Clarkson's Farm

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.

["Every Picture Tells a Story" by Rod Stewart playing]

I've never done this.

Ooh! Farming happening.

That's as straight as a roundabout!

Oh, 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.

Oh, 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.

Oh, yes!

This is my wilding project.

- Oh, my God! - Oh, no, no, no.

This is not wilding. That's damage.

It's like Fortnum & Masons.

It's what?

Oh, 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.

Oh, 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.

Oh, it begins.

Let's open it up.

Oh.

Having finished my test drive, I made a decision,

and bought this.

This is a Lamborghini R8.

Oh, 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.

Oh, 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.

- -Ah!

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.

-Uh... -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.

Oh...

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.

Oh, yes.

Soon, the fields started to fill up.

And the auction buzz was building.