Amanda and Clive Owen’s son, Reuben Owen, has come a long way from his TV debut as a youngster. The Mirror spoke to the 21-year-old about life in the Yorkshire Dales today and his rather unusual ideal date
Reuben Owen and Jessica Ellwood are far from your average 21-year-olds. Reuben, who like his eight siblings grew up on smash hit 5 documentary Our Yorkshire Farm, says his ideal date involves his digger and it seems he’s found his perfect match.
Jess hails from a farming family eight miles away from Ravenseat, the isolated farm Reuben grew up on with his shepherdess mother Amanda, 50, and her ex-husband Clive, 70. Viewers will meet her on new 5 series Reuben Owen: My Yorkshire Life, which focuses on his plant hire business. And it seems she is thoroughly on board when it comes to his passion for machinery.
“I could work with you all day in any sort of environment,” said the smitten Yorkshireman as he sat down for his first joint interview with his equally in love other half. “Last weekend we were felling trees. In terms of our hobbies, I think digging. Jess is very good on the digger. She’s better at driving a digger than I am milking cows.”
READ MORE: Our Yorkshire Farm’s Amanda Owen faces critical restoration delay ‘we have a problem’
Talented Jess, who describes herself as a “proper homebird”, rides and drives horses for a hobby and by day she works on her family’s beef and dairy farm, milking 90 cows and looking after a herd of 15 Belted Galloway cows and 350 sheep on the fells. “I’ve loved animals since I was small,” she said.
“I always knew what I wanted to do. At my school’s careers evening I walked in, put my name down for agricultural college and walked out.”
The couple met by chance at the night do of the Westmorland County Show, known locally as the Kendal Show, an annual event celebrating agricultural life across the border in Cumbria. “I was working on Stainmore (an area on the Yorkshire/Cumbria border) with one of my mates on the digger and he asked me if I fancied coming to the show’s night do,” said Reuben.
“I turned up and somehow managed to get talking to Jess and it went from there. It’s the biggest stroke of luck ever – I never really went to show night dos, it was just by chance I ended up at one.
“We got talking about sheep and cows, I managed to pretend I knew something about cows, she probably thought I was talking utter rubbish. We just got talking and never really stopped.” “He’s very handsome and we just got on really well, we clicked,” added Jess. “We have similar interests.”
Eight months on, to maximise the time the busy young couple are able to spend together, Reuben helps Jess complete milking at her farm and in return she helps him at the quarry. “I still do a little bit on my family’s farm but now my brothers have gotten older they do the main bulk of the farming and I concentrate on the digging and groundwork,” he said, of his famous family abode which is home to around 1,100 sheep. “But recently I’ve found myself doing a lot more farmwork…”
“Jess is absolutely gorgeous and great to be with, I love spending time with her whatever we’re doing,” added Reuben. “Her family are a lovely bunch, they’re great and look after me so well.”
The 21-year-old has previously appeared in Reuben: Life in the Dales and Beyond the Yorkshire Farm: Reuben & Clive. Viewers of the new series can expect to see the young businessman and his team, made up of pals Capper, Sonny and Tommy with brothers Miles and Sidney helping too, tackle a variety of jobs with their heavy machinery.
We will also witness Reuben trying a very old-fashioned pastime, Tug Of War, which is popular with young farmers. And while he displays some impressive brute strength, it doesn’t sound like this is an activity he’ll be repeating. “It took me a week to recover from that,” he laughed. “I felt like I’d been run over.”
Unsurprisingly, while many 21 year olds want a big party for their landmark birthdays, traditional Reuben had different ideas about how to celebrate his big day in November. “Jess and I were looking at my vintage tractors, which she doesn’t have a lot of faith in,” he said. “We went round and there were maybe eight in the shed. I told her what was wrong with them all and we decided we were going to drive seven of them from our house to fish and chips at Whitby.”
Reuben’s workmates, brothers and Jess joined him for the epic three day, 80-mile adventure, to the North Yorkshire coast, praying the vintage machines would hold up. “It was a really fun way to spend my 21st birthday and quite inexpensive,” he said.
“We had plenty of disasters along the way, I went up Sutton Bank and my tractor threw all its water out and overheated. We had to put a new head gasket on it in the car park, the engine on it had come to bits.
“We managed to find a gasket at a garage a few miles away and we resealed it between us. It was an adventure. We had cake on the beach.”
The machinery wizard’s immense knowledge comes mainly from his father Clive who like his hill-farmer mother Amanda remains on hand to advise him. “I’ve been through college and I don’t know anyone with the knowledge Reuben has,” said Jess. “He learned from such a young age.”
“I speak to a lot of young people and try to encourage them to have a go,” added Reuben. “I remember dad sitting me on the digger when I was really small. It’s nice to think we’re in a place with the business now where my brothers can be involved and make a few quid out of it. We’ve got a really good team of lads on with us.”
Reuben’s parents famously split up a few years ago, after 22 years of marriage. Amanda and Clive later reunited to co-parent their children – Raven, 23, Reuben, Miles, 18, Edith, 16, Violet, 14, Sidney, 13, Annas, 11, Clemmy, nine, and Nancy, eight – and recently teamed up for series two of Channel 4’s Our Farm Next Door: Amanda, Clive and Kids, which sees them breathing new life into a derelict farmhouse.
Reuben has been on TV since he was six or seven – or as he puts it “so long ago now, I can hardly remember” – and says the cameras have never really made a difference to his life. “The hardest time of year is winter, when the ground gets soft and boggy and we’re always getting stuck and there’s a camera there,” he laughed. “We’re good friends with the crew and it seems to be whenever something goes wrong, there’s a camera.”
“Round here everyone just knows me as someone that’s always riding around in a battered pick up,” he added. “When you get a bit further afield, people tend to want selfies, it’s sweet. You don’t realise until you get away from here how many people watch it and enjoy the programme.”
Reuben may be one of nine siblings, with Jess in the middle of three sisters but both say a family as big as the Owens isn’t on the cards. “Not after Easter Sunday – we took my siblings and your younger sister to a classic fair and I don’t think I’ve ever been so stressed in my life,” he said.
“There were six kids, we picked up some more, their friends turned up and I was left with them all. I was so stressed, in the crowds of people. Given my attention span, I don’t want that many.”
Source: Mirror
Leave a Reply