No one who watched Britain’s Got Talent will forget the moment judge Amanda Holden pressed the ‘Golden Buzzer’ to signify a group of singing farmers automatic advance to the semi-finals of the competition.
“It took a few seconds to realise what was going on,” recalls choir member, Warwickshire farmer and Agrovista customer Chris Slatter. “We were just expecting the judges to say, ‘you were alright’ and suddenly everybody’s clapping and cheering.”
It was the start of a scarcely believable few months that ultimately saw the Hawkstone Farmers Choir win Britain’s Got Talent singing an original song “This is Home”, record an album, and appear at both Farmers Weekly and Farmers Guardian’s Awards nights. Still to come are appearances at the Royal Variety Performance in November, a Christmas single featuring a trumpet solo by Chris, and next year a tour to venues around the country.
Among all of that Chris still has to fit in running his 270ha mixed arable and sheep farm in the north Cotswolds. “It does take its toll,” he admits. “But you just make it work.”
Harvest was a case in point when it coincided with recording the album. Asked to spend 12 days at a mixture of a recording studio in Bath and rehearsal venue in Thame in Oxfordshire, he ended up staying away from home for several nights.
“I didn’t do all the combining on my own this year like I normally would,” he says. “I’d finished cutting one block of oilseed rape, before heading to rehearsals, so my cousin, who farms next door, helped by moving the combine the next day and doing a day and half cutting the next block.”
When he was combining it typically involved some overnight harvesting. “I was combining at 5am in the morning, partly because you had to, just to have some moisture in the grain,” he says.
A milling wheat grower, often the battle is finding grain to cut under the 15% target; this year it was finding grain above the minimum 12% accepted by millers, he adds.
He also had some help from the team at his local commercial grain store. Using the store has significantly reduced grain handling time, but having recorded during the week, Chris was keen to crack on with wheat harvest at the weekend.
“But the store manager, because harvest was progressing so fast, had given his team the day off on the Sunday. Fortunately, having told one of the team I needed to continue cutting, they arrange for three massive trailers to be brought to the field so I could fill them up and they picked them up the next day.”
While Chris hasn’t changed anything on the farm directly because of his involvement in the choir, he is making some big decisions on the farm’s future direction.
With three daughters currently unlikely to take over running the farm, a little bit of disillusionment with farming generally although the public’s response to Britain’s Got Talent has led him to reconsider that view, plus a strong desire to have more time away from the farm doing different things, he’s decided the sheep enterprise no longer fits.
“It relies on having someone on the farm with the sheep every day, feeding and checking on them. I’m 57 and want to do other things. You can plan around arable crops a little bit easier.”
That’s where his Agrovista agronomist Peter Dews support become even more valuable. “There was a couple of times this summer, where I’d told him that I was going to be away for the next four or five days, and if anything needed spraying, I needed to do it before, which we were able to do.”
Chris also recognises the support Peter and most other agronomists provide, perhaps unknowingly, with mental health on farm. “Years ago, there would be loads of workers on farm, and sales reps calling in, providing advice and chatting about lots of things.
“But for various reasons, time being a main one, there’s much fewer visits either wanted or happening. But agronomists remain central on farm and might now be the only other people some farmers see.
“I feel they are very much at the forefront of farmers’ mental health, which is one of the central messages the Hawkstone Farmers Choir is promoting,” Chris says.
Singing and other activities that take people off farm can creates a vital sense of community and break the isolation felt in an often-solitary job, he notes. “We’re also addressing the stigma in agricultural communities where admitting struggle is often feared as a sign of weakness. We want to use our platform to encourage farmers to speak up and share the load.”
To help build the skills and confidence to have conversations about mental wellbeing, the choir completed RABI’s one-day mental health training course, while it also donated £50,000 of its Britain’s Got Talent prize money to charities Mind, RABI, the Farming Community Network, Shout and the DPJ Foundation.
Spreading awareness about mental health in the agricultural industry is set to be a key mission for the choir during its 18-venue tour next March.
For a group of farmers aged between 22 and 70 plus, touring is going to be a challenge in its own right, Chris acknowledges. “I think we’re having a tour bus, which I’m not sure how some of us will feel about sleeping on overnight after a gig.
“But like everything to do with the choir, it’s going to be an amazing opportunity and experience,” he concludes.
