‘Retirement ‘not on my bucket list’, says Rare Breed star Victor

Bushmills farmer and UDY deputy president talks to LAURA MCMULLAN

For Victor Chestnutt, his academic career in the sixth form studying A-levels lasted all of two days.

The young Bushmills lad had just rejected a place at Greenmount on a one year course in favour of going back to school, after having been persuaded by his teachers at Dunluce Comprehensive.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“I felt a lot of pressure,” admitted the Co Antrim man, whose farm has previously featured in the UTV series Rare Breed, which focuses on Ulster’s agricultural community, and is presently doing so again.

“So I went back to school for two days. I would have been a bit unruly and went in on the third day without the uniform on. The teacher had a go at me.

“I had got offered a place on the one year course at Greenmount which we had sent a letter away the day before to reject.

“I walked out of the school gates and walked the three miles home, and said to my mum, ‘why did you make me go back to school? That was a waste of time, I’m not going to stick that for two years - I’m for Greenmount.’

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“We didn’t have a phone in the house at the time, so I had to go and find a phone box, phone Greenmount and say, ‘when you get that letter, throw it in the bin, because I’m coming to do your course.”

This was back in 1978, and now a fourth generation livestock farmer, and deputy president of the Ulster Farmers’ Union, Victor has never looked back.

Married to wife Carol, the couple have two grown-up children, David, who also works on the family farm close to the Giant’s Causeway, and Zara, who works in CAFRE Advisory Service.

After leaving Greenmount, Victor developed the home farm into several livestock enterprises, mainly sucklers and sheep, with David moving into dairying in 2009.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Pedigree Texel Sheep were introduced in the early 80s, and Victor has gone on to represent the Province and hold many positions within the Texel Board, culminating in being chairman and president of the British Texel Sheep Society.

In 2018, he was re-elected for a second term as deputy president at the AGM, having served for two years.

His life is so busy that we even struggle to find a place to meet; last week, his duties for the UFU took him to Armagh and Cookstown, and we ended up chatting by phone when he got a break from some work at the organisation’s headquarters in Belfast.

He’s 59 years old - “but 20 at heart” - and says he has “no intention” of giving up work any time soon.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“Retiring is not on my radar, not on my bucket list,” he laughs.

“Why would you want to retire when your work is your hobby?”

A country man through and through, Victor was actually born in Belfast and lived in the north of the city for the first two years of his life, as his father’s missionary work saw him based there.

The family then uprooted and moved to Bushmills so that Victor’s father could take care of some of his elderly aunts and uncles.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

His wife, Victor’s mother, was originally from Adare in Co Limerick, and as Victor explains, “they bought the rest of the homestead on the understanding that they would look after the older generation”. He goes on: “We had a fair sizeable herd - 80 to 100 cows. All I ever wanted to do was farm. It’s just instilled in you or it’s not.

“I hated school and to me the best thing about it was the half three bell. I was stuck in an A class and would rather have been in a B class.

“I would like to have done metal work and wood work etc., but there I was doing French and Latin, and I didn’t like it.”

Unsurprisingly, as soon as he arrived at Greenmount, he “never had to open a book and ended up coming second from the top in the year” - because he was interested in it and enjoyed it.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“I stayed down in Antrim all week and I really enjoyed the practical element of it too. Once I finished the course I was straight back to the farm and got stuck in, although looking back I more or less took over without it being given over to me.

“I started to breed pedigree sheep, they were a big part of my life growing up. I made a bit of money out them, did well, and started to represent Northern Ireland in the Texel sheep society board.

“I’ve had a varied career and have judged shows as far away as south Brazil.”

Victor says he was also always “interested in farming matters” and heavily involved in his local UFU meetings.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Nomination by nomination, he worked his way up through the ranks to his current position as deputy president.

“I enjoy always trying to promote farming and get a better deal for farmers,” he says. “I got a phone call out of the blue asking me to appear on Rare Breed and because they were passionate about telling the story of what farmers do, and how and why they do it, and putting them in a good light, I was very happy to participate.”

Equally, he fully enjoys his role within the UFU, although he admits that at first, he felt somewhat “inadequate” to take it on, until he learnt the reality that “you can have education without intelligence, and you can have intelligence without a vast range of education.”

He adds: “I do think I keep in touch with local farmers on the ground, and am talking to all the local groups on a weekly basis throughout the year, so I feel I’m well placed to represent their views.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“Leadership can sometimes be a lonely role, and sometimes you have to take people to where they have never been before.

“There are times that can make you popular, and there are times it can make you unpopular.

“It’s not the type of job where you tell members what they want to hear - you have to be strong and take difficult decisions.

“Certainly with being on the committee over the last two years I have made a lot of contacts, and you start to feel a bit better equipped to meet this amazing bunch of farmers in Northern Ireland who care for our landscape the way they do.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

One of the biggest issues facing Ulster farmers, he says, is the environment.

“There is more pressure now for farmers in terms of taking care of the environment, and it can be annoying when you have to listen to somebody in a suit who has never done anything for the environment in his life except plant two trees in his back garden, telling us what we should do.

“Farmers live, breathe and work the environment, and most of them - in fact, practically all of the farmers I meet - want to leave their farm to the next generation in a better shape financially and also sustainably, and they want to leave the environment in better shape too for future generations.”

He adds: “What with leaving the EU, I also expect bigger changes to be set in place within the next year or two that will probably affect farming and how it progresses in the future for the next generation, so it is an exciting time to be in a leadership role.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“I look forward to giving something back to the industry which I love and which has been so close to my heart.”

Meanwhile back home, Victor’s Bushmills farm consists of around 310 acres which the Chestnutts own, plus the same quantity rented.

It’s certainly grown from when he took it over from his own father as a 100 acre hill farm, and to this day it remains very much a family operation.

“My wife Carol works tirelessly on it, helping David, and doing a lot of the milking. She wasn’t actually brought up on a farm herself - she grew up in White Park Bay.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

He adds with a chuckle: “Maybe I never gave her much option, but she certainly threw herself behind the farming and is a real asset.”

And whilst it’s essentially a business, for Victor, his farm remains, to him, a haven, a place of solace, and somewhere he still loves to be and work on.

“It has its stresses and its worries, but when you’ve been away all week in one meeting or another, and to use a common expression, ‘your head is fried’ you come home and get the dirt on those boots again and it’s great.”