The life of a farmer
By Mat Cole, Greenwell Farm
It is always interesting to me how our industry is portrayed in the media and we are all used to the rather dull, scripted portrayal of the countryside presented by Countryfile on lazy Sunday evenings. It has some good stuff, but to be honest I don’t watch it and if I do the only good bit is Adam Henson’s own farm. I don’t think Countryfile is honest with the viewers and presents a simplistic, greenwashed agenda with very little balance or understanding of the real issues and complexities facing our farmers, the countryside and the rural communities of the UK.
We then have the polarised portrayal of a farmer in fiction on television with the grass chewing, cider drinking, cheese rolling, down-trodden farmer at one end of the scale and on the other, the Edward Horton, Range Rover driving, shot gun carrying, tweed wearing, large farmer, landowner living in the manor house, owning half the county! There are characters in our communities, loved and loathed in equal measure, but on the whole most farmers I know are hard-working people trying their hardest to run a small family business to make ends meet like everybody else - but I suppose they don’t make good characters in a drama or comedy!
One of the best TV shows in recent years has been This Farming Life, which follows a group of Scottish farmers through the seasons. It is much more honest, showing how complex their lives are and the infinite variety of challenges that can be faced every day! It is a real eye opener and a credit to the makers. We then have Channel 5’s offering, Our Yorkshire Farm, following the life of Clive and Amanda Owen and their nine children. It is easy on the eye and sees numerous small children frolicking around the farm in the beautiful Yorkshire dales being very helpful and seemingly oblivious to health and safety. They put my boys to shame and I hope that sometimes they can be difficult once the cameras stop! Again, a good watch and going by the amount of new machinery around the place, the farm is doing very well out of it and good on them.
But my most recent fancy is Clarkson’s Farm. It features Jeremy Clarkson and his Cotswold farm. He decides to run his thousand-acre arable and sheep farm on his own once his farm manager retires. It is full of capers and a great team of staff who play their roles in his circus very well. It is very entertaining in a Top Gear sort of way and he holds no punches on how hard it is to run a modern farming business and make money. But you can also see how much he has enjoyed the journey; it is honest and it has shone a light on our industry in a different and innovative way – and I laughed out loud a lot!
I suppose in our small community on and around Dartmoor I am trying to provide a window into our farming lives in my own way by writing to you all every other month. It is a tough life. I spend far too much time looking for things I don’t want to find, the weather can be rubbish, prices rise and fall, cost always go up, but I love the job I do. Many smarter folk than me spend their whole lives working hard to afford to buy a small farm and run it in their retirement. It does not escape me that I am living the dream!