Jeremy Clarkson has opened up about his devastation at life on the farm in Clarkson’s Farm season three when - and spoiler alert for those who might want all of the details before watching the Prime Video series - his new venture of pig farming has a sad start when several of the newborn piglets die.
The TV personality opened up about the situation, calling it “very heartbreaking,” and admitting that it was the first time he’d ever seen his partner Lisa Hogan cry.
Chatting to HELLO! and other reporters about the ordeal, he explained: “I've always liked pigs. My mother used to buy me toy pigs every Christmas and birthday. I thought it'd be fun to have them and then they just died in alarming numbers and it was very heartbreaking. I’ve never seen Lisa cry, not once ever until that all started unfolding. It was just terrible.”
He added: "They still die but we're getting more used to it now. We're a bit more robust. We're a bit stronger at dealing with it now, but it was a very heartbreaking time there.”
Lisa also spoke about raising pigs on the farm, admitting that she doesn’t like it when they go to the abattoir. She said: “I don't want to drive them there. I have other things to do… but it's very satisfying when loads of piglets are born, and they have such a great life running up and down that bank and snuffling away. I think all the trees actually might fall over because they're now getting to the bottom of the roots.”
She continued: “But it's satisfying because they’re born to breed. They're farm animals. The one thing I will do for next year is bring a lot more venison because that is just superb and we found a really good venison butcher. We have way too many deer they need to be culled so we want integrate that more and venison sausages are amazing.”
While Jeremy and Lisa have gotten more used to saying farewell to their pigs, there is one animal that they’re not planning on getting right of, goats! Jeremy explained: “Kaleb keeps going, ‘Kill the goats, you can sell them, we can eat them.’
“But I actually thought, ‘No, I want to keep them almost because I like them, but the pigs you have to sell them. There would be no cows or pigs in the country if people didn’t eat them. We said that about trying pandas. If you want to save the giant pandas start eating it, then farmers will quickly go, ‘I know how we can get this lot of breathing!’”
