Jeremy Clarkson who is “worth £55 million” has revealed his “sleepless nights” as he struggled to make money from his farm.
The former Top Gear presenter turned farmer has admitted that he has had to grow as much mustard, blackberries and mushrooms as possible to make money.
The 64-year-old was forced to close his restaurant on Diddly Squat Farm by the local council after being served with an enforcement notice.
Residents in the surrounding area complained that Jeremy’s establishment caused heavy traffic.
Jeremy’s new series of Clarkson’s Farm shows him investing in new ways to try and turn a profit on the farm.
In the first episode of the latest season, he was forced to sell 13 cows to make some money.
“Everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong,” Jeremy admitted.
“On top of all of this there was the pretty little restaurant that we opened earlier in the summer to sell the food we’d grown and reared on the farm.”
“But after just six weeks, the council served us with an enforcement notice telling us it had to close.”
“With the restaurant shut down, we could no longer afford to keep all of the cows.”
After the success of the first two seasons, Clarkson’s Farm is back for its third series.
The new series sees Jeremy and his colleague Kaleb enter a competition to see who can make the most money from the unfarmed land.
“It was a case of, can we make five pounds here and a bit of money there,” Jeremy said.
“I started harvesting blackberries, planting mustard, and using tiny little pockets of unfarmed land around the place.”
“We harvested the nettles which normally are just a nuisance and tried to make them into soup.”
“I got pigs into the woods: woods are normally empty of cash, and no money comes from them, so I just did little bits and bobs.”
“Last year before the harvest we had to lay out £108,000 on diesel, fertiliser sprays, and the seed itself.”
“That’s fine if the weather is okay because you’re going to make that money back. But you have a hell of a lot of sleepless nights when you know that one rainstorm could wreck the lot.”
“I’ve noticed that farmers are quite sanguine; they go, ‘Well, you can’t control the weather’ and they sort of roll with it, but I’m too Yorkshire for that.”
“I lie in bed after spending £100,000 hoping the weather’s good and, guess what?”
“The weather was absolutely terrible, all year, every single month.”
