Matt Baker - A Year on Our Farm: How the Countryside Made Me

Welcome to our farm in the Dales!

A one-hundred-acre organic sheep farm, perched on the side of a valley in the Durham hills, with an ancient woodland, heritage-breed sheep, miniature donkeys, goats, sheepdogs, chickens and the most beautiful views anyone could wish for.

No matter what is going on in my life, no matter what direction my career is taking me in, no matter what kind of successes or challenges I am faced with, the farm has always been a constant part of my life. It has helped me to put and keep everything in perspective.

The farm has made me who I am and it always reminds me of who I am.

In general, people are quite surprised that there is more to me than the guy who was always sitting on a green sofa at seven oclock talking to other people about what they were up to in their lives. I love hearing stories; I love talking to people; I love being around individuals who have experiences and opinions and tales to tell. As the person doing the interviews, there was never really an onus on me to say what I was up to, or what was happening in my life. You may know me from Countryfile, The One Show or, earlier than that, Blue Peter, but I had a life before any of those shows, at the top of my sport in Britain, and I have certainly had many memorable moments outside of that TV world before and since. I have been so fortunate to travel the globe meeting people from every walk of life, from famous faces to solitary, remote nomads who live two days walk from the nearest village. Ive filled three passports with those adventures and over many years these experiences have really helped me to understand what is important in my life and motivated me to focus on what I believe in.

Yet there is one destination that I will always choose above all others.

The farm, with my family.

After every adventure and memorable experience overseas or on these shores, I always come back to the farm, living the life that I love, with these animals, in these fields, in this valley.

You know when youve been away on holiday and youre flying home? You take off and the landscape falls away beneath you as the plane disappears into the clouds. Then, as you start the descent back into the UK, you begin to see this green island from above and, as you get lower down, you can make out treetops, individual fields, maybe even some hedgerows or livestock

When I see all that, I get this intensely reassuring feeling of being home.

That is exactly how the farm makes me feel every time I am here.

I love nothing more than driving up the farm track, closing the gate, shutting the world out and just being here.

I love it.

I started writing this book the day after the very first episode of my TV show, Our Farm in the Dales, aired. That programme was about our farm, the place where I grew up, my family and our way of life. It was the most personal project I have ever been involved in I produced and directed it, plus it involved my family for the first time.

Filming that show crystallized what is really important in my life: family, the farm, being in tune with nature, working hard and aiming high, enjoying what life has to offer but also seeing the beauty in the small things around us above all, being so very grateful for growing up in a stunning landscape, surrounded by the incredible beauty of nature, right here, on my doorstep.

I am dyslexic, so I see the world very visually and, as a result, one of my hobbies is to draw. Scattered throughout these pages are some of my sketches from around the farm: animals, plants, ideas and scribblings, just stuff that inspires me. I love nothing more than taking a sketch pad down into the woods or across the valley and sitting down, surrounded by nature just drawing or painting.

So settle in for a tour of our farm, taking in each of the four seasons in turn and detailing what happens, when and how, during those very different but equally remarkable phases of the farming year. Along the way I will tell you some of the adventures Ive had away from the farm, somersaulting my way to a British championship, phoning the BBC switchboard after a phone call from my wifes aunty, jumping on to a sofa every weeknight in front of the nation for nine years, cycling a rickshaw for more miles than you can imagine, travelling the globe and meeting cowboys, tribespeople, film stars and fellow farmers.

With any luck, through the pages of this book, I can tell you a few of my stories, share some of the incredible experiences Ive been fortunate enough to enjoy and, hopefully, give you an idea of what makes me tick.

For the early years of my childhood, I lived in Easington village, County Durham, having been born there the day before Christmas Eve, 1977. Back then, we lived on a lovely smallholding and my dad ran a local newsagents in Easington Colliery. A smallholding is basically a compact version of a farm, so we had goats there, we had horses, we had all sorts of different animals and other bits and pieces. A set-up like that is more about people who want to be self-sufficient, tending vegetable patches, looking after animals and so on, rather than those who are looking to make a commercial living from the land. Dad had his newsagents while Mum looked after our family and all the animals as well as helping Dad in the shop.

It was a friendly village and I have happy memories of my early years there. Easington Village School was a lovely village primary school; my sister went there as well. It benefited from very small classes; in fact there were two years in each classroom. The school had a lot of really good art teachers, such as one lady that I had in my final year called Mrs Robinson. She used to paint all sorts of wonderful landscapes around the hallways of the corridors, and I would always get lost in her artwork on the way to my class. Thats a habit that would return to me many years later but I will come back to that

Even as a young lad, I used to know everyone in the local area: all the farmers, my school friends and teachers; in fact, when I look back at my childhood, the overriding memory is one of community. We existed as a community, provided for one another, looked out for each other, grew up together, and there were some fantastic characters that you came across, learned from, laughed with and spent time being around.

There were always a lot of conversations between local people, regardless of who was in the room, adults or children. The adults never spoke to the children in a patronizing or demeaning way; I never felt like a kid being spoken to by an adult, they were just all my friends and people I loved being around. I definitely think that helped me in later years when I ended up on the TV chatting away with anyone and everyone. Without even realizing it, I was learning the art of talking to people and finding out what makes them tick. There are so many people in the north-east that are just fantastic at talking with you; these are some of the greatest interviewers on the planet, but you wont see them anywhere near a television studio. They are usually to be found just chatting on a bus or in a pub. I learned more from them than you would from any media course.