Clarkson's Farm

A couple of months ago, someone mentioned Clarkson's Farm to us. I had never heard of Jeremy Clarkson but knowing he is doing pretty much what we're doing--learning a whole new way of life--we decided to watch it. In one way, it felt like watching my own life, so at first I didn't find it exactly riveting. However, I very much enjoyed the sheep episode, given our personal experience with sheep, and Jeremy is quite funny, too, especially in his interactions with his helper Caleb, who had never left the Cotswalds before working for Jeremy.. So we kept coming back.

The more I've watched, I've come to appreciate the show more for two specific reasons.

The first is that Jeremy teaches his audience a great deal in a fun way, about how much really goes into farming. He continually has failures and can laugh at himself. One man recently told me that Jeremy often fails 'on purpose.' He thinks of another way of doing things, one that he knows will fail, and uses that as a teaching moment. One such instance is when he decided he'd plow the fields his own way. We learned that rows are plowed very carefully according to the width of the implement behind the tractor and if not done that way, mess up a later procedure.

The other reason I've come to really appreciate the show is that I think Jeremy is doing a great service for farmers everywhere. Especially as we move into the second season, we see more and more how every single thing Jeremy tries to do runs into paperwork, permits, red tape, fees, the need for approval, council meetings...and on and on. He has a great deal of money and can afford all of this and afford people to help him while he's dealing with red tape. But I'm sure most people, like me, are asking, How does the average farmer ever survive? 

The necessary corollaries to that question are:

1. What happens to the availability and price of food as more farmers go out of business because they simply can no longer afford the mountain of government regulations under which they've been buried, and 
2. Certainly the people making so many regulations controlling every tiny aspect of everything know this is going to drive some farmers out of business and thus impact availability and price of food--so why are they doing it?

One example is Jeremy's attempt to open a restaurant that sells all locally produced food. It gives not only him, but a dozen of his neighbors, a great business opportunity so they can continue to farm. One woman in particular has lost half her dairy herd to an outbreak of bovine tuberculosis. To be able to sell her milk at Jeremy's proposed restaurant would have been a lifeline for her. But after getting feedback and reports from multiple groups and organizations, he was denied permission.

On a broader scale, the lesson is that some governing bodies seem to delight in putting people in catch-22s. This was highlighted in the episode Badgering, in which Jeremy learns that 

1. your cows must be killed if they develop bovine tuberculosis
2. badgers can spread bTB to your cows
3. you are not allowed to kill badgers even if you know they have TB

Thus, English law has the farmers in a bind. Their livelihood must be destroyed if TB is found. The source of that TB cannot be destroyed. Thus, they are legally prevented from protecting their cattle. The lives of badgers have put over the welfare of the farmers and their cows. These are some of the very real problems farmers (and many other people) face as a result of laws, and Jeremy is doing a great service by highlighting these issues.

In other news, I am currently working on 220 BC, the sequel to 221 BC, which I co-wrote with Kendall Price. I'm deep in ancient Egypt, working the history of that year, Hannibal, Alexandria, and the Ptolemys into a race for twelve magical amulets that can destroy the world in the wrong hands.

I've just re-read and summarized the first book and am now back to my next read-through on the sequel, looking for consistency between the two books in addition to continuing to flesh out the dastardly doings of the evil Ptolemy IV (or is he a victim of the dastardly doings of others?) and filling in the story of the attempt to rescue Hannibal's sister, Sophonisba, who is slated to be offered as a sacrifice if Hannibal can't stop it. 

When I'm done with this draft, it'll be back to the IV Leake Mysteries and the two volumes of our memoir on moving from suburbs to self-sufficiency.

 ~ ~ ~

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