Clarkson's Farm

Have all the numbers arrived yet?

Yeah, Bee Juice Honey.

Welcome back to Clarkson's Farm,

where everything is as we left it.

Nearly.

It's gonna stay there for a couple of hours.

- Which one? -This one.

Erm, so...

yeah, in a couple of hours, we'll take it off.

A few weeks earlier, I'd tried to open my pub

while simultaneously doing the harvest.

Power cut, fans are dead, no gas.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Fucking piece of...

And it had all been a bit too stressful.

- All right, mate? - Oh, you're back!

- I'm back and not dead. -How are you?

The Reaper will have to wait.

It was fucking close, though.

Cor, you did look ill.

I was worried, I have been worried. I've been properly worried actually.

It's good to see you. What did they say?

-It wasn't a heart attack. -Okay, that's good.

What did the tingling in the arm mean, then?

That was just coincidental. I was scrolling on my phone.

Yeah.

If I hadn't have been doing that,

I wouldn't have got pins and needles in my arm.

And if I hadn't have got pins and needles, I wouldn't have thought:

"Hang on, am I having a heart problem?"

I wouldn't have gone to hospital.

Anyway, they put me in this, like, big Polo ring

and they found I've got really bad coronary artery problems.

-So you've got three arteries... -Coming out the heart?

No, that feed your heart with blood to keep it pumping.

One of them, totally blocked.

One of them looked like something dangling from the roof of a cave

in the Peak District.

And one of them had got so clogged up it had had to form, like, branches.

So my heart wasn't getting any blood.

And I said:

"How close was I to a heart attack?"

And he went: "Days?"

Oh fuck.

They put a camera up my arm

and it crossed my chest and into my heart.

-Could you feel it? -Yeah, you can feel it.

And you can see your own heart on a TV screen. Then they put...

Because they were gonna have to do open-heart surgery, they thought.

Yeah.

Then they went up and they realised they could actually mend it.

So they got the Dyno-Rod out, shoved that in.

-"Dyno-Rod"! -Well, it was!

And they had, like, hammers, chisels, cameras.

And then they put, like, the stents, which are Brillo pads, in,

to stretch it out. So I should be as good as new.

Oh good. So what have they said, though?

I can't drive for a week.

Okay.

And...

no manual labour of any sort,

I can't stretch myself, for six weeks.

-Six weeks? -Yeah.

So no on the farm really, then?

-Cause, I mean, everything on the farm... -No, no, I know. I can't.

-I can't move, I can't do anything. -Oh, that's a shame.

Well...

Erm, I'm gonna see Lisa. Erm...

Yeah. I'm gonna just feed the cows and bed 'em up.

All right, see you in a bit.

I wasn't the only one who'd been in the wars.

Poor old Sansa.

Got pyometra at the weekend

and had to have an emergency hysterectomy.

You're never going to be able to have puppies, are you?

She could, however, eat whatever she liked,

whereas my diet was now in the iron grip of the doctor...

and Lisa.

Thing is, though...

That's cottage cheese!

Urgh, can't eat that shit.

That's disgusting.

What is that?

Greek yoghurt. It's better for your microbes in your stomach.

Oh fucking... What do you mean "wheat" yoghurt?

"Greek"!

Why would anybody eat Greek anything?

Because you're meant to for your stomach. It's better for you!

I'm not eating knob cheese.

What is that?

-What is it? - Kale.

Oh fuck...

I promise you, that is gonna be... I'm going to cook it up.

Wow, that was really bitter and horrible.

We farm beef,

we farm lamb,

we farm pork,

it's what we do for a living here and I can't eat any of it.

You can. Maybe once a month or twice a month

you can have a delicious lamb or a steak. Delicious.

-I can't! -You can!

I can't! Doctor Lucy said I can't.

-That's not true. -And she said I can't drink

-'cause my liver's fucked. -Well, your liver will recover.

-What, by tomorrow? -No, not by tomorrow.

Well then, what's the point?

What do you mean "what's the point"? Don't be such a petulant little child.

Just get healthier and then you can live life again in,

you know, bits and pieces.

You know, you were in fifth gear the whole time.

-Fifth? -Go down to two-and-a-half gear.

-Fifth? Are you in 1984? -Seventh.

-You were in seventh gear the whole time. -Ten...

Mustangs have ten speeds now.

Okay, you were in twelfth gear the whole time.

I'm not eating kale!

I'm gonna put loads of chilli and spring onion.

It'll be delicious.

But vegetables are an accompaniment to meat, we know that.

- Not for you anymore. -No, I know.

With the car keys confiscated,

my daily activities were limited to gentle dog walks

in the golden glow of Autumn.

This was a good way of relaxing,

unless I bumped into my sheeps,

who remained as wilfully disobedient as ever.

I put them in this field 'cause I want them to graze all this long grass

and all they're doing is eating the grass from the path

that I mowed

so I can walk the dogs.

Look. Eat the long...

No, I've already mowed this bit!

Go and eat over there.

No, don't! Go and eat this.

Look.

- Are you talking to sheep? -Yeah.

So there's, like, all of the food in the world there, hardly any food here:

"Right, we'll go and eat this." And then, of course, they shit on it.

So if someone gave you a glass of wine

or they gave you a bunch of grapes and said:

"Here, make the glass of wine," you'd just drink the glass of wine.

That's like giving them a bunch of grapes. They've gotta search.

Don't talk to me about wine.

The problem I had, though, is that to keep up

with the pub's incessant demands for more meat,

we needed more sheeps.

So a week later, I bought another flock.

And this pleased Kaleb enormously.

What the fuck has he done now?

Have you not learnt anything in the last five years?

Yeah.

When you get a pub, you need ten sheeps a week,

fat lambs, a week, a week.

So I've had to get more.

I'm literally surrounded with something I hate the most. I stood here,

-there's sheep here... -Yeah.

There's sheep over there by the farm shop, if you see them, over there.

Sheep by the house.

-And sheep by the house. - I know.

And these, this is my genius,

these are EasyCare sheep. That's what they're called, EasyCare.

Mate, I'm gonna break this to you.

-What? -No sheep is easy to care for.

These ones are.

Let me just explain the details, if I may?

Go for it.

They don't need shearing.

Their hair falls out by itself. So they don't get maggots.

- All right. -That's number one.

They're very, very easy to breed

and they lamb very simply.

So you get good lambing,

very low maintenance.

Okay, think of it this way.

Lamborghini.

Very difficult things to drive and own in the olden days.

Audi then come along,

blend Audi and Lamborghini together in the Aventador

and you had an easy-care Lamborghini.

- Was it easy care, though? -Well, more easy than the Countach.

I then introduced Kaleb to John and Louise,

who'd sold me the EasyCare sheeps.

- Hello! -Hi, there!

-How are you? Are you okay? -Hey! How are you?

In the hope they could talk him round.

So Kaleb doesn't like sheep, yes?

No, he doesn't.

But I've been trying to convince him that these are sensible sheep.

Very sensible. Very sensible sheep indeed.

And they lamb really easily.

It's basically a wedge-shaped sheep with a long neck.

So what it does is it sort of... The lambs will just dive out.

-So what... -What? 'Cause it's pointy?

Because, yeah, it's more pointy.

So the lamb is like an arrow?

Yes, something like that, yeah.

Listen, you're in for a good adventure with these sheep.