Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
WHERE THERE’S WOOL... THERE’S A WAY!
Mischievous miniature donkeys, fractious family meetings and puppies galore – Matt Baker tells Jenny Johnston why his new show about his efforts to save his childhood home is his most personal yet
Every member of the sandwich generation dreads it, and many receive it: that call to say a parent who lives in a different part of the country is in hospital. It’s a call that can be lifechanging for everyone involved.
For TV presenter Matt Baker, star of Countryfile and formerly of The One Show, it came last summer. His mum Janice, 65, a shepherdess who runs the remote family sheep farm in the Durham Dales where Matt had grown up (and where his own passion for animals and the outdoors was born), had been involved in a freak accident and been trampled by some of her sheep. Her leg had been smashed. She would need a knee replacement, and would end up in a cast from her hip to her ankle. The recovery would be long. Would she ever be able to farm again?
The immediate, emergency response was to dash north, of course. Matt, 43, and his wife Nicola, 42, rushed to Janice’s side. ‘It was one of those scenarios where you immediately go into rescue mode,’ he says. ‘In a way the early stages are the easy part. You just go. We headed up there. Nicola trained as a physiotherapist so she was straight on it and realised the implications physically. We spoke to an orthopaedic friend. It was all hands on deck.’
The next phase was trickier. The family farm still needed to be run, which Matt’s dad Mike, 77, was not fit enough to do himself. And running this sort of farm – covering 100 acres, 1,000ft above sea level with unforgiving terrain – is physically demanding even for the fittest farmer. ‘Dad had been dreading something like this happening. The life is so tough and Mum has always been so resilient. She was always the driving force, but suddenly she was out of action and we had to be realistic about what she would be able to manage even after her recovery.’
The fear was, of course, that his parents would have to quit the farm, which he knew would break their hearts. And his. Matt has always been determined that the farm should be there for future generations. So he came to an extraordinary decision: he would relocate from his own home in Hertfordshire to help out, and hopefully save the farm.
Luckily, Matt had already quit his long-term job on The One Show. Last March he said goodbye to the team and struck out on his own, setting up a production company with a view to making his own programmes (the plan was that some would have a rural theme, but not necessarily all).
Then lockdown hit, putting certain projects on hold, and their children Luke and Molly, 13 and 11, were being home-schooled (mostly by Mum, confides Luke, although ‘Dad’s a good PE teacher’). So it was viable for them all to simply leave their home and move north. ‘This was so fortunate for us,’ says Matt.
He makes it sound like quite a natural decision, although it must have been an epic one given that they have their own smallholding in Hertfordshire with their own menagerie. Or as he puts it, ‘My kids have never not had a flock of sheep.’ How do you just uproot and move in with your parents then? You can’t just stick a flock of sheep in the car. He laughs. ‘Anyone who knows me knows that I’m always on the motorway with a cattle trailer. Even in normal times we would move stock between the two places, so we just moved everything up – sheep, dogs, chickens, the lot. We had the children sitting in the back of the car with the chickens.’
This was no extended holiday though. Quickly Matt realised that for his parents to keep the farm, there had to be massive changes to allow for an easier life in the long run. Physically, parts of the farm would have to be reconfigured, livestock moved, even sold. Then he hit on an idea: what if he made a TV series about the family’s dilemma, and their efforts to save his parents’ farm?
The result is a four-part show about exactly that. Matt’s first solo TV project – Our Farm In The Dales on More 4 – is a deeply personal one (‘definitely my most personal to
‘The kids sat in the back seat with the chickens’
date’), tracking their progress over several months and letting viewers see the journey. The cameras roll as the children get involved in rebuilding barns, feeding animals and learning how to build dry stone walls. Matt very much rolls his sleeves up, getting on a tractor, or on a roof with a hammer. ‘Which is odd in the TV world. You tend to present and other people do the grafting. Here we were doing it all, so I’d have to say to the cameraman and sound guy, “I have to finish this roof, so you may as well have a cup of tea.”’
There was a family feel to the whole shebang, with the tiny production crew being old friends. ‘I’d known Steve, the sound man, since my Blue Peter days,’ says Matt, who presented the children’s show from 1999-2006. ‘Nicola knew him, as did my parents. That all mattered – everyone had to feel like the cameras weren’t there. It was very much the case that the work was going to happen anyway, cameras or not.’
Hats off to Nicola too. Not only
was she acting as nurse to her mother-in-law, she was taking on the cooking to boot. More of a city girl, she says it was the chance of a lifetime for her children. ‘I never had the opportunity to grow up with a lot of animals, although we did have a cat. But I love that our children do, looking after them, learning about life and death.’ One of the highlights of the series is watching a new litter of puppies arrive. There are already dogs galore on the farm. As well as Bob the border collie and Annie the Labrador, there are six Cairn terriers – Maddie, Isla, Bumble, Bibi, Mocha and Fergus. Bibi is pregnant and in the first episode the children gather round to watch the vet perform a scan and declare that there are ‘four, a tentative five’ more puppies on the way. The thought of 13 dogs to care for delights Janice – and the kids.
The idea of preparing the path for future generations is at the heart of farming life – and this programme.
The family gather around the kitchen table, and in the barn, for discussions about what changes they can make to ensure the farm will be around for decades to come. A key part of the overhaul is that Matt wants his mum to sell her beloved Hampshire Downs sheep – effectively lowland sheep, which are ‘high maintenance’ in their more unforgiving highland location – and concentrate on ‘easier’ breeds. They’re also huge (hence her smashed leg). Although it breaks Janice’s heart, she agrees. Ditto when Matt arrives home with a tractor (her passion for organic farming means she hates mechanical help), there is a
potential flashpoint. And when he tries to convince his dad – who’s a hoarder – that the pile of old wood he’s been keeping really needs to be moved, there could be more fireworks. ‘It’s a situation many people find themselves in when parents are getting older and can’t live the way they used to,’ he says today. ‘I never wanted to say to my mum, “That’s it, stop farming.” What I wanted to say was, “Here are some options, how you can keep doing what you love in a way that’s maybe more sustainable.” But whether or not you live on a farm is irrelevant. At its heart, it’s a programme about how the tables turn in your relationship with your parents. They have always looked out for you, but now you’re the one having to look out for them. That shift comes to us all and when it does it’s really emotional.’ Obviously none of this had been in the plan when he left The One Show. ‘But when we sat down and talked about it, it made sense. Because it was my production company, we could control exactly what went out – there is no way I would have done it without that sort of control, and trust me I’ve been asked many times over the years – and the kids were kind of used to having cameras around anyway. Luke had actually filmed one segment for Countryfile, during lockdown. It was an extension of that.’
Still a huge deal though, to turn the cameras on your own family like this? At heart he’s quite a private person. ‘We wouldn’t have done it if the kids had been younger, but they are at an age where they can make their own decisions. And the agreement is that we all see the early edits. We all sit down and Nicola takes notes. If anyone doesn’t like anything it comes out, no question. Family comes first.’ So we won’t see screaming matches on screen? ‘The funny thing is that we really don’t argue,’ he says.
He hates the tag ‘reality TV’, with its Love Island connotations, but how else to describe this sort of show? The stars of the show are the animals though. This may be a
‘It’s about how the tables turn with your parents’
working farm, but it was born out of pure love for animals. Although it’s the sheep that keep the business going, much of Janice’s time is spent tending her beloved miniature donkeys, a separate breed that originated in the Mediterranean (yes, they all have names too – Augustine, Pavlova, Sophia, Luna and Winifred). She bought them on a whim after selling a tractor when Matt left home (he was the only one who drove it, she hated it). The profits went on the donkeys. The idea was to breed them and sell the males while keeping the females. ‘But I’ve only ever had female foals,’ she admits.
Matt has a love/hate relationship with the donkeys, who have a penchant for escaping their field and making a dash for freedom – with him in hot pursuit. It makes for great TV, he acknowledges. ‘There’s always something happening.’
That he’s in his element on the farm is blindingly obvious, and he says letting his children immerse themselves in the world he grew up in was simply joyous. ‘A lot of that was timing. Because it was lockdown, we could do it. Nicola has done more of the structured schoolwork with them, but the stint in the Dales allowed them to get out and build fences and really learn. It’s so
remote that normal life here and lockdown life aren’t that different.’
All of his life decisions, he says, have come down to family. When Matt left The One Show it was partly a professional choice (‘you want to do new things, and it was very much the case that I wanted to develop the production side’), but also about the work/life balance. ‘My kids were at the stage where it was useful for me to be around at 7pm, rather than on The One Show sofa.’ It’s rare to hear men talk about this juggling act, and rarer still for them to quit that rare beast – a safe job in TV.
While he was sad to leave in some respects, it was time to move on. ‘There was no big plan. I’m not a planner. With me, it’s very much a case of let’s try things out – or let’s jump in the pool then discover what temperature it is.’
He says his life approach comes from his mum, who is one of life’s opportunity graspers. ‘She was the driving force behind the farm. She had a dream and went for it, and she didn’t make it easy for herself. In fact, she made it very difficult. The life of a shepherdess is so demanding. It’s arduous, even in summer, so in the depths of winter it can be brutal, but Mum’s attitude was always “crack on”, which is why it was such a shock when she was injured and she realised herself that she wasn’t going to go on forever. In a way it was a blessing though. The sheep made the decision for her that she had to step back a little. She’d never have made it herself.’
He says he grew up not realising that everyone’s mum wasn’t like his, confused when others would say that women were the weaker sex. ‘I’ve always been surrounded by powerful women, to the point that I never thought that women aren’t powerful!’ He met his wife Nicola (another strong woman who’s ‘at the centre of everything’) when he was 18. ‘That is a good thing. She came into my life before TV.’ It was actually Nicola’s aunt who saw an advert for Blue Peter and suggested that Matt have a go. Always a sporty type (he was a champion gymnast) and up for a challenge, he loved his time on the show. He fizzes today, particularly when talking about the outdoorsy stuff – training with the Marines, flying to the Arctic Circle. And obviously the training in live TV was second-tonone. ‘Just wonderful,’ he says. ‘You deal with whatever is thrown at you. I’ve loved live TV ever since.’
Little wonder he landed the Countryfile job, and helped turn the show from more of a niche news programme about rural affairs into a mainstream entertainment show. He was always comfortable in his wellies, and passionate about shows that can attract a family audience.
It chimed with his own life too. He says that in some ways his TV work has been his second job. With his own sheep and chickens in Hertfordshire, he’s always been a farmer first. ‘By the time it came to leave home for The One Show, I’d already done a day’s work. But I honestly don’t think I could have done the TV job if I hadn’t had the farm. It’s always been the heart of everything.’
Which farm though? His stint living with his parents had to end, and in the autumn he moved back home with his flock (both human and sheep) as the schools reopened. The Dales farm has been adapted so that his mum, who’s much more able to get around, can cope. In the longer term though, does he foresee a permanent move back? ‘Those are planning questions, and I don’t plan,’ he says. ‘But that farm is going to be in the family for a long time. In my own mind, I’ve never really left it. And it’s like a magnet. It draws you back.’
‘The farm draws you back, like a magnet’