- Jeremy Clarkson embarks on his path towards muddy misery and potential ruin by running his own farm.
- Jeremy Clarkson embarks on his path towards muddy misery and potential ruin by running his own farm. Jeremy has bought a large country farm (In Cotswold) and decides to plant wheat and barley. In september 2019, he goes shopping for a tractor. Patrick Edwards is the owner of the dealership. Patrick suggests a basic and sturdy model for 7500 quid, but Jeremy is not impressed by the 45 horsepower engine. The most powerful one is at 65 horsepower. He finally buys a Lamborghini R8. weighs 10 tonnes. 40 forward and 40 reverse gears. Lisa Hogan is his girlfriend and makes fun of him as the tractor is just too big. Charlie Ireland is his land agent. He tells Jeremy that the tractor has the wrong hitch (its from Germany).
Charlie explains that Jeremy spent 40K on the tractor, he needs a cultivator (25K), a new drill (50K), sprayer (60K), trailer (10K), Blades (62K), fertilizers and stuff (70K). quarter of a million pounds just to get started :) To save money, Charlie takes Jeremy to a farm sale. Jeremy doesn't know any of the equipment and quips that the death rate in Agriculture is 20 times more than in all the sectors combined. Jeremy spends 82K on the auctions.
Next, Preparing 235 acres for planting (wheat and barley) in 2 weeks. Plus 200 acres of prep for spring planting. This means Cultivations, spraying and cultivation & drilling. Plus Jeremy has to learn how to do everything. Fertilizer arrives, but Jeremy is not allowed to store it in a barn with hay in it. So, first he has to move all the hay out. Then he has to unload 46 bags of fertilizer from the trucks. It takes 5 hrs to unload all fertilizers and seeds.
Clarkson doesn't know how to operate any of the equipment and calls the local farmers union for help. They send Georgia Craig. She helps Jeremy attach the cultivator to the tractor and she makes Jeremy go up and down his tractor many time to accomplish one tiny task. Jeremy starts cultivating, and actually likes it. He doesn't like the 3 point turn at the end of every run, and decides to do a series of U turns and then just cultivate the bits he missed. But Jeremy cant drive straight and has to go over the ground many times to cultivate all of it. Jeremy has 14 days to do 435 acres and he did 10 acres on the first day. Jeremy calls Kaleb Cooper, the tractor driver who worked for the previous farmer. Kaleb has a contracting business on the side, with a 1.5 tonne digger, 50 heads of sheep and 120 heads of chicken. He's 21.
With Kalen and Jeremy operating in shifts, the pace picked up. Deadline is Oct 7th. But rain intervenes on Sep 25th and 26th. Plus the cultivator broke down and needed a day to fix. Sun finally comes out on Oct 4th. Then the tractor broke and all the manuals are in German or Italian. Another day is lost. The next day they figure a lever was knocked into neutral and that prevented the tractor from moving. Meanwhile the seeds have started to grow inside the bags. So they decide to plant the seeds, even in fields that were not cultivated yet. That means lower yield and lower profits, but it is better for the environment. Jeremy cocks up again and gets all the tram lines wrong, that leaves no space between the crops to get the sprayers in. Jeremy gets an earful from Kaleb. Somehow the planting gets done. But then beetles invade a field and eat almost 10 acres of it. Loss of 4000 pounds. Then it started to rain again on Oct 10th and didn't stop for 6 weeks. The entire country was flooded. Jeremy's farm is 700 feet above sea level and drains well, but even then it was a mushy quagmire.
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