Chris prepares for second series of TV hit

Chris Jeffery, of Spring View Farm in the hamlet of Thornton on the Hill, near Easingwold, is now the Alan Sugar of the countryside booting off contestants in the Channel 5Star programme Celebs On The Farm that starts its second series next month.

“Our farm, that I run with my wife Kate, has been featured regularly on The Yorkshire Vet and there was one episode that involved Julian (Norton) and I artificially inseminating a sow that proved hilarious for everyone but Julian as he ended up with a face full of pig semen as I was seen riding the pig, or at least that’s how my farmer friends described it.

“One said ‘That was a rum going on seeing you riding that pig’.

“Louise Cowmeadow who was a producer on the programme rang a year last March saying she had a friend who was making a TV programme called Celebs On The Farm who was looking for a farmer to be a judge and had recommended me.

“I told her she was crazy, that I wasn’t an actor but she convinced me to talk with people in London who were making the show.

“Next thing I know I’m receiving a call from the production company. That’s when I thought, I’m 60 years old, I’m being offered the opportunity to appear on a TV show that has something to do with farming. Why not? Give it a go. So I did.

“Shortly afterwards I’m going down to London on the train, meeting in their offices in Camden and I’m being introduced to Stephen Bailey, a comedian who is such a nice, funny young man who is to be the show’s presenter with me working alongside him. He’s now one of my very best friends.

“I’m in this alien, strange world far away from my little farm in North Yorkshire, scared stiff but so excited.”

The first series aired last year with Chris confessing that beforehand he’d hardly heard of any of the participants apart from Louie Spence.

This year’s series has attracted bigger names including footballer-turned-pundit Paul Merson and Benidorm star Crissy Rock.

“Paul (Merson) said he couldn’t believe how I came across so stern and angry,” says Chris. “That’s one of the things that has changed a little from last year.

“I’m now more Alan Sugar than slightly sweeter.”

Back home in Thornton on the Hill, Chris and Kate’s rare breed livestock farm is growing in reputation, particularly for Chris’s Whitebred Shorthorn cattle.

It’s a welcome diversion from the couple’s main business running Green’s Farm Supplies that is marketed under the moniker Green’s Country Store at Thirsk Livestock Market just over a handful of miles away.

“I was born in Wigginton near York where mum and dad had a small farm, but with four sons it wasn’t going to work and they sold up.

“I was always determined to have my own farm one day and the country store has allowed us to buy this 10-acre grassland farm with another acreage in Wigginton that takes us to near 20 acres.

“It’s small, but it allows me to have some great stock and I fell in love with the Whitebred Shorthorns four years ago when we visited the Rare Breeds tent at the Great Yorkshire Show and saw this beautiful white cow called Elizabeth.

“We’ve bought her now, but at first we bought two in-calf heifers from her owner Helen Marginson from near Burnley.

“The aim is to get to 10-12 breeding cows, which we will reach later on this year. It is a fantastic old breed and very rare.

“So rare that you have to be very lucky to be in the right place at the right time when one comes up for sale – and I was extremely lucky late last year.’

“I’d received a nod from a neighbour that a Whitebred was coming up for sale at York Livestock Market as part of a dispersal sale, but when I got there my heart leapt even more. There were three, but only one was registered.

“The icing on my cake that day though was there was also a registered Whitebred bull.

They just don’t come up for sale like that. I rang the Whitebred Society from the mart to ask what was going on with the bull.

“Then I rang the breeder, Donald Hendry from Dumfries, and very well respected. He just said buy him and that the genetics go back 30-40 years. Buy the bull.”

Farmer Chris, having received his instructions from Donald proceeded to buy the registered cow and the bull, Ben Ledi Duke, for a snip at £1,000 between them both.

“If you see him today, as he wasn’t quite in the right shape when I bought him, he is now the best example of a Whitebred Shorthorn bull I have ever seen.

“I can quite understand why Donald was so demonstrative over the phone. He’s stunning. If I had the time to show him I most certainly would and I am confident he would win. He’s such a marvellous example of the breed.”

Chris also has three Oxford Sandy & Black sows that farrow at the same time and he currently has a lot of piglets as a result.

“One of our sows farrowed an amazing 17 piglets last time. They normally only have around eight. She brought out two herself and I pulled out fifteen!

“There were so many Kate fed them with artificial milk from a bottle.

“We used to have pigs when I was growing up on the farm and I’ve been a farm manager on a pig farm previously and I’ve never seen them drink from a bottle, but Kate did a tremendous job.”

Spring View Farm is also home to a flock of Kerry Hill sheep.