Series One of Clarkson’s Farm – Jeremy Clarkson’s new TV show on Amazon Prime Video – launched in June 2021 and it was a huge success. The show grew a devoted fan base and garnered much attention for Jeremy’s farm and his Diddly Squat Farm Shop, in Chipping Norton, in the Cotswolds.
Series two was also met with much anticipation last year and now fans of the show are thrilled as the third season of Clarkson’s Farm has dropped on Amazon Prime.
For the third instalment of the series, the Diggly Squat gang are back, with Jeremy Kaleb Cooper, Charlie, Lisa and Gerald up to a whole host of new projects from rearing pigs to growing mushrooms.
Jeremy Clarkson’s farm – which he has lovingly named Diddly Squat Farm as a nod to his amateur farming status – is located in Chipping Norton in the Cotswolds. Clarkson’s Farm follows Jeremy being taught how to run his own farm by a group of local farmers and agricultural experts. This includes sidekick Kaleb Cooper, who is Chipping Norton born and bred and never wants to leave the area.
“I love my life. I am very, very happy,” Kaleb told Country Living. “I don’t understand why anyone would want to go to London and stay in London but that’s completely up to them. Farming for me is not a job. It’s a way of life.”
Although Jeremy Clarkson has owned the farm since 2008, he has only just decided to take it on himself, after the previous contract farmer announced his retirement. “I genuinely believed that you’d put seeds in the ground and then weather would happen and then food would grow and I’d go on a skiing holiday – that’s what I thought farming was,” he admitted.
Learning how to be a farmer has shown Jeremy a different side to life in Chipping Norton, in the north of the Cotswolds. But let’s start from the beginning with this beautiful town. Here’s everything you need to know about Chipping Norton…
Where is Jeremy Clarkson’s farm?
Diddly Squat Farm lies between Chipping Norton and Chadlington in Oxfordshire. It is in the northern tip of the Cotswolds.
“It is a perfectly average farm really,” Jeremy told us. “1,000 acres, a few sheep, wheat, barley, rape. We wanted to say ‘this is what it’s like farming’ [with the new show] and that’s what we’ve tried to do.”
Diddly Squat Farm is not organic but Jeremy, Kaleb and the team work hard to encourage wildlife where they can, striking a balance between sustainable farming and affordable produce.
“We’ve created quite a big wetland area for insects. We’ve got beetle strips running through the fields. We’ve put turtle dove mix in,” Jeremy listed. “We do quite a bit to attract wildlife and birds and bees. We’ve put owl boxes up. We really have worked very hard but then do I dump a load of glyphosate on the crop? Yea I do.
Where is The Diddly Squat Farm shop?
The Diddly Squat Farm Shop is located on the farm. It sells the farm’s produce as well as products from local growers and makers. Alongside food, you can also find clothes, kitchen accessories and gifts. Jeremy describes it as being “full of good, no-nonsense things you’ll like” and emphasises on the website that “we do not, for example, sell kale.”
The website also reads: “Established in 2020, Diddly Squat Farm Shop was the brainchild of Jeremy Clarkson after realising that potatoes did indeed grow well on his farm and he had accidentally produced 40 tonnes of them. From there, with his partner Lisa, he bought hives and began to produce and sell bee juice, along with apple juice and cow juice from a local dairy.”
Where is Chipping Norton?
Chipping Norton is the highest town in Oxfordshire, perched on a hillside where a Norman castle once stood. The word ‘Chipping’ comes from the old English word for ‘market.’ There are other Cotswold market towns with the same naming convention including Chipping Campden and Chipping Sodbury.
Chipping Norton is famous for its wool and tweed production which has attracted shoppers to its market since the 13th century. The town is home to Bliss Tweed Mill, designed by George Woodhouse. It’s a grand building which looks more like a mansion that a textiles factory.
Chipping Norton, known to locals as ‘Chippy’, is also home to an impressive church, thought to have one of the best church interiors in the Cotswolds.
