'This is a real country house' - Amanda Owen gives Yorkshire audience sneak peek of what to expect in new series of Our Farm Next Door: Amanda, Clive and Kids
Amanda Owen and her family have been restoring an abandoned Swaledale farmhouse for more than two years. Ahead of a fresh TV series, she reveals the lessons she has learned. Emma Ryan reports.
There are renovation shows aplenty on television these days - but how many are as authentic as this?
If you are expecting magazine style interiors, the star of the show, Amanda Owen, herself will tell you this is not the show for you.
As Our Farm Next Door: Amanda, Clive and Kids returns to our screens for a fourth series on More 4, Royal Television Society (RTS) Yorkshire hosted a stage with the Yorkshire Shepherdess, ahead of Monday night’s (Oct 5) opening episode.
The series follows the Owen farming family and the third year of their ambitious renovation of their new family home, Anty John’s - a derelict farmhouse in Swaledale.
“We are never going to be in an interiors magazine,” Amanda told the audience. “This is a real country house.
"A country house with the smell of wet dogs, ponies and you come and drink tea from a chipped mug. You will like it, or you won’t, but it is real.”
Joined by Jayne Stanger, Channel 4’s lifestyle commissioning editor and James Knight, creative director of Wise Owl Films, which produces Our Farm Next Door, Amanda gave a behind the scenes insight into how the show is made, alongside everyday farming and family life with nine children.
She said: “The crew are very good, they come and say ‘what’s happening today, or this week’ and I haven’t got a clue.
"It is difficult because there are so many variables - people, animals, nature. And, the wonderful thing is, they just go along with it and keep the cameras rolling.
“The first thing that happened when we went to Anty John’s was everybody hopped out of whatever vehicles they were in and the children ran off up a tree, we chatted about this and that, something scattered about in the tree and they came down.
“The crew got their cameras out and asked them to do it again and they said ‘no’. There are no re-takes, that’s it.
“It wouldn’t work if we were on our best behaviour, and realistically, I can’t control what’s going on with all these variables so you just have to go with it.
"The bottom line is, it is everybody’s choice to be filmed. Nobody is set up to film five or ten minutes, they are just themselves.”
For James, he says one of his highlights from filming this season - done between winter 2025 and spring 2026 - is watching the younger Owen children growing up.
“We see the middle cohort of the children come to the fore and there is a lot of evolution of these characters,” he said.
“The series is constantly evolving and we don’t know where it is going next. There are funny moments, poignant moments and, hopefully, visually exciting moments.”
One poignant moment, shown to Wednesday night’s audience at The Everyman Cinema in Northallerton, relates to last season and the death of 14-year-old family dog, Chalky.
Monday’s opening episode will see viewers join the Owens on Christmas Day where some late Christmas presents are dropped off on Christmas night.
Clive had arranged for terrier pups Patch and Rascal to join the family, while Amanda also had her own surprise for the children with 12-week old pup, Dora.
“Communication is not always top but when you have got a farm, you have got to fill it,” Amanda joked with the audience.
Giving a sneak insight she added: “Clive was determined he would not like this dog and was going to give it away. Now he sits there with her and they are twinning.”
Clive and Amanda bought Anty John’s in 2020.
It had been empty and derelict for decades, at some time previously belonging to Anthony John Clarkson, a surveyor and mapmaker, who lived there in the 1800s with his wife Mally.
Wise Owl learned he had kept diaries and with the help of the show’s historical consultant, Derek Wallace, they tracked down one of Clarkson’s original diaries, dated October 20, 1817 to September 1, 1824.
With reams of neat, uniform handwriting it tells of, amongst other things, drinks at the Tan Hill Inn and riding horses. It also transpires, Clive and Amanda got married in the same church as Anthony and Mally.
It is another favourite moment from series four with a previously unseen clip, being shown to the audience.
This snapshot of social history is what makes Our Farm Next Door different to other renovation programmes, Jayne added.
“In terms of renovation shows, we do lots of them but you don’t get that social history and this was key to us and why this show is so special.”
The Owens first appeared on television screens back in 2009 as part of BBC series, Wainwright Walks: Coast to Coast.
Other appearances followed which led to their own series on Channel 5, Our Yorkshire Farm which became one of the channel’s most popular programmes.
When Jayne was pitched a show following the Owens and the Anty John’s renovation by Wise Owl, she “snapped their hand off”.
As a viewer she said she loved the family in their own right, but had worked with Amanda on her show, Our Farming Lives and wanted to carry on working with her.
Our Farm Next Door is More 4’s highest rated series in the last four years.
Jayne said: “You are following a renovation, following a family in an area few people get to see or experience. It is a way of life getting rarer and rarer, and this is a real document.
“To see the life of the children away from urban life, social media and mobile phones - it is a joy people can relate to.”
Amanda said the shows about the family and farm started as programmes about nostalgia, but in more recent years had come to represent something more powerful.
She told the audience: “I am so proud of that, we live in a world with AI, CGI and all this technology coming quicker and faster.
"I really and truly believe this programme helps anyone to see there are different routes and to ask what is success?
“Something like this offers a ray of hope in a way. I used to think this was about nostalgia and looking back, but COVID was a turning point. I hope people now see it as a way forward.”
Our Farm Next Door: Amanda, Clive and Kids, the new series starts Monday at 9pm. Watch the series on More4.