One of the week's highlights for me has been my discovery of Clarkson's Farm on the telly.

It's Jeremy Clarkson, once of Top Gear and the Grand Tour fame. His show follows his decision to work his own 400-hectare land after the bloke who used to do it for him when he was busy driving cars, retired.

The importance of the show is it's actually important because beyond the fun, of which there is a fair bit. There is a message, and the message is farming is bloody hard work.

If you like Country Calendar like I do, you already know that.

In fact, Clarkson's Farm reminds you of the importance of Country Calendar as well. It's not as entertaining, but it has for a number of decades shown a side of New Zealand not enough of us get to see and appreciate. And it still remains every week one of this country's most watched programmes.

I appreciate farming more since I bought land three years ago. It's not Clarkson type land; it's not even proper farmland, although it could be. Everyone around us grows stuff; everyone around us makes a living from what they grow.

This is important here because of two things. Farmers have had a rough go of it under the current government. They are not appreciated or understood the way they have been and should be.

Despite all that, this country has been able to tread water because of what farmers do. When the borders closed and the tourists with money stopped coming, the farmer didn’t stop growing and the prices they are getting haven't stopped rising.

We are the best in the world at this game and not enough of us who aren't farmers get that and appreciate it.

In between Clarkson's antics and his fellow worker's reactions, all of whom are brilliantly cast, is the simple truth that farming is about risk and a lot of it. It's about expense that may never be recouped.

He bought 175 odd sheep to mow the paddock thinking it would be better than mowing a paddock with a tractor for hay.

By the time a couple were sent to the works because they couldn't breed, he found out the lambs he was left with, were now worth 52 quid not the 100 they were last season. And the wool from the mums was about 80 pence a fleece, and he was paying the shearer 1.75 pound a fleece and her assistant another 1.75.

Thus reminding us going backwards financially is very real on the land, and that’s before you get to the weather.

Watch it. It's brilliant because it's good telly. But it's also powerful because it's real. The reality sobers you up to just what we owe the farmers of this country.