Jeremy Clarkson hit with 'devastating news' moments into new series of Clarkson's Farm

From the get-go in the first episode of Prime Video's new series, Clarkson's Farm, Jeremy Clarkson received a wave of devastating news. The former Top Gear presenter, along with his right-hand man Kaleb Cooper, was hit with numerous financial challenges on the farm after several tough years.

Jeremy faces a crushing blow as he hears disheartening news within the initial moments of the first episode, stating that everything that could go wrong has indeed gone wrong regarding his attempt to start "unfarming". After an exceptionally dry summer season, his hopes for crop cultivation were dashed.

The adverse weather conditions had induced skin hardening in potatoes, stunting their growth and making them too small for harvesting machinery to pick up. Both Jeremy and Kaleb absorbed this as a significant setback, their expended labour seeming futile.

Elsewhere on the farm, complications persist, with Jeremy realising that his sunflowers cannot be harvested, and his unique farming experiment off to a shaky start. Faced with restrictions to plant oilseed rape and receiving a closure notice for his restaurant, pressure surmounts for Jeremy. Prior to this, Jeremy had shared his "heartbreaking" encounter with losing piglets on his farm.

He recounted the distressing experience: "It was just a heartbreaking time. I've never, ever seen Lisa cry - not once, ever since that all started and was unfolding. It was terrible."

Describing the emotional attachment to the animals, he said: "It is weird because you love them and you help birth them and you feed and nurture and care for them.

"I mean, you don't say, 'Let's buy some pigs and hope they die."

Reflecting on his initial optimism, he shared: "I thought it would be fun to have them, then they all just died in alarming numbers."

"It was absolutely horrific at the time, and we had another calamity with them just the other day, but by and large they're now going OK. We're getting more robust now, though - we're a bit stronger at dealing with it."

On the financial impact, he noted: "That's a lot of money. I reckoned the pigs would provide something that's sadly lacking in farming today: a bit of genuine happiness."

Jeremy concluded with a somber note: "It was almost unbelievably sad, we had a catastrophically high level of deaths.

"The piglets were sadly accidentally crushed by their mothers while some died of natural causes in infancy."

Clarkson's Farm returns to Amazon Prime on May 3.