Will Simpson from Berriwillock said he had an amazing time on Farmer Wants a Wife, which starts September 4.
For Will Simpson the choice was a no-brainer — keep helping his father mark the lambs or talk to Country News about his stint on Farmer Wants a Wife.
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The new series starts this Sunday — Father’s Day — and the Berriwillock mixed farmer says he can’t wait for all his family and friends to see how his “rollercoaster ride” turns out.
Under pain of deportation, or worse, the entrants are banned from leaking anything about the show, but unless Will is the most upbeat cropper in the country, you can detect a lot of excitement about the show and how he felt it turned out for him.
However, back home on the family farm (where he is generation four) he is also facing some other serious challenges.
“I’m in charge of the fines at my footy club, and unless I put in a clause about TV appearances, the boys reckon I’ll be paying for the whole end-of-season trip,” Will says.
Playing for the Sea Lake-Nandaly Tigers, his team is in this week’s preliminary final after finishing the home-and-away season in third.
“We’re looking pretty good I reckon, and we’ve had a pretty solid year all round, so hopefully we get to the grand final to meet Birchip,” he says.
The Simpsons run 2226 ha (5500 acres) of mostly cropping, with wheat and barley the mainstay, lentils as a break crop and, depending on the season, some canola as well.
But Will says changing weather patterns have meant problems, such as stripe rust, which has previously never been a big issue for them.
“I would normally have expected to spray about now if we did have rust, but we did a first pass four weeks ago and I am pretty sure we will be giving it a second go very soon,” he said.
“We also run a small first cross lamb business with around 500-600 Merino ewes with terminal sires, with our wethers turned off at 12 months and ewes at one and half years. They are run on medic pastures and vetch hay — and then get a run on the stubbles after harvest.”
While he has been watching Farmer since he was a kid, the now 26-year-old describes his time on the show as “amazing” and an experience he absolutely loved.
Although, for a country boy, trying to have that first kiss proved a little intimidating when “this private moment is being done with a TV camera up your nose”.
“The first time that happened I was so nervous, sweating bullets and thinking this was going to be a disaster, but the crews and the producers were fantastic and made everything much easier than I anticipated.”
Will says he was so nervous about his first on-screen kiss he was “sweating bullets”, but the crews and the producers “were fantastic and made everything much easier than I anticipated”.
And it took Channel 7 two years to get Will on the show after he knocked back the first approach — a favour he still owes one of his good “mates”.
“He had actually sent in his details, but when he got the call out of the blue about coming onto the show he panicked and said ‘you don’t want me, but I know someone who would be perfect’,” Will said.
“So without me being aware of anything, I got the call to go in last year’s series but for me, at that time, it wasn’t going to work out.
“But they rang again this year and I had given it a lot of thought, and talked to family and friends, so I said yes.”
A decision he now knows was absolutely the right one.
Whether this Mallee cropper gets a wife is still a secret, but when he says it all turned out “really, really well” you have to think it’s going to be worth watching Farmer Will for the next few weeks.
While Will can’t give too much away, he says the show turned out “really, really well”.
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