Can we just get back to farming?