05x07 - Sickening

[bunniefuu]

The FarmDroid
had now been set to work

replanting the onion and beetroot field.

But with the sky still stubbornly blue,

I wasn't sure I could see the point.

So this planting
is all very well,

but pointless if it doesn't rain.

Yeah.

So, it's reckoned

ten thousand litres of water
over a hectare

gives you the equivalent
of one millimetre of rain.

And it's 24 millimetres

you need every week.

You've never seen a James Bond film,

but I've never seen anyone
as captivated...

- It's fascinating.
- ...as you are by that.

- Could you not just watch that all day?
- No...

I mean, yeah, five minutes and...
But you... Look at his face!

It's really...

- You love that machine, don't you?
- Yeah, I do.

What gets me is
it put 200,000 seeds in yesterday

and it knows
where every single one of them is.

- That's unbelievable.
- So,

when it's finished doing this, OK?

Oh no, I've lost him again.
He's gone back to his CornHub.

- CornHub!
- CornHub, that's what he's watching!

Since there was nothing
we could do about the lack of rain,

we got on with other jobs.

Kaleb started
mowing and baling the grassland

to make silage.

Eighteen bales so far.

More food for the cows
throughout the winter months.

Then it was time to move
the EasyCare sheep and their lambs

to a new pasture.

- How are you doing, Jeremy?
- Hi, Jez.

- You well?
- Yeah, good to see you . How are you?

And to help us, our
sheep-farming neighbours had come round.

You tell me where you want me, Jeremy.

Not that Jeremy.
The one that knows what he's doing.

Which meant we had the treat
of watching their sheepdog at work.

Stand! Stand!

Here they come.

Look, here's the dog!
Look, the dog's doing it!

Look at the dog!

I just love watching sheepdogs.

Midge! Stand! Stand!

Midge, stand!

Stand!

Midge! Stand! That'll do. That'll do.

- Wow!
- Midge, that'll do!

Stand. Stand!

And the sheep are now corralled.

They look stonking little lambs,
though, don't they?

Oh the best, I have, really.

I can't believe...

You're a committed sheep farmer

who's never had EasyCare before

and you always hated sheep

and both of you are going:

"Well, why don't we all have EasyCare?"

It was a good decision you made here.

- I wish it was...
- Bloody hell!

- You wish it was your decision?
- No, it was.

Do you know, it was...
Countryfile.

Oh, f*ck me!

- Up! Up!
- Go on, in you go.

Having loaded them
into the trailer...

Baaa!

...we took them
to their new field

which the government had made us
fill with eco plants

that humans can't eat,
but sheep can.

Come on, lambas!

- Come on!
- Oh my God, that is glorious!

I know!

Look at this!
They've never seen grass this long.

- That is amazing. So lush.
- Unbelievable, isn't it?

What a sight.

They're gonna be the size
of Zeppelins those sheep.

What's a Zeppelin? Like a zebra?

f*ck off.

You know what a Zeppelin is.

Oh, it's an ant... it's a... it's a an...
it's an antelope.

With the sheeps
happily grazing away,

I set off with
Diddly Squat's resident zoologist

back to the yard.

What I'm gonna do is just
check my mirrors before reversing.

I find, I don't know, it kinda helps.

If somebody's
parked their car behind you,

you just have a look in the mirrors,
just check it out

and make sure there's nothing...

- I'm never gonna live this down, am I?
- No.

No, he wasn't.

Because the day before,

Kaleb had given me
the absolute best of sticks

to beat him with.

Bad job, innit?

- That's the producer's Land Rover.
- I know.

I wonder how its windscreen's
got broken and all the front smashed up?

It must have been a pheasant.

Must've been a pheasant.

- Is this you too?
- He's done everything.

- How?
- I was baling, it was parked over there,

didn't see it in the mirror

'cause it wasn't there beforehand
and then reversed into it.

But when I reversed into the barn,
you were really cross with me.

Well, yeah, obviously.

Look, there's that barn over there.

You've done that barn over there.
You've done the barn over there

and the gale break
on the right-hand side.

I didn't do that.

Basically,
I employ Kaleb Cooper Contracting

who come round to the farm
and smash everything up.

You talk so much sh*t,
it's unbelievable.

It's so much fun catching him out.

A few days later,

a June morning arrived bearing gifts.

♪ Only love ♪

♪ Can bring the rain ♪

♪ That falls like tears ♪

♪ From on high ♪

♪ Love ♪

♪ Reign o'er me ♪

♪ Rain on me ♪

♪ I can't sleep and I lay and I think ♪

♪ The night is hot and black as ink ♪

♪ Oh God,
I need a drink of cool, cool rain ♪

"Cool, cool rain"!

That's what we got now!

Cool, cool rain!

It feels good, doesn't it?

And to keep our spirits up,

we decided to release Endgame
back into the fields

to join the rest of the herd.

Endgame, give us a hand.

- Yeah, push, buddy.
- Come on!

- Push!
- You can do it!

Go on, buddy.

- Look at him.
- Looks f*cking good. Watch out...

He looks smart, doesn't he?
He's done well over the winter.

Yeah.

Mate, I have to say,
we are f*cking good at our jobs.

If there are prizes

for loading a bull into a trailer,

I think we've just won gold.

He's still the best animal on the farm
by a country mile.

You can keep Richard Ham,

you can keep everything:
he's just tremendous.

Hey! I'm gonna do something
I haven't done for months. Ready?

What's that?

Windscreen wipers.
I forgot what they were for.

Hey, kids, daddy's home!

There's palpable excitement
from these cows and calves.

- Ready?
- Yeah.

Oh, hello.

Oh, look at him. He's just
beside himself, running with his kids.

I love it when a calf's tail
goes up in the air, like "I am fast."

It's like a spoiler.

Erm...

f*cking hell...

You know we've been ringed here?

Hey?

They're just running round.

And there they go,
sheltering from the rain in the trees!

What a happy day: it's raining,

- and look how happy Endgame is.
- Yeah!

We prayed
the rain would continue,

but the next day...

normal service was resumed.

And because there was still nothing
I could do about that,

I decided to busy myself
with a distraction,

a pet project I'd wanted to do for years.

One of the things
that's depressed me a little bit

since I started this farming malarkey is,

as you walk around the place,

you see quite a few songbirds,

you know, yellowhammers and goldfinches
and sparrows and so on, but...

you don't very often see

any traditional farmland birds.

And I was talking about this the other
day to a girl in the next village

who is a very keen birdwatcher.

And she said:
"OK, well, look, I'll come round

and let's see what's going on."

The problem with birdwatchers,
though, is that, erm,

they're like the army:

they never want to meet you
at about eleven.

or "let's have a spot of lunch
and then get cracking".

It's always: "Right, I'll see you
at o'crickey o'clock."

And so, at 4 a.m.,
I met the birdwatcher, Hannah,

who was already excited
having heard a bustle in the hedgerow.

I know loads of people across
the country come to Diddly Squat.

But this guy has travelled
eight thousand miles

to get here to this thicket.

- And hope...
- What is he?

A Garden Warbler. Oooh...

Birders get really crazy about Warblers

because they're so pretty. They kind of
sound like Mariah Carey on fast-forward.

A Garden Warbler?

- From South Africa.
- South Africa?

Yeah. And he'll come back next year.

Isn't he about that big?

Oh yeah, they're really small,
and they're dull,

but they sound really cool.

There's also a Blackcap, another Warbler.

What's this?
Is this your list of things you've heard?

Yeah. Oh, that's a Wren.

Like a pneumatic machine g*n.

From what I can gather so far,
this isn't birdwatching,

this is bird listening.

Yeah, this is a singing survey.

That's not its technical name.

I know, though.
Ah! My Merlin bird app.

Let's go over there because
the Garden Warblers hang out here.

That bird...

that's a Skylark.

When it goes yellow that's 'cause it's
heard that bird at that precise moment.

That's what it's said so far.

It's this one.

{\an8}There,
Garden Warbler, she was right!

She doesn't even have the app.

And so I'd love...
I've always said I want to get that...

Oh! Listen, listen, listen!

Can you hear the lorry reversing?

It's a bird,
but it sounds like a lorry reversing!

- That?
- Yeah.

That's a Greater Whitethroat.

{\an8}Oh, Greater Whitethroat.

{\an8}Greater Whitethroat!

{\an8}faster than the Merlin bird app.

Do you do it when you're just walking
along and you're constantly tuned into?

Oh, look, Skylarks.

{\an8}Erm...

{\an8}Well, I can't see any.

How did you learn to do this?

Erm, I spent a long time living on my own
in the bush in Africa

where I had no friends
and I had a bird in my hair,

- and I just tuned into all the birds, so.
- You had what?

Erm, I just tuned
into the birds because...

- No, you had a bird in your hair.
- I had a bird in my hair, yeah.

I found a little nestling bird

and his nest had been blown down.

His whole flock had abandoned him,
he would have died otherwise.

So I thought, OK, fine,

I'll try and be surrogate mother
to this tiny little Finch.

And it worked, but it meant
that I was his whole world

and so he lived on my body
for all of his time awake,

and when he went to sleep and napped

he would make
little nests out of my hair.

And this went on for three months.

So I hung out
with this little bird in my hair.

What happened to it in the end, then?
Did he just fly away?

No, well,
I reintegrated him into his flock

by stalking his family every day
for twelve hours for two months with him,

so that he learnt how to be a wild finch.

And in that time I had to tune
into all the landscape sounds

because a lot of them were predatory
sounds that would have k*lled him

and also snakes and things
that would have k*lled me.

And so I learnt all the sounds
and I got addicted.

I then explained
why I needed her expertise.

I don't think we're badly off
for songbirds here.

- You see quite a few.
- Yeah.

- It's farmland birds.
- Yeah.

So I'm super interested in
the farmland birds that are here all year

and that's why I wanna go
and have a look at that hedge.

What would you call
"farmland" birds?

Lapwings and Curlews,
obviously, but what else?

Skylarks, Linnets,
Corn Buntings, Yellowhammers.

And how many of them are endangered?

Oh, there are thirteen
on the red list right now.

- Out of six...
- Out of, like, twenty.

So, I mean,
most of them are on the red list.

And it's not just that
they're endangered: they're massively.

So Turtle Dove:


- Oh yeah.
- Grey Partridge: 92%.

And the point is,
the reason why they're on the red list,

is because of the change in
farming practices, the intensification,


that has gone in the last seventy years.

They are starving to death in the winter
because there isn't enough natural food.

But I'm sure there's something we can do.

Also, for example,
one obvious thing is...

Oh, I just heard a Yellowhammer.

- What, while you were talking?
- Yeah.

We then headed
to another part of the farm,

with Hannah drowning me
in trivia about swifts.

Their first maiden flight:
three years, no landing.

- Three years?
- Three years.

They mate in the sky, they eat
in the sky, they sleep in the sky.

- How can you sleep and...
- Oh, wait, look.

Can we just stop the car,
'cause this is like the most insane...

So she's just ordered me to stop the car

and literally leapt out
while it was still moving.

You've got a really special bird!

- What is it?
- I've never heard one in real life.

- What is it?
- It's a Corn Bunting.

This is like
the most exciting thing ever.

And almost as though it wanted
to give Hannah an extra treat,

this Corn Bunting made
an actual appearance.

- There.
- Oh, yes!

- That's a Corn Bunting.
- A Corn Bunting!

That is so cool!

We concluded this happy tour
by visiting a field we'd given over

to one of the government's
environmental schemes.

So this is rye grass.
This was part of the scheme.

Kaleb's... Look, he's been along
and he's making silage.

- Oh f*ck.
- What?

Well, that's bloody awful.

I might vomit in your car.

What's he done wrong?

So Skylarks
and other birds

will nest in the crops.

So... urgh.

If you'd just waited another two weeks,
he wouldn't have k*lled any of them.

But there's a very good chance,
if you silage too soon

you k*ll all the chicks.

He said

if he cuts it now

and then makes this into silage
to feed the cows in the winter,

by doing it now,
the grass will have a chance to regrow

and he'll get two cuts
of silage in the year.

Yeah, great, lucky him.

Now we'll just have
squashed chicks instead of living ones.

Erm...

he cut this yesterday.
He's gonna bag it today I think.

So would there have been chicks
in here, or eggs,

- this time of year?
- There'll be chicks.

- And he's minced them?
- Yeah.

Look, there's a Skylark right there,

probably crying over its dead family.

Right...

The next field due to be cut
for silage was the GS4 field

we'd put the sheeps in.

And because I could see
both points of view,

Hannah and I went there the next day,

after the sheeps had been moved,

to intercept Kaleb.

- Hell of an evening, though, isn't it?
- It's beautiful.

I mean, just...

If we weren't talking
about the mullering of a red-listed,

threatened-with-extinction bird,
it would be a really relaxing evening.

- I'm doing my best here.
- I know!

Imagine if you were a baby Skylark
with that coming towards you.

What, Kaleb?

Hannah, this is Kaleb.

Hannah, lovely to meet you.

Hello.

With us all gathered together,
I called the meeting to order.

Right, you two.

Erm, case for the prosecution,
case for the defence.

Judge.

You want to go out there
literally now and cut it.

- And you say if he goes out there now...
- Mullering.

- He's going to decapitate...
- Twenty-four chicks.

From the Skylark's point of view,
they have an average of four eggs

and there are probably six nests
with the Corn Bunting,

so that's 24 chicks, let's say.

- In this field?
- In this 21 hectares, in all of it.

So when would it be safe
to silage this field?

Four and a half weeks after they stopped
laying and started incubating,

which would be about the 16th of July.

- Okay, so seventeen days.
- Yeah.

Can you wait 17 days
before silaging this?

No, not really.

I'll tell you for why.

The nutritional value
for the food now is great

because, of course, it's green and so on.

If we wait seventeen days,

with this heat here,
it's gonna die off and become half dead.

So therefore,
we lose all the nutritional value.

We're gonna be short on cow food.
We're already short now.

We might have to start feeding
our winter resources now

'cause we're so short on grass.

So you've already mullered
the rye grass Skylarks,

so you kinda have to make the decision
whether you want to actively contribute

to the decimation of farmland birds...

No, no, it's what the bloody hell to do.

I'm sorry, you want to go tonight,

and it's already half past seven.

So...

I've gotta make a decision.

- I've got a compromise.
- I've had a... Oh, what?

So, put the chain on.

- What's the chain?
- So it's like

on my mower, on my front mower,
you have like a chain hanging beforehand

which is about two metres out.

So therefore when it rattles, yeah,

before it gets to that nest
or that bird...

Yeah, but if they're only chicks?

Yeah, the chicks will probably die,
but the mums and dads will...

- Yeah, so then...
- OK, so the chain isn't going to solve...

It's more for deers,
to be honest with you.

I'm just trying to focus on the Skylarks,
'cause I know they're here.

'Cause you can hear them.

- Can't see 'em now.
- Well, you can hear them.

- We...
- Can't hear 'em.

- I can just hear...
- Look, there's one there, right there!

- Singing right there.
- That's a Skylark. Look at it.

Yeah, 'cause its babies are over there,
look, not in here.

- All right...
- Anyway, the point is...

So the chain isn't going
to save the babies.

So the most important thing is cut higher
than you might normally do,

so five inches or twelve centimetres.

I don't think I can, though,
'cause the bed still lays...

I don't think
that's gonna able the chicks to survive.

The bed of the mower
goes across the floor.

- All I'm doing is doing this.
- What's the bed? I don't know what it is.

The bed of the mower.

So look, if we go to the back...

Kaleb then took us over
to show us what he meant.

This is what sits on the ground,
look. That's what I'm saying.

- That's a skid.
- Well, where are the blades?

Here, look.

This spins round, right?

And then,
so it slices the little bird's head off

and then the rest of the bird is smeared
into the ground.

- Like a smash burger.
- It might go underneath it.

Why can't you just lift
the whole friggin' thing up?

'Cause it's not how it works.
It's designed to sit on the floor.

Can you push this up so it's five inches?

- No.
- Why not?

Because that's the stabiliser.

This proves how sh*t it is for birds
if you're nesting and you're up to here.

What I'm saying
is every single mower's like this.

Yeah, that's why there's
a national population decline of 63%

because everybody's mowing like this.

What I can do, you see, yeah?

These go down, and you've got
that little bit there, look, you see?

This is like
a f*cking sh*t show.

But I'll just mow it.
It won't take me two minutes.

- You're saying: "They'll die quickly."
- No, no, they won't.

It was time to end the arguing
and make a decision.

I'm gonna say, do not cut this tonight.

- Yeah?
- Yeah, yeah.

I'll see if I can come up
with a plan.

f*ck.

I needed a plan
that would save the Skylarks

without hurting the farm.

But there was no time
to come up with one,

because the next day,

we had other bird business to attend to.

Come on. This way.

Have you ever herded geese?

- Weirdly, no.
- I haven't either.

Lisa had bought
another gaggle of geeses

for her Goose Night endeavours
at the pub.

And this lot now needed moving down
to their new living quarters.

They really do walk
in a funny way.

I feel like I'm Amish.
You know what I mean?

How do you know
what an Amish person is?

I just watch 'em build barns.
They're really fast.

That is beautiful.

Can we do this every day?

- I'd like to do this.
- This is fun.

Not far now, geeses.

Geese, geese, geese!

There we go, look at that!

And there they are. They've got
their shade, their water, their house.

Santa's grotto.

I know. Has it still got
that bit of thing in the middle of it?

No!

So last year I just used half.

This year,
I'm gonna have to use all of it.

Oh, for God's sake.

Mother of Christ, Jeremy,
who left these in here?

What?

We've got Mother of Christ, literally.

Is this some joke?
Ha-ha, very funny.

No, it's not a joke, honestly.
I'd, honestly...

Oh, sh*t, I've broken their ramp.

Yeah, you need to keep going
on the fat jabs.

Yeah, the Mounjaro ramp.

I think there's enough for it
not to be hobby farming.

- Er, well.
- Borderline, but.

Goose Night did well last year,
so it's not hobby farming, I don't think.

Kaleb then headed off
thinking the job was complete,

but, er, it wasn't.

Oh sh*t, the fence is off.

Oh f*ck, no, no, no.

- Lisa, quickly.
- Geese, geese, geese!

- That way. Go on!
- Come on!

We've got them. Now...

Oh, my God.

- No. Uh-uh-uh.
- Eejits. come on.

- No, no.
- Over here.

Oh, sh1tting hell.

This is just ridiculous.

Is it on?

It's on.

Right, now they're safe.

They're about to get
their first lesson in electricity.

Oh.

Oh, poor geeses!

Nevertheless, they were now
protected from the foxes.

And with that done,
I went off with Charlie

to check on
some other newcomers to Diddly Squat.

Hello, donkeys!

My granddaughter has decided
they're not called Bill and Ben.

She called them Ben and Ben.

I feel now I...

- I'm on a petting zoo, a petting farm.
- Oh, come on.

- There's nothing wrong with having them.
- Do they take your fingers off when...

Oh, hello!

- Have you felt how soft it is?
- I know, it's stunning.

I know that you say
"petting zoo", blah blah blah...

No, I'm joking. It's great!

You know, that's what a lot of people
forget about farming,

- is that you've gotta enjoy it.
- Yeah.

Like the birds, the animals.

Have I got one more?

Listen to the sound
when they eat a carrot.

Back in the car,
I brought Charlie up to speed

with the problem of Kaleb and Hannah

being at loggerheads over the birds.

So can you see my dilemma?

Cut it now: we get silage,

but we k*ll all the skylarks
and the corn buntings

and all the other birds
that have nested in that field.

I mean, have you tried walking through
that GS4 field with the chicory in it?

- It's bloody impossible.
- Yeah.

It would take an army three hundred years
to find a skylark nest in there.

Erm, now, I don't know,

but they can use drones

to heat-seek grey partridges now.

So where people are having
grey partridge projects,

they're putting a drone up.

So you could go up at night and then you
can literally pinpoint where they are.

Oh.

Well, I wonder who's got a drone?

Yep, we do.

So I went off immediately to find Chris,
the man who flies it.

Charlie was just saying
if we had a heat-seeking drone,

it might be able
to locate the skylark nests.

- Yeah.
- In the fields.

In theory, yes.

We know which field they're in.

So you know they're definitely
in a field, right?

- Yeah.
- Yeah.

So we've got drones
that have got thermal cameras,

not this one,
but it's about the same size as this.

- So it wouldn't disturb the birds.
- Yeah.

But you need a very specific scenario.

So, for a thermal camera to work,

it needs to see a difference
between something hot and something cold.

So we would have to do it
very early in the morning

before the sun came up
and warmed the ground.

Well, Sunday it's down
to sixteen degrees apparently.

So that could work.

We'd have to do it probably
about four o'clock in the morning.

Again, before the sun comes up
and warms the ground.

And we would have to hope
that the birds were giving off

some kind of heat signature.

So obviously the birds they're designed
to conserve their heat with feathers,

Before I got sucked
into a drone-operated,

tech-speak black hole...

I said yes to Chris.

And the following morning at 4 a.m.,

he was duly in position,

ready to initiate Operation Skylark.

Once Chris had finished his sweep,

the images were downloaded
to Mission Control,

so I could see if he'd found anything.

Erm, OK, cold earth,

which it was at half past four
in the morning, is pink.

Plenty of the sheep
sticking around up there.

But these greeny-yellow splodges

are patches of warmth.

And that

is a potential skylark nest.

This is fantastic.

'Cause we never ever
would have found that.

Oh, another one.

There, look.

Unbelievable.

So anyway, we got all this.

And then
here's where it gets really quite clever.

I feel like I'm in
a Jason Bourne movie here.

So this is one of the five skylark nests

that we found in Barn Ground.

Juxtapose that

with Google Maps.

So we know it's there.

And from that we've been able to get

a precise What3words location.

So I'll go in my phone.

Yes, and there it is.

In that three-metre square
is a skylark nest.

I'll go mark it,

Kaleb drives round it,
he gets his silage,

all the skylark chicks survive.

Armed with
this Langley-style surveillance,

I got hold of Lisa
and we headed to the field

so we could locate and mark
the nest sites with flags.

Right.

Seventy-five metres away.

Ooh, this way.

I'm still watching where
I put my feet in case I tread on one.

Thirty-nine metres.

This way.

Fifteen.

I think we're getting
quite close.

Oh, six metres away.

We're here.

Oh, f*ck's sake.

f*cking hell, honestly.

Yep, all the thermal camera
had found

were five piles of still-warm sheep sh*t.

So, with no realistic way
of locating the nests,

I went with my heart rather than my head

and asked Kaleb to stand down

until the chicks had flown away.

Then, Hannah and I got on
with another bird-related project.

- So you're gonna walk in front?
- Yeah.

So that we don't mince
a skylark or a corn bunting.

Yeah.

Right. Well, it's set to go


so you won't have to sprint.

Don't k*ll me.

Right, you go first.

Our plan was to create
a winter pantry for the birds

in the margins at the edge of the fields.

And job one
was to mow the grass in the margins

using the AgBot
and Kaleb's agricultural mower.

What I will do
for the dicky birds.

Once the mowing was complete,

I attached the cultivator to the AgBot...

...so that it could break up
the sun-baked soil.

That's not a good sound, is it?
That's not how it should sound.

We're gonna break it.

Well, hang on.

Oh, that's fancy.

I'm just gonna drop it down
on some actual grass bit.

Yes!

- What are you doing?
- Cultivating, mate.

- Cultivating a margin?
- Yeah.

- Hannah's made this bird food mix, OK?
- All right, yeah.

It means that in the winter,
when their food source is very low,

they'll get to have a little bit
more food in the farm than normal.

OK, right.

But the point is here, though,
it's not gonna f*ck up your cash crops

- so it's all right.
- Yeah.

I can see that.

That is some incredibly hard ground.
Should you be doing this right now?

- It's doing it.
- I'm not saying it's not.

What I'm saying is
the job that it's doing is sh*t.

What are you on about?

How are you gonna break that up?

At the moment,
you're just making craters everywhere.

And what you've officially done
is basically just wreck a margin.

Come on, you know all this now.

You've been...
Five f*cking years!

You just got excited
and wanted to use that piece of sh*t.

I've just looked at your...

Is that side parting
on purpose in your hair?

I don't think so.

He's quite yellowhammeresque, isn't he?

I'd say Hitler.

Have a look
at the ladies and gentlemen.

I don't know.

- It is weird.
- Does it look bad?

I think it looks like a yellowhammer.

He doesn't look like a yellowhammer,
he's just like a fat Hitler.

Shut the f*ck up.

- Maybe I should do like a middle parting.
- Yeah, okay.

Now you look like you're from the 1920s.
Now you look like Martin Bormann.

You wanna try and look
like a yellowhammer...

Like that Sky Sports guy.

No, Martin Bormann is not
a Sky Sports guy.

That's Martin Brundle.

I think you should tuft it up.

Martin Brundle and Martin Bormann
are not the same people.

We then got back to
the business of cultivating the margin,

and there was no denying
that Kaleb did have a point.

Jesus Christ.

That is like a sort of hairy paving slab.

Yeah, so I don't think
you should drill it today.

I think you should leave it
until we get some sort of moisture.

I think your point is
that there's no point doing it,

it will just be a waste of seed
without the rain.

Yeah. Yeah.

There's no point doing it
because it's not gonna grow.

Two weeks later,

when we were certain the skylark chicks
had flown their nest,

I allowed Kaleb to mow the GS4 field,

which to him felt
like a complete waste of time.

How dead this lot looks.

If we had done this
four weeks ago, we'd have had silage,

therefore the nutrition
in the grass is much higher,

for example like the sugars and so on.

So therefore,
actually the cows might actually like it,

'cause it's more palatable for them.

Where I think now it's gonna be
like eating a bit of cardboard.

In the grand scheme
of things, though,

Kaleb's silage problems were quite small.

Because harvest was now approaching

and I was seriously worried about it.

We'd had the driest spring
for over a hundred years.

In early summer,
a drought had been formally declared.

And in the five months
since we'd planted the spring crops

we'd had 70% less rain than average.

Consequently,
my pre-harvest crop walk with Charlie

was a grim affair.

- Onions and beetroots.
- Yeah.

Or, as I like to call it,
no onions or beetroots.

What the bloody hell's gone wrong?

- Well...
- We planted this twice, remember.

We've given it 1.6 million onion seeds

- and five have grown.
- Yeah.

Sorry, sorry, sorry, I'm wrong.

Seven have grown, there's two there.

It is very disappointing,
'cause you put all that effort in.

- I know.
- Well, the machine did.

And I feel sad actually
because the RoboDroid

is a fascinating piece of equipment.

And everyone will just go:
"Well, that's rubbish."

But the truth of the matter is
it just hasn't rained.

I think we've had no more
than twenty mil in March, April, May

- and June.
- It's not even an inch.

- It's...
- That much.

Twenty twenty-fifths.
It's four fifths of an inch.

And over in the mustard field,

things were no better.

This is very, very, disappointing.

It's a bit of a desert.

And the issue is
you've got a commercial need for mustard,

which is one of the biggest sellers
in the shop.

It is the biggest.

sh*t!

Charlie was just
as downbeat in the wheat fields.

You can see that the crop
is much thinner than it usually is.

There's a lot more light got in,
you've got some pretty small heads.

That is one ear of wheat.

The grains are quite shrivelled
and look a bit rubbish.

And even I could see
that the barley wasn't much good either.

It's just not tall enough.

It's six inches below where it should be.

I mean...

if Russell Crowe walked through this,
he'd have to have arms like a chimpanzee

to be able
to drag his fingers through it.

I then dug out a clip
I'd posted back in 2019,

and that rammed home the point
even harder.

This is from...

June five years ago.

And look at the barley then.

Look how much taller it is,
it hadn't even ripened,

than it is now.

Marcus Aurelius.

Nevertheless,
we'd still have to do the harvest,

which meant decluttering
and cleaning all the storage sheds

so they were ready to receive the grain.

- We've gotta get all this out.
- Yeah.

Wow! Wow! Stop!

OK, good.

After the storage areas
were tidied and prepped,

I asked Charlie and Kaleb
to come to the office for a chat.

Right, come on you two.

- Harvest...
- Yup.

"Harveest".

It's upon us.

I know, but I need some dates.

'Cause last year,
it was a bit disorganised

and we had a falling out,
I don't want that to happen again.

- You were stressed.
- I was.

Trying to open the pub was...
But I think this year...

Erm...

I think it's very clear.
Oats next week.

I think the wheats will be ready

probably the week after.

Say, Monday the 28th.

- Or end of July basically.
- Or end of July.

- Why, you going away?
- f*ck.

Yeah.

I've got cancer.

No.

Yep.

You haven't.

Where?

Where is of no concern of anybody.

I've known since May.

I had a medical.
You remember, back in May?

- Yeah, yeah.
- And they went, eew...

You know, I disappeared off
the other week and I had a biopsy,

and it is cancer,
and it's aggressive, but...

It's really early,
so the treatment will be, you know...

I'm praying
that we can get the harvest done

and then I could go
and get some treatment,

but it's gonna be
slap bang in the middle...

- Look after yourself I would...
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You go and do...

Yeah, I know, I mean, listen,
I'm not that daft.

So, it's going to be in about two weeks,
maybe three.

I'll have to go and have an operation.

And then...

and then...

Erm...

Will you stay away
or are you coming back after?

No, no,
the operation's in and out in no time,

but then you're slightly
out of action for a little while.

But in the meantime, Simon,
the combine man, has retired.

So you were going to do
the combining this year.

- And I was going to do the grain carting.
- Yeah.

But it now looks likely I won't be able
to do the grain carting.

So we're gonna have to get Lisa
trained up.

- Yeah.
- Lisa can drive a tractor.

She's perfectly capable of it.

And if you load stationary,
which only adds, what, two minutes...

Well, she'd probably be good enough
to do it on the move, honestly.

Well, I just wish you a very,
very speedy recovery.

Well, I thank you.
I promise I'll be fine.

- If you need anything, you just ring me.
- Yeah.

Pisser, though, innit?

I don't like this.

No.

I wasn't thrilled.

No, but I wasn't prepared for this.

Mercifully, in farming,

you don't ever have time
to dwell on personal matters,

'cause there's always something to do.

And the thing I had to do
the following day

was put the cows through
their six-monthly test for TB,

along with an ever-shrinking Dilwyn.

Morning.

Strewth, mate...

Yeah! Yeah, you're coming along
as well, aren't you?

- Well, not much. Not like that.
- No.

But I've been at it
for longer than you have.

Well, I mean, you are literally
an advertisement for fat jabs.

Yes, possibly.

So, all bar one are pregnant again,
aren't they?

Yeah, you've got
six of them pregnant

in the space of about 35 days.

- Endgame's a busy boy.
- Yeah.

These calves are fantastic,
aren't they?

They're good-looking
calves, aren't they?

That one is a bit under the weather,

so I've just checked him out.
He's got a touch of pneumonia.

- Has he? Oh no!
- Sad, but hopefully he should be okay.

- That one looks a bit peaky.
- Yeah.

- Kaleb's bringing some hay down.
- Yeah.

Here he comes.

That's dinner.

They are excited by that.
They can smell it.

All right, come on,
let's get 'em in here.

Yeah, come on then.

The actual TB test

involves Dilwyn
measuring lumps in the cow's necks.

What number is she?

Hang on. Seven.

But what you really hope for
is no lumps at all.

- No lumps.
- Clear?

Yeah. Okay.

Off you go.

Hay time.

Oh yeah, look at that!
"I'm gonna wear my food."

- Good news?
- Good news.

That's what I like to hear.

There we go.

Are you not actually measuring them?

There's nothing to measure.

I thought you'd have
those little tweezer things.

I have.

But I only measure them
when there's lumps.

- And there's no lumps?
- There's no lumps.

- Oh, so she's all right.
- She's all right.

- That's number eleven.
- Yeah, good.

All right, callipers.

You what?

- Lumps.
- You've got... This one's got...

Good girl.

All right.

She's got two lumps the same size.

So, all right, I'll just measure,

I'll just check to see what
her measurements was last time.

Right,
so last time the top one was eleven

and the bottom one was ten.

This time round she's twelve-twelve.

Is that a TB chart?

That is a TB chart.
Different colours mean different things.

- So red's obviously bad.
- Red is bad.

The blue and white is inconclusive

and a green is a pass, right?

There's eleven before and ten, OK?

Now she's twelve-twelve.

- So it's plus one.
- The top one's gone up one.

Yeah.
And the bottom one's gone up two.

I don't like the sound of this,
Dilwyn.

And then if you go down to this,
that's a plus one,

that's a plus two,

so it's that square there,
which is the green.

- It's green.
- It's green.

Pass.

If that had been one millimetre more,

then we'd have failed her on the bovine,

but she didn't.

That was bloody close.

That is sh*t-a-brick time.

- Well, it was.
- Yeah.

Luckily,

you passed but only just.

Don't talk to any badgers.

Go on then.

For the next cow, Dilwyn
once more needed his measuring tool.

Have you got the chart out
again, Dilwyn?

Yeah.

Oh sh*t.

So she's passed.

But again, close.

Well, let her out.
We've never had close before.

No, no.

It's a worry that two of them
have done that,

I think.

All right,
the bull's gonna come through now.

Go on then.

Widen this out a bit
for Endgame.

Still there, mate.
How are you doing, laddy?

I know.

What?

Let's have a look.

No, come on, Dilwyn, what?

I think it's a fail.

f*ck.

Hold on.

Erm...

It is actually a pass.

What? f*cking...!

Dilwyn, when was the last time
somebody m*rder*d you?

He's got one lump seventeen,
one lump twenty-one.

So he is
five millimetres increase at the top,

five millimetre increase at the bottom.

Right on the borderline.

Go on.

We'll see if we can't finish
on a high.

So that's number three. She's fine.

She's fine? Oh good.

Off you go.

Go on.

And this one is carrying twins.

- Twins, I know.
- Yeah.

Ten, thirteen.

- Close?
- No.

- What?
- She...

I've got bad news.

Fail.

What?

Fail.

I'm putting the whole farm
under restrictions.

So you have effectively lost

your official TB-free status.

That's the long and short of it.

The ministry will get in touch with you

and then they'll talk through
what you can and can't do.

So you'll have a test in 60 days.

If she is an inconclusive
next time round,

then she's called a reactor
and she will be slaughtered.

With twins.

With twins.

That means the whole herd
is now stuck here.

- So we can't bring cows in...
- We can't bring cows in or out.

And our big plan
of getting more cattle this winter...

Gone.

Obviously, Endgame and two others
are marginal, yeah?

Yeah. Right on the borderline.

- And that's a fail.
- Yeah.

But what do you do with Endgame?

Well, that is the big question.

He is the most valuable thing
on the farm at the moment.

If he goes down, we are f*cked
in terms of reproducing calves.

I f*cking give up, mate.

sh*t, innit?

f*ck...

It never gets easier this.

- And she's got twins and it's...
- And she's got twins in her.

As if I haven't got enough

to be worried about. sh*t.

- Keep that head up.
- Oh, bollocks.

f*ck.

I just don't even know...

Oh, f*ck.