Clarkson's Farm (2021) s04e03 Episode Script

[theme music playing]
[birds chirping]
[thunder and rain]
[thunder]
[soft music]
[Jeremy] The morning after my meeting
with Cotswold District Council,
I withdrew my offer
to buy the Coach & Horses.
This was a sad day for me,
and a sad day too
for this lovely old building.
But even though
I was feeling quite deflated,
I had to turn my attention to a problem
that was affecting
every farmer in the land:
the weather, which, like a stuck record,
had reared its ugly head yet again.
[soft piano music]
[male reporter] There have been grey
skies over farming for six months now.
The sodden ground spells disaster.
[female reporter]
Crops are already rotting,
while many with livestock
have seen grazing land turn into mud.
In 2024,
the ground is simply too wet.
[Jeremy] This time, the problem was
we'd had almost continuous rain
throughout a mild winter.
In the past 188 years of weather records,
we've never had a wetter February
than the one we saw this year.
[Jeremy] And now we were
into the April planting season,
everyone was stuck.
No one could get their crops
into the sodden ground.
And it was still raining.
Mentally, financially, anything,
we can't carry on like this.
[Jeremy] We'd been hit,
the same as everyone else.
[wind blowing]
Rain, rain, rain.
It's stopped progress.
No spraying, no fertilising, no drilling.
It just keeps on coming.
[soft music]
[Jeremy] This meant
my crop chat with Charlie
was more of a crisis summit.
[Jeremy] I don't want to go on
about rainfall 'cause we've done that
in every single programme
since we started making Clarkson's Farm.
Basically, since you started farming.
- It hasn't stopped raining.
- The weather's been rubbish.
I haven't had one proper year yet.
No.
I printed this out from The Times.
"Sick of all this rain?
You should have seen 1872.
By December 1872,
after 12 months of continuous rain,
conditions in England
were little short of apocalyptic."
At least according to The Times.
"In the fields, rats as plentiful
as hares ravaged the cabbages.
In Cambridge,
rowers practised in railway ditches.
Rivers flowed
into the cellars of Leicester.
The Archbishop of Canterbury was leading
emergency prayers for blue sky."
That was in 1872, okay?
"And how much rain did we have
in England that year?
Roughly the same as has fallen
in the past 12 months."
Interesting, isn't it?
1872, they had the Archbishop
of Canterbury praying
- For blue sky!
- For it to stop raining.
- That's amazing.
- And now we're just sitting here going,
"Oh, bloody nuisance, this rain, innit?"
- We're getting used to it.
- Yeah, yeah.
Anyway.
It's now April the 3rd or 4th.
How much later can we go
before we have to plant that durum wheat?
We're getting to a point
where the yield
is dropping off quite quickly.
And the weather forecast
for the rest of this week is rain.
Yes.
Monday, rain. Tuesday, rain.
Wednesday, rain. Friday, rain.
Saturday, rain.
[Charlie] It's not a good outlook, is it?
What the fuck are we gonna do?
We haven't got the durum wheat planted.
We haven't got the rye grass in.
We haven't got the NUM3 in.
And nor is all of the herbal ley.
- The GS4?
- The GS4.
That is in. I planted it.
We might have to re-drill it.
We will have to re-drill it.
- The field I did?
- The field you did.
- [Jeremy sighing]
- It's not growing.
I must say,
I was up at the farm shop yesterday.
No, day before yesterday.
- It's quite brown.
- Talking to a farmer, I said,
"I've got my GS4 in." And
- And he went
- Expansive gesture! And he went, "Where?"
Well, he had a point.
The seed went onto the ground
and it's no longer there.
- Shit, we need it to feed the cows.
- That's the point.
If we want to feed the cows this year,
we want the GS4 in quite quickly as well.
But, the priority is very easy:
durum wheat, GS4.
Give me a deadline.
So if by the 24th of April
we haven't got the durum in,
that's the problem.
But we have planted it in May before.
And the yield was
Poor.
Right.
I think that's last year's calendar.
Why haven't we gotten
another calendar up?
[Charlie] I don't even know
what month that is.
I'm gonna get a calendar
and I'm gonna ring it.
- 24th.
- There's one on your phone.
Yes, but I can't hang
my phone on the wall.
[both chuckling]
Well, you could.
[soft music]
[Jeremy] On the odd day
when it didn't rain,
the fields remained
completely waterlogged.
[Jeremy] Look how much flooding
is over here.
- [Lisa] Yeah, all floodplain.
- [Jeremy] Jesus.
[Jeremy] Lisa and I, therefore,
used the time to get back to pub hunting.
And, rather sadly,
we were spoilt for choice.
- Every single pub owner I went to
- [Lisa] Yeah.
Every single one
said that their pub was for sale.
Every single one.
[Lisa] Oh, my God.
Like, so, if you look at this, right?
- [Jeremy] Yeah?
- In 1990,
there was 110 pubs per 100,000 people.
- [Jeremy] What, in the UK?
- In the UK.
[Lisa] And then, in 2022,
there was about 68 pubs.
- [Jeremy] So it's fallen from 110
- To 68.
- [Jeremy] To 68, per 100,000 people.
- Yes.
[Jeremy] I mean,
there are so many for sale.
So many.
[Jeremy] The first pub we visited
was a heartfelt reminder
of this sad decline.
[Jeremy] But you're still open,
aren't you?
- No, we're not now.
- Oh, you're closed.
Closed on Mother's Day.
- [Jeremy] Oh, shit. I didn't Oh, shit.
- Yeah.
[Jeremy] And what made it even more sad
is that the pub was an absolute gem.
[Jeremy] Oh wow, look at this.
This is a properly nice building,
isn't it?
[Lisa] It's very, very charming.
[Jeremy] However, access to its car park
meant it wasn't right for us.
[Lisa] So, if it's busy
and you've got cars coming in
and cars trying to get out,
this is a gridlock right here.
I agree, I agree, I agree.
That is an issue.
This is our issue.
[Jeremy] The next pub,
another beauty, had no parking problems,
a lovely garden, great views,
and a proper Cotswold-pub interior.
[publican] Come and see the garden room.
It's a good size.
It has a good flow to it.
[Jeremy] It's very pretty, isn't it?
- [Lisa] It's very, very charming.
- [publican] Yes.
[Lisa] Oh yeah, this'll do.
- [publican] It's a perfect size.
- It's a bar with a view as well.
It's a stage as well. Ta-da!
- Ta-da! I do like a bar.
- [publican laughs]
[Jeremy] But if I wanted
to put a shop in it,
it would have to be listed by
the planners as a Class E establishment,
not just a pub.
I don't suppose you know
if you're Class E, do you, planning-wise?
- Are you a pub or a restaurant?
- Er, pub.
[Jeremy] Shit.
[laughing] Okay.
[Jeremy] Lisa didn't think
this was too much of a problem.
I did, though.
[Lisa] While you're doing planning
permission,
we could be up and running and busy.
No, that's true, but
If you don't ultimately get planning
permission, I end up with a pub.
Yes.
And I don't want a pub.
I want a pub and a shop and a butcher's.
[soft rock music]
[Jeremy] Our final pub of the tour
had good-sized outbuildings
- [Jeremy] Farm shop.
- [Lisa] Yes!
[Jeremy] A garden with well-aerated soil,
a great name,
and a brilliant car park.
Can you imagine
having your own personal traffic light?
There's a sensor on it, look.
I drive up
"Oxfordshire, stop."
What? You think
it'll think the film crew's a car?
Yes, it did!
[laughing]
Look, every the lorry has stopped.
That's stopped.
Fucking hell, I want that.
[upbeat music]
[Jeremy] But then,
we took a tour of the interior.
[Jeremy] I mean,
let's be honest, it's hideous.
It is the ugliest building
in Oxfordshire.
[Lisa] There's so many
beautiful Cotswold pubs.
Why would we buy
the ugliest building in the county?
We could call it "The Ugly Pub".
[soft music]
[Jeremy] Back at the farm,
the continuing rain meant
we were confined to the office,
unable to plant.
[unintelligible speaking on the phone]
[Jeremy] However,
rain doesn't stop pigs giving birth.
And that night, Swizz, the pregnant sow,
showed signs
that her piglets were on the way.
[Harriet] Oh, my gosh! Did you do that?
[squeaking]
All right, get on and do your others.
Well done, mum!
[squeaking]
Aw
Look at that little piglet.
[pig groaning]
So that one's on,
but this one's not yet discovered.
Come on, piggies.
Get some colostrum in you
and you won't shiver.
Look for it.
There's the teats, right down here.
Can you get it in your mouth?
Are you on?
- [groaning]
- Yeah!
[Harriet] Good girl.
[soft music]
[Jeremy] By the time Lisa and I arrived,
Swizz had pushed out a total of nine.
[Jeremy] This is looking great.
So this pig has produced
25 piglets in a year.
- [Lisa] Amazing.
- [Jeremy] She's got a new name.
- [Jeremy] Not Swizz.
- [Lisa] Yes!
[Jeremy] So you think that's the end?
- [Harriet] She might be done.
- [Lisa] The teats will only
She'll only have so many full teats
to match the piglets.
So this isn't one,
she's not having that piglet.
She's not having that piglet.
She's had nine.
- [Lisa] Can they have an odd number?
- I don't know if that's how it works.
- [Jeremy] What?
- I don't think that's how it works.
- [Jeremy] What?
- I think they all fill up with milk.
I don't think they only fill
if you've only got ten piglets,
only ten pop.
[Jeremy] No, I don't think that's it.
No, Lisa,
a pig doesn't just fill up its breasts
[Harriet] Due to how many babies
its having!
[Jeremy] What?
Only nine of her breasts will fill up
- If she has nine babies.
- If she has nine babies.
[Lisa] Obviously.
Well, so say you had one baby,
did only one tit fill up?
[Lisa] It's not the same, though.
- [Harriet and Jeremy chuckling]
- [Lisa] It's not the same.
[Lisa] So every single piglet
in her stomach
would have been lying a certain way
and then all go to the teat
that corresponds
to the way they were lying in the womb.
Lisa, you're talking absolute nonsense.
When was the last time you gave birth
to anything? Shut up.
[Harriet] Aw, they all look so happy now,
don't they?
[Jeremy] All suckling
and the mother lying on her side
and not squashing any of them.
- [Lisa] Nice one, Harriet.
- [Harriet] It's great, isn't it.
- I love it when the pigs give birth.
- [Harriet] It's the best part of farming.
[Jeremy] I just love it
when the pigs give birth.
- [Harriet] Isn't that perfect?
- [Lisa] Yeah.
[piglets squeaking softly]
[soft rock music]
[Jeremy] The next day was a big one,
because after more than two months away,
Lenny Henry was back.
[Kaleb] Hello, girls.
[mooing]
Looks like they've lost
a little bit of weight.
[mooing]
[Jeremy] You're back!
- You all right?
- [Jeremy] Who are you?
Good to see you. How'd it go?
Oh, yeah, it was good.
- Good to see you.
- Good to be back.
- Yeah, it was good. A helluva experience.
- I'll bet.
- Christ.
- It's been a long time.
I've seen so many different farms.
Onion farms.
Big cow farms. It's been awesome.
- That's all you've seen?
- [Kaleb] And a goat farm.
- Goat farms?
- [Kaleb] I went to a place
near Wales which is like a cliff farm.
I say "cliff"
They had sheep grazing on,
like, a cliff like that.
- [Kaleb] I was like, "Will they fall?"
- Yeah?
Weather's good.
- Hasn't stopped since you left.
- I know! It's bad!
- Hasn't stopped raining since you left.
- Some would said I timed it well, though.
But, it's like this.
Anyway, as you can see
- I've managed.
- Yeah!
[Jeremy] Clean yard.
Spotless. Everything tidy.
Looks like a farmyard.
Looks good, doesn't it.
- Cows mucked out.
- [Kaleb] Yeah.
[Jeremy] I bet you thought
it'd be all on fire
when you got back, all the animals dead.
- Fire everywhere.
- No, 'cause I've been saying, actually,
everywhere I go,
I've been praising you up actually.
[Jeremy] One thing I'm amazed
you haven't noticed
- [Kaleb] Yeah, so have you bought that?
- [Jeremy] No, it's on demo.
[Kaleb] Why?
The Lamborghini's been
a bit unreliable since you went.
Has it? What's happened?
- Everything.
- Really?
[Jeremy] Hmm.
I've had to get help.
- What's happened?
- I had to get someone to help me.
[Kaleb] What do you mean?
I'm confused.
You'll meet Harriet. You'll like her.
Okay.
[soft music]
[Jeremy] Sensing that Kaleb
wasn't entirely happy
about me hiring someone else,
I decided he should meet her
as quickly as possible.
[Jeremy] So, where we're going now
Harriet's,
where she's drilled the barley.
- [Kaleb] Okay. She done a good job?
- Yeah.
[Charlie] So, it's all coming up.
Look, you can see the slugs have been
- [Harriet] Hammering it.
- Hammering it all the way down.
[Jeremy] Right, now, that
that's Harriet, all right?
[Kaleb] All right.
- [Jeremy] Now, be nice.
- [Kaleb] Mm-hmm.
[Jeremy] Behave. I'm not having
any of your Andy Cato nonsense.
This is going to be interesting.
[Jeremy] 'Cause he wants to encourage
young people to start farming
but I don't think he wants them
to farm on this farm.
[chuckling]
[Kaleb] Hello.
- Lovely to meet you.
- [Harriet] Hello.
- You okay.
- Yeah, you?
- Oh, yeah, have you not met?
- No, not yet.
Harriet, Kaleb.
- Did you drill this?
- Yeah.
- Judgement here.
- [laughing]
Yeah, inspection.
Look, are you pleased?
- We've got barley germinating.
- Yeah.
Right, they've met, look, they've met.
No actually fighting so far.
- [Kaleb] What's that?
- Slugs.
Slugs, Kaleb.
- [Jeremy] How are you, Harriet?
- Yeah, good.
[Harriet] Fert's on.
- [Jeremy] You got fert on?
- [Harriet] Yeah.
- [Kaleb] Did you put the right fert on?
- [Harriet laughing]
- [Jeremy] What have you found, Charlie?
- [Harriet] A slug.
[Charlie] This winter
has been really warm.
- [Jeremy] Yeah.
- [Charlie] So we've got lots of slugs.
[Jeremy] And how many of them
are there in this field?
Millions.
- Millions?
- Yeah, there'll be millions of them.
What they do is they just strip the leaf,
they just eat the leaf.
- But, we have slug pellets.
- Yes.
[Jeremy] If you didn't put slug
pellets on, would that eat the barley?
We would not have any barley
if we hadn't put slug pellets.
- It would have all been eaten.
- None?
I once had to go to prison
in France because of a slug
True story.
I went to a restaurant
called La Pomme d'Amour,
and there was a slug in my lettuce,
and the man was so apologetic.
He said, "You can drink as much
as you like on the house."
And I was only 19,
so I thought, "Well, I will, then."
And did.
And then, anyway, I was arrested
a bit later 'cause I was a bit wobbly.
And I was trying to explain
to the policeman
that I'd eaten a slug
and the man had given me a lot of drink.
But I couldn't think
what the French for "slug" was.
- [in French] L'escargot.
- So I said
[in French] "Je mange un escargot
sans maison."
And they just thought,
"This man is properly paralytic."
- Definitely, yeah!
- And off I went to prison,
'cause I didn't know
the French for "slug".
- So did you get what he said?
- Nope.
[Charlie] "I've eaten
a snail without a house."
[Jeremy] You've lost
your sense of humour, haven't you?
No, I just don't speak French.
So why would
that whole conversation matter to me?
- Well, it was slightly amusing.
- Yes, it was an amusing story.
- [Jeremy] So we've got to slug-pellet.
- [Charlie] We've gotta slug-pellet this.
Ultimately, we have got
a nice crop to work with.
Enough seeds here, enough plants.
Well done!
[Charlie chuckles]
[Charlie] Right. Come on.
[soft music]
[Jeremy] Charlie then showed Kaleb
the GS4 fields.
Which went down well.
[Kaleb] It looks shitter here.
What a waste of a fucking field
planting GS4 in it.
I've got three fields that had GS4.
It doesn't feed any fucking cows.
There is literally no evidence
I've done anything in this field.
[Charlie] We're gonna have
to drill it again.
I'll rip it up and put
some spring wheat in it, if you want.
[Jeremy] No! We need cows.
- [Kaleb] Yeah, I know.
- For the pub, I've got to have cow food.
Yeah, I'm very aware of that.
- [Jeremy] What?
- But have you ever tried grazing GS4?
- [Jeremy] Well, do you know, let's think.
- No, you haven't.
[Charlie] Right, we done?
- [Harriet and Kaleb] Yeah.
- Do you want to look at anything else?
[Kaleb] No, I don't.
[Jeremy] Kaleb's inspection
of the main shed was equally joyful.
- [Kaleb] Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
- Whoa, what?
Who orders Skyfall wheat in 20-kg bags?
I admit that was a mistake.
[Kaleb] Why have you got rye grass? Why?
Why is there so much paint
all over the drill?
Ah! I invented something.
- All right.
- That didn't quite work.
Where has the disc gone on the back?
Did you pick it up?
- You mean that one?
- Yeah.
Yeah, no, well, that was off, you see.
That was my invention.
No, it wasn't.
Go and find it.
I'll get Harriet onto that straight away.
No, you do it.
- Put that in somewhere dry.
- Well
Put it somewhere dry. Not in here.
If moisture gets in, it'll fuck it.
Put it somewhere dry.
Can I just explain something to you
that I don't think you know.
- Go on.
- You've just come back off tour.
- Now, I know some rock stars.
- Mm-hmm?
[Jeremy] I won't say which band.
And after they came back off tour,
when they were touring a lot,
they used to rent a house.
- Okay?
- Mmm.
Just the four or five of them,
for two weeks.
No staff. They had to make
their own meals, wipe their own bottoms,
clean up, load the dishwasher,
so that when they went home,
they were normal human beings again.
You're such an arse.
You've had people
running around after you.
Such an arsehole.
- No, I haven't.
- "Would you like a cup of coffee?"
- No, I have not.
- "Would you like me to make your bed?"
- That's what you've had.
- You think that I've had that.
You're standing there going,
"You, put that back."
You said, "I'm such a good farmer."
What have you left it out there for?
Do you know what Blur
call what you've got?
- Oh, here we go. What is it?
- Cunt flu.
[Kaleb laughing]
- You come back off tour
- You're such a twat!
"Oh, no, if you'd like to step this way?
Here, are your shoes all right?
Here, let me.
Are you just getting a bit wet, Kaleb?"
You've got to come back
to the real world. I know! I've toured!
I came back and I was
[whispering] a cunt.
[whispering] You still are!
A cunt!
[Kaleb chuckling]
So, one thing I went on tour for
was to see the world
[Jeremy] Mercifully, my tough-love chat
obviously did the trick,
as, the next day,
Kaleb began to bond with Harriet,
chatting away
like one young farmer to another.
- [Kaleb] Done all your courses now?
- [Harriet] Yeah.
- [Kaleb] How many have you had to do?
- [Harriet] Spraying, slug-pelleting.
- Tractor, telehandler, ATV.
- The fucking tractor test.
- The bloke didn't know anything.
- [Kaleb] I know.
[Jeremy] And we needed him
back on an even keel
because, a day or so later,
over at the pig pens,
there was a bit of an issue.
[Jeremy] So, the first time
we had litters,
we lost 28%, remember?
They were all being squashed.
We put the pig rings in,
and that death rate fell to 13%.
- [Jeremy] Which was brilliant.
- [Kaleb] Really good.
This time, pig rings in,
would have been 8%
Except for her.
[Lisa] Surprise!
- [Jeremy] She had 14 piglets.
- [Lisa] Yeah.
- She's squashed nine of them.
- [Lisa] No, she didn't!
So, that's back to 28% again.
We're exactly the same
as where we started because of her.
[Kaleb] Let's go back into her history.
She's called Surprise
'cause she had three.
[Jeremy] The first time she gave birth
to five, squashed three, ate one of them.
The second time she gave birth to 17,
but, if you remember,
you took some of those 17 and
distributed them amongst other mothers.
- Yeah, I left her with ten.
- Left her with ten.
So she squashed four of the ten.
This time, she's done nine
of the fourteen.
[Kaleb] So what are we gonna do?
[Jeremy] Well, I mean,
this is the debate we've got.
It's costing 750 pounds a year
to feed her.
[Kaleb] Yeah. And the straw
and the labour.
[Jeremy] Exactly. And she's squashing
most of her children every time.
[piglet squeaking]
[Kaleb] Do you want my opinion, then,
as your farm manager?
[Jeremy] Mm-hmm.
This is only her third litter.
So I would say, personally, go one more
time and try it on the fourth litter.
[Kaleb] And if she does it again
[Jeremy] Yeah, abattoir.
Basically, this pig was this close
to becoming sausages.
- Yeah.
- And then, along you came.
[Jeremy] Then, I moved on
to pig problem number two.
Dilwyn the vet had raised
the alarm after noticing
that the boar we'd rented
was bullying the three sows.
[squeaking and grunting]
I've had to come out three times
to see them being beaten up.
The first time there was one lame one,
so I gave her some anti-inflammatory.
The second time, the two of them
were actually off their legs.
- And that's just
- What do you mean?
Basically, their back ends
They couldn't lift their back ends.
[Jeremy] So he's a rough lover.
- Something along that line, yeah.
- [Jeremy] Is that why they're all hiding?
[Dilwyn] He stops them sometimes
coming out and going in.
He just stands by the entrance there.
I've seen him actually chomping
at the metal. So he's just
[Jeremy] He's eating metal?
[Dilwyn] Yeah.
I wouldn't trust him with us in the pen.
[Jeremy] Is he saying,
"Get out of my pen"?
Yeah, I think: "Leave my harem alone."
So he's not 100% safe to be around.
- But, er
- [Jeremy] Well, can they hurt people?
Yeah. I mean, if he decided he didn't
like us, he could take a chunk out of us.
- What?
- [Dilwyn] Yeah, yeah, he could do.
- Really?
- [Dilwyn] Yeah, he could.
[Jeremy] Erm, he's looking at my legs
as though they're snacks.
[Dilwyn] Yeah. There you go, look at him!
[Jeremy] He is, look, he's pawing.
He's like a Spanish bull.
Yeah, I'm not sure I wanna look at him
from where I am.
- [pig oinking]
- [Lisa] Hello!
[Jeremy] Look, he's so violent at sex,
he's broken the house.
And I was just in there
and he was pawing the ground.
- [Lisa] Would they be up the duff by now?
- [Dilwyn] They should be, yeah.
[Lisa] So can we, in the next
couple of days, get rid of him?
[Dilwyn] I would get rid of him
sooner rather than later.
[Lisa] Sooner rather than later? Okay.
- [Jeremy] He's just not a very nice pig.
- [Dilwyn] He's not, yeah.
I think we get rid
of Harvey Swinestein tomorrow.
"Harvey Swinestein"!
- [all laughing]
- He's gotta go.
- [Dilwyn] Yeah, very good!
- [Jeremy] "Harvey Swinestein"!
[soft acoustic music]
[Jeremy] The following day,
I returned with Kaleb and Harriet
- [Jeremy] How are you?
- Good. How are you?
[Jeremy] To send the unruly boar
back to his owner.
[Jeremy] Right, Harvey Swinestine is off.
- Harvey Swinestine?
- [Jeremy] Swinestein.
What's that? Who?
- [Kaleb] Is that the scientist?
- Oh, come on!
- No, I'm not having this.
- [Harriet] Singer?
Actor?
- Do you have a clue?
- The scien I don't fucking know.
- [Harriet] Are you gonna tell us?
- It's a scientist!
- He's not a scientist.
- What is he, then?
He's a shocking human being.
[Jeremy] Right, come on.
[soft rock music]
Keep coming.
That'll do.
[pigs oinking]
[Kaleb] Are you coming in there?
- [Harriet] Are you coming in?
- I can't move around in that. I'm 63.
[Kaleb] Well, yes, you are.
We need you in here.
- [Jeremy] What for?
- [Kaleb] What?
- [Harriet] This is your pig!
- [Jeremy] Come on, get the pig in.
- [Kaleb] Can you please stand here?
- You need to hold these.
- I can't get in!
- [Harriet] Grrr!
[Kaleb] Don't bend the posts over.
Don't do that.
No, don't do that.
[Kaleb] Woah! What is going on?
- I can't get in.
- [Kaleb] Breathe in.
[Jeremy inhales]
Think skinny thoughts!
[Kaleb laughing]
- [Harriet] For God's sake!
- Can you get that hurdle quickly, Jeremy?
See what I mean?
Put the hurdle over there.
- And run him up that side?
- And run him this way.
But Jeremy can get the hurdle.
[Jeremy] What
If I knew what a hurdle was,
I'd get it. What does he mean, "hurdle"?
- [Kaleb] Incoming.
- I can't Oh, that.
- [Harriet] So he's coming this way?
- Yeah, ready?
Ready? It's going to come out.
Go on, buddy.
[Harriet] Come on,
Michael What's-His-Face.
- Come on, Jimmy Savile.
- "Michael"?
I know who Jimmy Savile is.
Can we not just say that?
No, 'cause it's not the same thing.
- [Harriet] Why?
- [Jeremy] Jimmy Savile was kids.
- [Harriet] Ah
- Yeah, but these are kids.
Yeah, these are only a year old.
- They're young ones.
- Jimmy Savile doesn't work.
Or a bit older than a year, are they?
Come on, Hobbs.
[grunting]
- [Harriet] He's so unbothered!
- Hold, hold, hold. That's it, just in.
All right, stand in there, stand there.
[Harriet] Whoa!
[Jeremy] Right,
what we've got there is Red Rum.
[Jeremy] At this point,
I remembered that my knees hurt
- [Jeremy groaning]
- [Kaleb] So, right, hold, hold.
[Jeremy] And that I was paying
everyone's wages.
So, I decided to leave
the youngsters to deal with Psycho Pig.
[Harriet] No!
[pigs squeaking]
[Jeremy groaning and chuckling]
- [Harriet] Come on!
- [Kaleb] Here he comes, here he comes.
- [pig squeaking]
- [Harriet] What's your plan, K?
Calm.
[Kaleb] Yes, yes, it worked. Hold, hold.
Put that down. Hold. Right.
[pigs grunting]
[Kaleb] You're not fucking getting off!
[Harriet screaming]
[Kaleb] Ogh! You'll break my ribs, man!
- [pigs grunting]
- Hold, hold, hold, hold, hold, hold.
- You okay?
- Yeah.
[Kaleb] Pig board down. Pig board down.
Come on.
This is just fucking brute force.
[Harriet] Yes, yes!
Let them pigs go. Quickly.
[pigs squeaking]
[Kaleb] Oh, shit.
[Harriet] That was fun.
That board went, like, straight
into my, like, rib.
[Harriet] Not good.
I need a bag of peas.
- [Harriet] A bag of peas.
- Yeah. Cures everything.
[soft acoustic music]
[Jeremy] No one was upset
to see Harvey leave.
But it was now time
for another departure from Diddly Squat.
And that was a bit sad.
- [Harriet groans]
- [Jeremy] So this is it, you're off.
- I'm off.
- [Jeremy] You're off back to Derbyshire?
Yeah.
- Listen, you've been an absolute star.
- Thanks.
Thanks ever so much for everything.
Absolutely brilliant.
- Thanks.
- And best of luck.
- Yeah.
- [Jeremy] Erm
And I'll send you pictures of the barley
when it's growing.
Yeah, if there's any fuck-ups,
don't send them to me.
No, I'm not. I'm not gonna tell Kaleb
either, that's the important thing.
- Erm, saved my life, you did.
- Any time.
- You were brilliant.
- Yeah.
So, listen, if we get stuck again,
can I give you a call?
Yeah.
- Just let me know.
- No, sorry, let me re-phrase that.
When we get stuck again.
Yeah, ooh.
- [Jeremy] All right.
- All right?
- [Jeremy] Yeah.
- Thanks!
I'll close "t'e" caravan door.
[in a Northern accent]
Close the caravan door.
- Your caravan now!
- Yeah.
When you and Lisa fall out,
she can come and live here.
I like your thinking.
She can come and live here.
- [Jeremy] I approve of that!
- [Harriet chuckles]
- You drive carefully, won't you?
- All right, yeah.
[Jeremy] All right, thanks.
[Jeremy] Bye!
Yeah, she's a superstar, that one.
[soft rock music]
[Jeremy] Now that Kaleb was back
and fully in charge,
I could get back to my hunt for a pub.
So, that is called The Shaven Crown.
750 years old.
It's got a great hall in it.
It's got a beautiful courtyard
and a car park round the back.
And it is for sale.
And so is the pub just on that
corner down there.
Two pubs, one village, both for sale.
[Jeremy] Sadly, none of the pubs
I saw that morning were right,
for one reason or another.
And nor were the multitude
I saw that afternoon.
[soft rock music continues]
[Jeremy] If you were to make this
economically viable,
you'd need 80 or 100,
lunch and dinner, 7 days a week.
And that doesn't look
like the sort of village, to me,
that would welcome
that many people turning up.
And I don't wanna piss
another village off. I've done that.
[Jeremy] The sheer volume of options
was very depressing.
And that evening, in my own local,
I started to realise
what effect this pub-cull will have.
And I was just thinking,
loneliness is becoming
a big issue in rural areas.
And part of the problem is:
villages are kind of losing their souls.
You don't have a village doctor any more,
he's in a health centre 30 miles away
and you can't get an appointment.
There's no village bobby on the beat.
There's no village vicar.
There's no village shop.
There's no village school.
And if we end up at a point
where there's no village pub
What is a village?
It's just some houses.
The pub's the hub.
And it should always be that way
said the man sitting at a table for one.
[chuckling]
[soft acoustic music]
[Jeremy] We were now just ten days
from the durum wheat planting deadline,
and it was still raining.
But Charlie had at least found
a way to make some profit
from our waterlogged ground.
There's been an explosion
of demand for English willow,
to supply the appetite
of Indian Premier League cricket.
And what they really want
is British willow.
Obviously I don't want to be growing
cricket bats 'cause I loathe cricket.
[Charlie] Well, I know. That's, er
[Jeremy] But it could be worse,
it could be growing golf clubs.
[Jeremy] Anyway, so, I buy the trees,
is that right?
[Charlie] We pay a small price
to have the trees planted,
and then they're managed,
these guys pop out three times a year
to just clear all the growth off them,
and then 12, 15 years later,
they'll come and harvest them.
[Jeremy] 15 years?
15 years, yes.
[Jeremy] This incredibly
long-term business plan
was the brainchild of a man called Josh.
- Hello, Charlie. How're you doing?
- Are you all right?
Good, good.
[Jeremy] These are the trees?
[Josh] I need you to carry the deer
guards or the planting device here.
[Jeremy] No, come here! Dogs! Here!
- Come here! Sorry, Josh.
- [Josh] That's okay.
[Jeremy] Sansa, sit.
Sansa, sit.
No, not "shit", sit.
Sansa!
Fucking hell. They're worse than ever.
[Jeremy] So, how old did
you say those were?
- [Josh] So they're four years oldish.
- [Jeremy] Four years?
[Jeremy] You do realise this area
you've chosen is a swamp.
[Josh] That's perfect.
- [Jeremy] Really?
- That's the idea.
- Basically, that land is underutilised.
- [Jeremy] Yeah.
- [Josh] So it's not earning you money.
- [Jeremy] No.
- [Josh] It's about to.
- [Jeremy] So, hold on.
- Can you talk me through the finances?
- Yeah.
Because I pay you how much for a tree?
So, 20 pounds for the tree and the guard,
15 on top for those.
[Charlie] So, 35 pounds.
- [Jeremy] 35 pounds
- [Josh] It's planted.
- [Jeremy] We harvest them in 15 years?
- [Josh] 15 to 20.
So, at the other end, when they're ready,
in today's prices,
they're worth 700 pounds.
And there's a dozen. So that's
8,200 pounds.
So we get 8,000 back. But I will be
- 8,400.
- 84 years old
By which I mean
I'll have been dead for ten years.
[Charlie] We've got some willows.
Could we use those for cricket bats?
[Josh] There is a chance
that it's not quite the right willow.
Who's lopped that one down?
Is that something to do with you?
I've done it.
Why have you cut
a bloody great willow down?
- There's a footpath running next to it.
- Yeah?
It was sort of leaning over the footpath
and there were bits splitting off it.
[Charlie] And rather than
land on somebody
- I thought that was an ash.
- [Charlie] No, no.
Oh, that's to save a rambler's life,
you've killed a tree.
Yes.
[Charlie] And now the council's
I've got into trouble with them
'cause I've made a mess of the footpath.
- Who said that?
- [Charlie] I got a letter from the c
"Dear Mr. Clarkson,
you've made a mess of the"
You mean I've had a letter
from the council.
- [Charlie] Yeah, but they sent it to me.
- From which council?
Our favourite council.
[Jeremy] Anyway. Erm
How many cricket bats, then,
do you get from a tree?
[Josh] We work to an average of 35.
[Charlie] And how much
do they sell those for?
A cricket bat can go
for about 900 pounds in some places.
What?
Who's going to pay 900 pounds
for a cricket bat?
It's a lot.
It's in high demand at the moment,
thanks to, you know, America, India,
Pakistan, players being paid millions.
And it's always English willow?
It's the best.
We have the best climate for it.
- Okay. Let's get them in the ground.
- Right.
[soft acoustic music]
[Jeremy groaning]
Here I go.
- [Jeremy] Ready?
- [Josh] Yeah, go on.
[Josh] There you go.
Now give it a real good wiggle.
[Charlie] Heel it in.
- And that's it? You're happy?
- Done.
[Jeremy] The planting
of these weird rootless cricket trees
was not without complications.
Ooh, my God! Jesus Christ!
[Jeremy] Are you actually sinking there?
Look, I mean, honestly, that's just
Ha!
[Jeremy] And so, when we were in danger
of losing valuable cameramen
- [Charlie] Ben, grab me.
- [Ben] I'll get my boot out.
[Jeremy] We decided to beat
a brave retreat and leave Josh to it.
[Jeremy] Sansa, Arya!
Dogs?
Sansa, Arya!
That's the last time
I'm bringing them out.
[soft rock music]
[Jeremy] Two days later,
with the heavens still firmly open,
I went back to the boozer
with Kaleb
and various other local farmers
to discuss just how much
this wet weather was killing us.
[chatter]
I thought it was December the 8th
it started raining. But I think
- 18th of October.
- Was it the 18th of October?
- And then
- That was it.
[Jeremy] And we haven't really had
[farmer] No, we haven't turned
a wheel properly.
Oh, I've never known anything like this.
This is biblical.
Because we've had no cold weather either.
Normally, you'd get a week
of really heavy frosts,
it kind of draws the moisture
out of the soil,
and you'll get a dry time afterwards.
It's just been mild and wet continuously.
The winter crops that went in last autumn
are suffering on heavier land
because they're just sitting in water.
They're turning yellow
and they're drowning in the field.
That's what it said in one of the reports
I was reading this morning.
There's a number of farmers who
just don't think they'll have a harvest.
No, no.
We've got, well, about 2,500 acres
of spring crops to try and get in,
spring barley,
in the next ten days, two weeks.
So if this rain doesn't stop
in the next two weeks,
we'll have 2,000 acres of
- Nothing.
- [farmer] Bare fields.
- Probably the same, yeah.
- [Jeremy] Same?
- [farmer] Yeah.
- For the first time
Apparently, the second-hand combine
market, is flooded
Pardon the pun. But it is.
People are selling their combines
because they're not gonna have
anything to cut.
But I have been thinking, the risk
and the stress and all of the worry
about the weather and the prices
and so on,
is it not just easier to say,
"Sod it, I'll put the entire farm
into a Sustainable Farming Incentive,
SFI, scheme, government scheme?"
That is exactly where we were
a month ago.
With the scheme, we've got
an agreed price that we're all gonna get
from a crop
that's not being used for human food,
but we know where we're going,
we know where the income's coming from.
- Yeah.
- You can keep your bills being paid.
To keep going.
75% of our farm is going into
- [Jeremy] Schemes.
- Yeah, a scheme.
- What are we? 10?
- Yeah.
- [Jeremy] 10 or 15.
- [Kaleb] Yeah, 10%.
[farmer] We're only probably 10%.
But that means if 10% of the land
is being taken out
of food production this year,
and we've got this weather
Yeah, it's how much
is actually gonna be left fallow.
I mean, there's going to be
a shortage of wheat and barley.
- There is.
- Yeah.
[Jeremy] And ultimately,
people have to eat.
Exactly.
Indeed.
[soft music]
[Jeremy] Seven days
before Charlie's planting deadline,
the rain finally stopped.
But, the fields were still
far too wet to plant anything in them.
So I went off to wade through
a backlog of paperwork.
[Jeremy softly] God Almighty.
[Jeremy] And that's when Charlie called,
from a hundred years ago.
[Charlie on the phone] Erm,
I've been thinking about cultivations
before we drill this durum.
And I think that we should plough it.
What?
Hang on, sorry. I thought
people hadn't ploughed the soils
since about 1926.
[Charlie on the phone]
No, it still has a useful place
[Jeremy] Charlie explained
that ploughing would kill the weeds
without using chemicals,
and, crucially, help dry out
the soil more quickly.
[Charlie on the phone] I think
we'll also get the durum wheat in
in a more timely fashion
between these sort of showers,
rain events.
I'm just thinking
it's probably what's required.
- Right, so, ploughing.
- [Charlie on the phone] Ploughing.
[soft acoustic music]
[Jeremy] Not knowing anything
about ploughing,
I immediately rented
the biggest one I could find.
And that was great
but it came with an instruction manual
written in gibberish.
"Calculation of minimum
ballasting value at front,
GV min,
for rear-mounting implement.
GV min equals GHX,
bracket, C plus D, brackets,
dash TVXB plus.
If the distance between the tractor's
rear wheels is not to be altered,
it is additionally possible
to reduce the side pull
by laterally adjusting
the three-point"
[Jeremy] Thankfully, at this moment,
the farm manager arrived.
- All right?
- [Jeremy] Are you all right, mate?
- Yeah, not bad. You?
- [Jeremy] I've got a plough.
Charlie says we've gotta plough.
I've been speaking to Charlie
about the ploughing
but I didn't know he was gonna get
this big of a plough.
- [Jeremy] No, I got that.
- [Kaleb] I kinda gathered that!
- Why
- I can't understand the instruction book.
When have you ever read
the instruction book?
Well, no, I know.
[Jeremy] Kaleb conceded
the instruction manual was nonsense.
What?
[Jeremy] So, he offered
to give me a hand.
I've got a vast range of new warning
symbols on the dashboard.
[Kaleb] Well done!
Right, now it's your hoses.
[Kaleb] Can you float them all for me?
- [Jeremy] What?
- Put them into Float.
What do you mean,
"put them in the float"?
- I don't know what you
- Have you put them into Float?
I don't know what that means!
Oh, God
These are your hydraulic spools, yeah?
To float them,
there's a button on the back.
Yeah.
[Kaleb] Pull that button in
and hit that one.
It makes it easier,
then every pipe will go in easy.
To say this is the colour of that
G-Dog!
[Gerald] Yeah!
[Jeremy] He's making even less sense
than you at the minute.
I've got a spade in the back of my van!
He's getting there big time!
[Gerald] When you've had one,
you're always subject to the second one.
It's like digging your garden.
Yeah, that tractor will romp along
with that all right,
don't worry about that.
- Yes.
- [Gerald] Oh, yeah!
[Gerald] He's gotta cut that out, he has!
What's up then?
- [Gerald chuckles]
- [Jeremy] Can you remember
when the last time
anyone ploughed this farm was?
I can remember when that happened.
[speaks indistinctly]
[Gerald] Gazza was playing for Newcastle,
instead of doing what he does
half the time.
- Yeah.
- [Gerald] When you've got a clear thing,
you can do anything with it.
It's never been ploughed with
an eight-furrow before up there anyway.
What's up there, now?
[soft rock music]
[Jeremy] With the plough
attached to the Lambo,
we headed off
to the fields to start work.
[Kaleb] Bottom left. Now press it.
[Jeremy] God,
there's some engineering in that thing.
[Kaleb] Amazing!
[Jeremy] How much do you reckon
that weighs? Five tons?
[Kaleb] Four ton? Yeah.
[Jeremy] And it's gonna be
six inches into the earth.
- [Kaleb] Yeah.
- [Jeremy] That is called a land anchor.
[Kaleb] Yeah.
Now you're gonna see
what a powerful tractor can do.
[Jeremy laughs] Here we go.
Hand throttle engaged.
You're about to see, for the first time,
the true power of the Lamborghini.
[engine roaring]
[Jeremy] I'm ploughing!
Unbelievably wet field.
[Jeremy] Yes!
No!
[Kaleb] I don't think he has
a fucking clue what he's doing.
We may have some wheelspin here.
Kaleb, we've got
a little bit of wheelspin.
[Kaleb] So if I was you,
lift it out the ground.
Try and get out of this wet bit.
[Jeremy] Ready? Here we go.
[chuckling]
Barely noticing its workload.
[Kaleb] Drop the plough down!
Drop it down!
Unbelievable.
You're only skimming the top.
What you normally do to get rid
of the weeds in a field
is you use weed killer.
But that puts chemicals into the soil.
Nobody wants that.
If you plough, you turn the soil over
so that the weeds are deprived
of light and oxygen
and then they die.
So you'd think, "Great, do ploughing."
But if you turn the soil over,
you're releasing the carbon
and then that goes up into the sky
and then Greta Thunberg has a paddy fit.
This is farming.
It's the constant game of Whack-a-mole.
You solve one problem and create another.
Do you want me to produce food for you?
Yes.
So, do you want me to hurt
the sky or the soil?
Those are your choices.
[Jeremy] When I reached
the end of my first run,
Kaleb pointed out that, actually,
I hadn't hurt the sky or the soil.
[Kaleb] That is the shittest bit
of ploughing I've ever seen in my life.
Well, how could I have done it
any differently?
[Kaleb] Drop it in the ground.
Look, you're only skimming the top.
[Jeremy] Obviously,
I'd been incompetent again.
But, Kaleb reckoned
that because the soil was so wet,
we were on a hiding to nothing anyway.
[Kaleb] I think it's way too wet, mate.
That tractor's trying to pull
all them eight furrows, that's an anchor.
- Yes?
- I said, it's a land anchor.
Yeah, through the soil.
- Yes.
- So it needs much more traction.
Yes, which luckily I've got
'cause I've got new tyres on it.
- Yes, you have, but
- 270 horsepower.
But
This is what it was built to do,
would you not agree?
[soft rock music]
[Jeremy] Desperate to prove
that my old friend would save the day,
I went for another run.
Sinking plough.
[Jeremy] Plough. That's good.
[Jeremy] Right, here we go.
Building up revs.
[Jeremy] Come on, mighty Lamborghini.
God, I've got some wheelspin.
A lot of wheelspin.
Come on, you can do it. Come on!
Come on.
[Jeremy] But, with the enormous plough
actually in the soil,
I was going nowhere.
It does not like this bit.
[Jeremy] No, no, no.
[whirring]
Whoa!
[Jeremy] We are struggling here.
I think it's probably too wet.
Shit.
[Jeremy] Drying this field with a plough,
then, had not worked out.
It had simply been too big a job
for even my wonderful old Lambo.
[engine whirring]
[Jeremy] A couple of days later, though,
my new tractor arrived.
[Jeremy] So, I got it down to Fendt,
New Holland, with the levers in it,
and the Case.
[Kaleb] Yeah.
Ta-da!
Ha-ha! Check it out!
Check it out!
[Jeremy] It's a Lamborghini again!
[Jeremy] Our quest
is at an end, isn't it?
[Charlie] So you just went out
and bought this
- [Charlie] How many hours has it done?
- 500.
- [Kaleb] 3,000.
- I meant 3,000.
[Jeremy] But hang on, look.
- [Lisa gasping] That's so tiny!
- [Jeremy] Really tiny.
[Jeremy] It's the perfect site.
- I can see that.
- But now this bloody picnic site.
[rock music]