Channel 5 farmers Dave and Rob Nicholson’s podcast on the farm with celebrity guests: From reviving the lost art of sheep shearing to podcasting

“We’ve built a little audio visual studio to do a podcast from. We will be filming bits too,” said Cannon Hall Farm director Rob.

While Rob’s heart is in family farming, he said to keep farms alive it has always been essential for their generation of farmers and beyond to have a number of different business strands.

Rob said: “Dave and I knew from school that we’d have to diversify to keep things going.”

In 1989 the farm opened to the public showcasing seasonal demonstrations such as sheep shearing which is a “back-breaking” part of the farming calendar.

Cannon Hall Farm has helped to keep such traditions alive even during lockdown when they were forced to close temporarily to the public.

Rob and Dave started to broadcast daily livestreams on Facebook from the working farm in early lockdown 2020, sharing live demonstrations as well as the birthing season online.

Rob said at the time: “We said from the start of our broadcasts that if we could help one person, that would have been enough.

“We would have never expected that 13 weeks after we began we would be broadcasting live to thousands of people a day all across the world – and we’ve had so many lovely letters and emails from people saying how watching our broadcasts has helped them through this tough time.”

These livestreams bred Cannon Hall Farm an entire army of fans. It was during this period they had their biggest growth online with some of their content going viral, reaching millions of people worldwide.

They started recording This Week On the Farm presented by Helen Skelton, Jules Hudson and JB Gill alongside Rob and Dave Nicholson, shortly afterwards.

The show has proved popular with the Channel 5 audience and has since won two TV Choice awards.

“I think people want ‘the simple life’,” said Rob.

For Rob, doing anything that supports and champions “proper British farming” is all that matters.

He said: “We want what’s best for farming but animals come first and what’s best for the environment.”

Rob and Dave have been adding strings to their bow ever since they started running the family farm, from a play centre to food festivals and a range of school holiday activities.

It was the media attention they couldn’t have predicted which has opened up a plethora of opportunities for the brothers.

“It’s a real honour that we will be on the main stage again at the Great Yorkshire Show,” said Rob.

This year will be the 165th show in Harrogate at the showground which is dubbed the highlight of the agricultural calendar.

Rob’s personal mission is to keep farming alive which he hopes to explore more in his podcast.

“Once farms have gone, they'll never come back,” warns Rob.

He said prior to On the Farm and other farming shows on TV that people had the wrong impression about farmers driving around in range rovers.

“Farms are the lifeblood of the local community,” said Rob.

He himself enjoys watching anything to do with farming on TV, and enjoys seeing how other farming families live.

He said: “Clarkson’s On the Farm is good but my favourite is Farmers Country Showdown.”

Rob added that farming is a complex business that must be supported.

He realises one way he is able to do this is also through the media and his podcast.

“New media is the future. It will be nice to be able to talk at length obviously with TV you don’t get long to speak,” he said.

“This will be a chance for us to talk about farming and hopefully get our friends Helen (Skelton) and Peter (The Yorkshire Vet) on it as well as other people we’ve met along the way.”

One of the issues he will be discussing with Dave and celebrity guests is how to save the farming industry.

As he pointed out it now costs farmers more to shear sheep than you can even sell the wool for.

Cannon Hall Farm has helped to put Barnsley on the map and he hopes their podcast will champion the area and farming even further.

Farming is a family affair and their latest venture also involves Rob’s son coming up from London to help as well as Dave’s son in law who is a podcast producer.

“They’ll steer us in the right direction. “We’re excited to get our teeth stuck into it,”added Rob.