SHOWBIZ TV Matt Baker TV presenter Matt Baker on Channel 4’s National Trust: Our Dream Farm With Matt Baker, farming misconceptions and what his dream farm would look like
By Yolanthe Fawehinmi, PA
Matt Baker’s dream farm looks like the traditional hill farm he grew up on in the Durham Dales.
But when the 47-year-old British TV presenter thinks about the 600-acre farm in Eryri, (formerly Snowdonia), North Wales, that tenant farmers (people who rent land from a landlord and work the land) compete for in the second season of Channel 4’s National Trust: Our Dream Farm With Matt Baker, it’s a close second. “I’m very fortunate to have grown up on a very traditional hill farm in Durham Dales.That’s the farm that I love. I love a mixture of landscapes as well.Welsh farms are very similar to the kind of farms that we have in the Durham Dales, but thankfully, my dream farm is the farm I grew up on,” says Baker, a former presenter on children’s television show Blue Peter from 1999 until 2006. “It’s the world I know and love. It’s where I feel comfortable in that kind of landscape with lots of dry stone walls and older buildings, but also more modern buildings that you can drive tractors in and get all of your stock in if needs be. I love a hardy, rugged farm with a good yard and some modern barns.” In the documentary-style series, seven shortlisted candidates are put under the watchful eye of the National Trust as they complete real-life farming tasks in the hope of becoming the new tenants of a unique hill farm in the national park, with a four-bedroom farmhouse at its heart, for the next 15 years.
The National Trust have a lot more applicants for their farms than they have to give.
So in National Trust: Our Dream Farm With Matt Baker, contestants will be judged on how well they maximise the opportunities that the farm has to offer.
This can be anything from tourism, how innovative or business savvy they are to how they prioritise environmental sustainability.
Across eight episodes, prospective tenants will be eliminated one by one until only two hopefuls are left and invited to have a final meeting with the National Trust. But only one person can win and become the proud owner of the farm. “For me, any show that puts our agricultural world front and centre is absolutely vital, as far as I’m concerned. Not a lot of people know of the world of tenant farming, and the fact that a third of British farmers are tenant farmers. I think you only have to go out into the countryside and be so thankful that it looks the way that it does because of our farmers,” says Baker, who shares two teenage children, Luke and Molly, with his wife, physiotherapist Nicola Mooney. Continued on following page >
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