Waking up 2-3 times a night to piss, thinking it's the water you drank before bed.
It's not the water.
Here's what's actually happening (and what fixes it):
1. Your blood sugar is crashing at 1am, 3am, 5am.
The rarest thing on Clarkson's Farm is not the Lamborghini tractor. It is Kaleb Cooper.
A young man, genuinely young, who wanted to farm and does. Who runs the place, knows the ground, drives the machinery he was raised around, and has built an entire working life on a farm before the age most people have chosen a career. On screen he is comic relief, the exasperated professional rolling his eyes at Clarkson. Step back and he is the single most valuable and most endangered thing in British agriculture, and the show never quite says so.
Because here is what Kaleb actually represents.
The average British farmer is past sixty. In America it is 58 and climbing, with the over-65s now the largest group by far. Right across the developed world the story is identical: the people who grow the food are ageing out, and almost nobody young is coming in behind them. Not because the young do not want to. Because the door has been bricked up.
Work out what it takes for a young person to farm today. You need land, and farmland costs a fortune precisely because it is a tax shelter rather than a business, so it is priced out of reach of anyone who actually intends to earn from it. You need capital for machinery that runs to six figures a unit. You need to survive years of thin or negative margins with no cushion. And you need to accept that the reward for clearing all three hurdles is the £144 profit the whole country watched Clarkson find.
So the miracle is not that farming is short of young people. The miracle is that Kaleb exists at all.
He came into it, stuck at it, and made it work, and the reason a few million people know his name is that a television programme happened to point a camera at him. For every Kaleb on screen there are a thousand villages that no longer have one, where the young left because the maths told them to, and the farm went to the retiring neighbour who was already too big, and the land got a little more consolidated, and the countryside got a little older.
Kaleb barely wants to leave the county, let alone the country. When the show finally took him abroad it was an event. And that rootedness, the sheer unfashionable determination to stay put and do one hard thing well, is precisely the trait the entire food system depends on and has spent fifty years making financially irrational.
The old farmers are retiring. The young ones were priced out before they started.
We are down to hoping enough Kalebs turn up by accident, because we built a country where choosing to feed people on purpose is the wrong financial decision.
We love watching Freddy’s journey on his road trip across the U.S.
There is no better way to learn about America’s story than from the open road, in our towns, and with the people! 🇺🇸
To Love America is to See America. Can’t wait to see where you are headed next @FreddyLA7
Was not ready for Eric Church to deliver the best commencement speech I’ve ever heard.
Six guitar strings. Six pillars of a life.
Faith. Family. Spouse. Ambition. Community. You.
Tune them when you’re whole, not just when you’re broken.
Watch the whole thing.
All I want for my birthday today is for you to forward this post: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." -John 3:16
We've given out so many Christmas presents that people are now asking what we want for Christmas...How about 100k followers for the @Unitedcajunnavy ?
🙏💪🎄🎅 #CajunNavy https://t.co/wwNr3POf0U
We have 42 days left until he is unemployed. We are here for the American people with #operationshelter because the government failed we all are sacrificing money, time, and resources as your tax dollars pour overseas. This is not a political issue it is simply not right.
How about we patronize Amish owned businesses while Christmas shopping this year. Fine American Made products purchased from good, patriotic Americans.
If you live too far away from Amish Country, there are many places online. Here are a few I’ll be patronizing this year:
https://t.co/q0ZK21U8ur
https://t.co/XDFe0ZO8gX
https://t.co/zVDqklmJMN
https://t.co/nNppgQtSpp
https://t.co/JTNJ1JuIbQ
https://t.co/0DmL81o3jH
Here we go! 3pmCST It's #Turdstock2 LIVE STREAM
from @rnrbarnash@redneckriviera with @catturd2 and my Nashville singin' buddies! Tune in as we celebrate our freedom together! Click either link to join: https://t.co/ufGgtjwgxG https://t.co/KEgTDJ3b3I LESSGO! REPOST!
Our new song is out today. “Saturday Night Gone Wrong”
A little band we threw together “Crooked Creek” with Jeffery Steele, Angio Aparo, and myself.
Please repost.
Saturday Night Gone Wrong - Crooked Creek https://t.co/OmCZsSTFwi
Download here:
https://t.co/25PTDjdekP