JB GILL I Love Watching Ace As He Goes Around the Musician Enthuses About His New Life the Farm, Starting to Learn the Names of the Animals
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
FROM LEFT JB has embraced farming life on his land in the Kent countryside, adopting a Tamworth pig called Ginger realise how important they are. She had piglets and now we have six breeding sows and one boar. They are free-range and we sell them for meat. I’m really proud of our welfare standards. On the farm, I’m pretty hands-on. I do everything, including mucking out the pigs. If I’m away, such as when I film for CBeebies’ Down on the Farm, then my dad comes and helps out as he MY COUNTRYSIDE only lives 20 minutes away. My son, Ace, is nearly two and absolutely loves getting involved, too. He’s more of a hindrance than a help at the moment, though! JB GILL I love watching Ace as he goes around The musician enthuses about his new life the farm, starting to learn the names of the animals. We all learn so much since buying a farm in Kent from our environment. My plan is that, within the next three or four years, the farm will be open for other people to I bought my farm while I was still in thing I did was harvest the hay from come and see it with their kids, and the group [JB was in the boy band JLS]. some of the land myself and sell it for organisations including Rays of It’s about ten acres in Kent. I’ve never to local farmers. Sunshine – a charity I support been a huge fan of living in central My first animal was a that works with seriously London and at the time I was travelling rescue pig I got from ill children – to be able to a lot. I really wanted a place to call the RSPCA in 2012. I feel proud visit, too. home, a haven to escape to for the one It was my dad’s fault. I’ve always been conscious day off I’d get every three months. I was looking for a that I don’t want to do It was previously used as equestrian dog at the time, and to be able farming a disservice. land, and for the first three and half Dad came with me It’s really important to me years I did nothing with it. Each year and started talking to represent that if you do something, the hay grew up, and I’d pay someone to to the lady who runs you understand how it cut it and take it away. I was brought up the centre. She said works. Farmers do a PHOTOGRAPHY DABNEY EDMUND BY PORTRAIT GETTY IMAGES. [in Croydon, in the London suburbs] they had loads of the farming difficult job and there is not to take things for granted, and so farm animals, very little recognition of I began to feel this was just a waste and including Ginger the world now that. I feel proud to be able to wanted to use the land properly. pig. Dad said, “We’ve got represent the farming world I kept getting things in the post – space; we’ll give her a home.” And I now, even though I don’t come from it, BY . PHOTOGRAPHS sheep and goat inventories, farm remember saying to him at the time, and hope it helps get other farmers the machinery catalogues – and a few “If you’re going to get a pig, you need respect they deserve. people asked whether I had thought to make sure you look after it!” It felt about farming the land. I didn’t know like parent-child role reversal. JB presents Down on the Farm LANGRISH KATE the first thing about it, but I started to At the time, I wasn’t aware that on CBeebies, a seasonal series that look into different types of farming and Ginger was a Tamworth. I didn’t know explores the outdoor world of farming that was it; I’d got the bug for it. The first about traditional breeds, but now I and the countryside (jbgill.com). BY INTERVIEW 210 OCTOBER 2016 countryliving.co.uk document1982913979156321389.indd 210 03/08/2016 14:25.