If anyone has had a glimpse of the series and seen some of the goings on the farm this will have you in stiches.
Jimmy is great, comes across as a top bloke, he's achieved some great things with that derelict farm, I'd love to live the dream he's chasing but as a business-man he does seem pretty clueless & even more hopeless.
I think we're on about the 3rd episode now? 1st episode showed him signing up for this farm without having planned ahead for all contingencies, he found the well on the farm was dry & immediately had to spend a fortune (about ?£20K) to get mains water piped in, went to switch on the leccy then realised there was none, appointments line said he'd had to wait months for electric company to call out to reconnect the place.
Had a bit of a bonfire right next to a tinder-dry corn-field which promptly went up like it had been doused in petrol & the nearby motorway had to be closed due to the smoke, firemen turned up & had no water to turn on the fire.
He had a fox running around killing chickens, his solution? Buy more chickens! When they were being slowly picked off he went out & bought (?A shotgun to kill the fox perhaps?) no he bought dozens of chinese quail!!! These would have been pretty much useless anyway for meat or eggs but it doesn't really matter anyway because they were all dead in about 5 minutes flat. He eventually got around to getting someone to sort out the fox.
Chickens, great idea, farm shop- free range chickens, free range eggs. Where would Joe-average go for chickens? I'd probably go out & buy some good stock, young hens that wre just about to start their laying life. Jimmy, goes out & buys a vanload of bald, diseased,mentally ill, clapped out, elderly battery hens which were "cheap" (wonder why?) They were being offloaded obviously because they had stopped laying or were expected to stop laying soon. So, in their expensive caravan coops, being corn fed & cosseted his flock of old hens soon rewarded Jimmy by laying. I think it was about 1 or 2 eggs a week but they were laying (and that's not each - that's 2 or 3 eggs for the whole flock!)
No accommodation on the farm, no problem, go out & buy some old mobile home type 6 or 8 berth caravans. I could probably go out & get these for £3K or £4K each, he set himself a budget of £7K each I think, fell in love with the top of the range unit & ended up spending nearly £40K on one caravan. And yes these were the caravans we saw in s2 being gutted out & used as (very expensive) chicken coops.
The list of disasters is absolutely endless, planning disputes, planning rejections, bank problems, supplier problems, staff resignations, etc. etc.
Every time BBC2 screens the latest disaster which could close down the farm, where is our entrepreneur? Usually out buying something seriously daft which he doesn't need and which is guaranteed to cause no end of problems in the future.
Most folk would perhaps learn from one or 2 of these harsh & expensive lessons but Jimmy seems to plough on regardless planning admirable but ever more bonkers schemes. Last week it was 'Ferret-World', Dolly perhaps injecting a note of sanity when he started to describe the likely scenarios if the ferrets got loose (lots of dead chickens, bunnies & guinea-pigs presumably), the paying public going home with kids with no fingers after the ferrets had bitten them off! etc.
The Xmas week 'disaster' yet another example of his cluelessness, that was the potentially the most important week in the calendar as far as the business was concerned but because there were not proper systems in place & chaotic organisation it was a shambles & must have lost them a fortune. Was Jimmy there sorting out the ordering-cockup's? Was he putting sensible, foolproof quality systems in place? No, you've guessed it, he was off again in cloud-cuckoo-land planning more madcap ways to ruin his business & bankrupt himself & his long-suffering girlfriend.
I felt so sorry for the Butcher on the farm, he resigned shortly afterwards, at the end of the day he was employed as a Butcher & was probably pretty good at it, his workload had grown exponentially so he was doing the work or 3 or 4 Butchers on the run-upto Xmas and it looks as though he was being expected to sort out all the ordering issues as well.
Jimmy did then employ a General Manager at £45K a year, no reflection on the guy he's probably going to do a decent job but that's an awful lot more dosh to find out of a failing business. I think this General Manager had just given up on his own business which doesn't bode too well, (and of course Jimmy then leased his old premises & bought all his old equipment off him for more money-losing schemes).
I just couldn't help thinking that if he'd got another Butcher in and a couple of assistants they'd have managed to sort everything out, would have cost less than a General Manager & stressed out staff wouldn't have been resigning!
Andy the stockman, again seems a nice guy, and yes, like many it seems I have wondered if he was a female to male transexual or a eunuch or someone with an unusual clinical syndrome like Prader-Willi's? It's been interesting though watching his learning curve as he copes with new skills & new animals.
Jimmy, loved what you've tried to do & really hope it works. If everything does work out & it all succeeds, sadly, it will be in spite of you - not because of you!
This is a top real-life soap opera so I hope he manages to stay afloat for another year at least so we get another series.
Jimmy is great, comes across as a top bloke, he's achieved some great things with that derelict farm, I'd love to live the dream he's chasing but as a business-man he does seem pretty clueless & even more hopeless.
I think we're on about the 3rd episode now? 1st episode showed him signing up for this farm without having planned ahead for all contingencies, he found the well on the farm was dry & immediately had to spend a fortune (about ?£20K) to get mains water piped in, went to switch on the leccy then realised there was none, appointments line said he'd had to wait months for electric company to call out to reconnect the place.
Had a bit of a bonfire right next to a tinder-dry corn-field which promptly went up like it had been doused in petrol & the nearby motorway had to be closed due to the smoke, firemen turned up & had no water to turn on the fire.
He had a fox running around killing chickens, his solution? Buy more chickens! When they were being slowly picked off he went out & bought (?A shotgun to kill the fox perhaps?) no he bought dozens of chinese quail!!! These would have been pretty much useless anyway for meat or eggs but it doesn't really matter anyway because they were all dead in about 5 minutes flat. He eventually got around to getting someone to sort out the fox.
Chickens, great idea, farm shop- free range chickens, free range eggs. Where would Joe-average go for chickens? I'd probably go out & buy some good stock, young hens that wre just about to start their laying life. Jimmy, goes out & buys a vanload of bald, diseased,mentally ill, clapped out, elderly battery hens which were "cheap" (wonder why?) They were being offloaded obviously because they had stopped laying or were expected to stop laying soon. So, in their expensive caravan coops, being corn fed & cosseted his flock of old hens soon rewarded Jimmy by laying. I think it was about 1 or 2 eggs a week but they were laying (and that's not each - that's 2 or 3 eggs for the whole flock!)
No accommodation on the farm, no problem, go out & buy some old mobile home type 6 or 8 berth caravans. I could probably go out & get these for £3K or £4K each, he set himself a budget of £7K each I think, fell in love with the top of the range unit & ended up spending nearly £40K on one caravan. And yes these were the caravans we saw in s2 being gutted out & used as (very expensive) chicken coops.
The list of disasters is absolutely endless, planning disputes, planning rejections, bank problems, supplier problems, staff resignations, etc. etc.
Every time BBC2 screens the latest disaster which could close down the farm, where is our entrepreneur? Usually out buying something seriously daft which he doesn't need and which is guaranteed to cause no end of problems in the future.
Most folk would perhaps learn from one or 2 of these harsh & expensive lessons but Jimmy seems to plough on regardless planning admirable but ever more bonkers schemes. Last week it was 'Ferret-World', Dolly perhaps injecting a note of sanity when he started to describe the likely scenarios if the ferrets got loose (lots of dead chickens, bunnies & guinea-pigs presumably), the paying public going home with kids with no fingers after the ferrets had bitten them off! etc.
The Xmas week 'disaster' yet another example of his cluelessness, that was the potentially the most important week in the calendar as far as the business was concerned but because there were not proper systems in place & chaotic organisation it was a shambles & must have lost them a fortune. Was Jimmy there sorting out the ordering-cockup's? Was he putting sensible, foolproof quality systems in place? No, you've guessed it, he was off again in cloud-cuckoo-land planning more madcap ways to ruin his business & bankrupt himself & his long-suffering girlfriend.
I felt so sorry for the Butcher on the farm, he resigned shortly afterwards, at the end of the day he was employed as a Butcher & was probably pretty good at it, his workload had grown exponentially so he was doing the work or 3 or 4 Butchers on the run-upto Xmas and it looks as though he was being expected to sort out all the ordering issues as well.
Jimmy did then employ a General Manager at £45K a year, no reflection on the guy he's probably going to do a decent job but that's an awful lot more dosh to find out of a failing business. I think this General Manager had just given up on his own business which doesn't bode too well, (and of course Jimmy then leased his old premises & bought all his old equipment off him for more money-losing schemes).
I just couldn't help thinking that if he'd got another Butcher in and a couple of assistants they'd have managed to sort everything out, would have cost less than a General Manager & stressed out staff wouldn't have been resigning!
Andy the stockman, again seems a nice guy, and yes, like many it seems I have wondered if he was a female to male transexual or a eunuch or someone with an unusual clinical syndrome like Prader-Willi's? It's been interesting though watching his learning curve as he copes with new skills & new animals.
Jimmy, loved what you've tried to do & really hope it works. If everything does work out & it all succeeds, sadly, it will be in spite of you - not because of you!
This is a top real-life soap opera so I hope he manages to stay afloat for another year at least so we get another series.
Missed the first couple of episodes so that was enlightening!
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