Fresh fields for a teenager inspired to join the farmers who feed our nation

Footballers and pop stars, yes. But if you did a straw poll of 19 year-olds in this country you could probably count those who wanted to run their own farm on the fingers of one hand. Gareth Barlow, though, is a young man with a passion and one day he hopes to do just that – despite the fact he doesn't come from a farming background, or have thousands of pounds stashed away to buy the land he needs.

For most people, such obstacles would mean their dream remained just that, but Gareth bought his first sheep at the age of just 16 and now has a flock of 33, which he keeps in a couple of fields near his North Yorkshire home.

Sheep farming is a tough business and although declining stocks have edged up prices in recent years, farmers have to fight to make a living as well as having to operate in remote and challenging areas like the Yorkshire Dales or Moors. But Gareth's fascination with agriculture dates back to his childhood.

"I bought Farmers Weekly religiously while everyone else had The Beano. My dad says it was my comic," he jokes. "We had some friends in the Lake District who had a hill farm with 100 acres and we used to go there when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. I think that sparked the interest, so although my family didn't have a farming background, I was exposed to it. I was allowed to sit on the tractor and watch the lambs being born, feed the chickens and collect the eggs. We only went two, or three times a year but it was heaven to me."

Gareth was brought up in Reading before his family upped sticks and moved to picturesque Bulmer, one of the original Castle Howard villages, seven years ago. But despite not coming from a farming family – his father is an IT specialist and his mother works in sales and marketing – he enjoys working on the land.

"I love working outside, I'm not one for being cooped up in an office. When I was at school, I had to do stuff outside on Sundays otherwise I'd be in a terrible way come the evening."

At the tender age of 16, having saved up birthday and Christmas money and sold his PlayStation, he bought his first sheep, six Hebridean ewes and a ram.

"Everyone uses birthday money to buy sheep, don't they?" he says, sipping his tea. "There was a woman over towards Hovingham who breeds sheep. She called all of her rams after Roman emperors and I bought one

called Hadrian."

A family in his village had a disused paddock which Gareth borrowed to house his sheep. "It was a bit of a jungle, so every night after school I went there with a rake and a little compact tractor I'd rebuilt and shovelled the grass to the side. Mum and dad would join in with their pitchforks until the field got going again."

His first lambing experience, however, ended up being a fraught one.

"It was fine apart from one. Mum and dad were away and eventually the vet was called and he said the lamb wasn't going to come out, except in pieces. I'd only seen lambs coming out nicely before, so this was a baptism of fire. I'd just lost 100 worth of lamb on top of the 120 to get the vet out. As a 16 year-old, that was a lot of money to lose on a sheep."

But far from putting him off it just reinforced Gareth's determination to build his own farming business. In order to get more experience, he wrote to the Prince of Wales asking for the chance to work on the Duchy of Cornwall farm.

"I wrote to Prince Charles, as every 16-year-old does. I found a name and address for the farm manager and copied him in, but didn't hear anything for a month. I'd rather be told 'no' than not hear anything, so I wrote another letter and two weeks later I received a reply saying 'yes'."

He spent two weeks living and working on the estate "doing a bit of everything", as he puts it. He impressed the farm managers and was invited back the following summer, this time for eight weeks' paid work.

"That was the first time the rose-tinted glasses had to be chucked aside. I was no longer watching someone else do the hard work, I was doing it all. Getting up at half six, cycling in to the farm and working long days, hauling bales and getting my hands dirty."

After leaving St Peter's School, in York, in 2008, he went to study zoology at Durham University, but quit after just a year. "There were a lot of lectures and not much to do with farming. So while it may have been a degree that set me up for understanding animals, I felt I was getting further away from farming." He decided instead to concentrate on his fledgling business, as well as working as a part-time trainee butcher at the Castle Howard farm shop.

"That's given me a greater understanding of what the consumer wants, because how often do farmers get to deal with the finished product?" he says.

"I've bred the sheep, raised and slaughtered them, so it really is from field to fork."

His average day is not for the work-shy. He gets up at 5.45 in the morning and checks his flock before working at the farm shop from 7.30 to half-five in the afternoon, when he returns home to feed and water his sheep. Gareth's "can-do" attitude is infectious, but behind his fresh-faced exterior is a sharp business mind.

"Any money I've ever made has gone straight into buying new stock, rather than land or fencing, because at the moment it makes financial

sense to do that. It would be nice to get a parcel of five or 10 acres that I could rent and I'm constantly on the internet, or on the phone looking to see what might be available. But you can't farm without grass and that's the biggest limiting factor. If I can get more grass, I can get more sheep."

Gareth's remarkable story has come to the attention of BBC producers who have included him in a new Radio 4 programme called On Your Farm, which features the stories of different people trying to break into the farming business. He has also spent a couple of days filming with John Craven and the Countryfile team for a TV programme due to be screened later this month.

The interest is understandable. The average age of a British farmer is 58 and younger people are needed if the industry is to flourish in the future. Gareth, though, is under no illusion as to the challenges he faces if he is ever to fulfil his dream of running his own farm.

"People say I've got youth on my side but that can be a barrier because people probably don't want to invest in a 19 year-old lad, and I can understand why they wouldn't, it's more of a risk. So I've had to build my business up bit by bit, like Lego, although I've been fortunate to get a lot of help from local people here."

However, as well being convinced about his own path, he's adamant, too, that farming can play a key role in our future.

"It's predicted there's going to be nine billion people on the planet in a few years and people need feeding. So at the end of the day it's much better if we buy our food from producers in the UK," he says.

"This is something I've always wanted to do and I'm going to give it my best shot. Hopefully, I'll spend the rest of my life farming, even if I never have another holiday again. I'm just one person with 33 sheep, but I'm inspired by the idea of doing my bit to feed the nation,

because who else can we rely on if not farmers?"