COPING with ten celebrities who are all miles out of their comfort zone is not generally all in a day’s work for most Northern farmers, but Chris Jeffery is becoming something of an old hand at it.

Chris is judge and jury for the second year running on Channel 5Star’s reality show, Celebs on the Farm, which was due to air from Monday, August 26, on Channel 5 and Channel 5Star at 10pm.

He will guide the celebrities, many of whom have never set foot on a farm, through a series of agricultural tasks, whittling down the numbers day by day over two weeks until a winner is finally found.

Chris, who has become known as Farmer Chris, was chosen to front last year’s show after appearing on Channel 5’s The Yorkshire Vets.

A colleague of the then producer, Lou Cowmeadow, asked for her help in finding a ‘down-to-earth’ Yorkshire farmer to judge the celebrities in the first series and Chris’s rise to stardom began.

Chris farms with his wife, Kate, near Coxwold in North Yorkshire and has rare breed cattle, sheep and pigs, including a herd of Whitebred Shorthorns from which he is about to sell his first breeding stock, with three heifers going to the Carlisle mart.

His pigs are Oxford Sandy and Blacks, with the farm selling weaners as well as for bacon.

The couple also run Greens Farm Supplies at Thirsk Farmers Mart, a business which offers a range of feed, medicines and accessories and is expanding apace thanks to recent investment into the production of Lazer tags for cattle and sheep while customers wait, cutting the lead time down from two weeks to a few minutes.

He sees the programme as a great opportunity to introduce a new audience to farming, its issues and the importance of it in the economy and future of Great Britain.

Chris said working with the celebrities has been a revelation. “I was absolutely terrified the first time, but nowhere near as terrified as they were. Most of them were scared of the animals, even the sheep!”

The show is filmed at Lunsford Farm, a mixed stock farm in East Sussex, with Chris joining the celebrities there for the duration of filming. This year’s line-up includes stars from TOWIE, Love Island and Strictly, comedian Crissy Rock and former England footballer Paul Merson.

They will tackle a whole range of rural tasks, from mucking out barns to preparing pigs and learning how to present them in the show ring and from tractor driving to making and selling sausages at a farmers’ market.

Chris said his own fear levels had reduced to “nervous” for the second series and he had been delighted by how committed and hands-on the celebrities had become during filming.

Paul Merson had been terrified of the livestock at first, despite having played on the biggest footballing stages in the world, while Crissy Rock had developed a deep caring for the animals. None of them had ever seen a lamb born and that was a particularly special moment they shared.

So how can Chris follow this? He is in the middle of writing a book about his experiences which will be launched on his own farm at Open Farm Sunday next June.