That’s because Sam has become a bit of a YouTube star. Known on the video sharing website as The Swaley Man, at the time of writing Sam had 6,941 people subscribing to watch his videos about life on his family’s Brigg Farm in Fell End near to Sedbergh.
Roughly averaging between five and 10 minutes in length, his videos capture snippets of everyday life on a working Cumbrian hill farm – and people appear to love it.
Called ‘Farming Life’ and divided up into episodes, his most popular footage so far is an eight minute and 45 second video about a brand new Honda quad bike which had been delivered to the farm. The video, uploaded two years ago, has been viewed a mega 63,220 times and liked on 533 occasions.
With a modern sound track backing the video, it’s right on trend, fun, informative and involves plenty of sheep. Sam has a great presence in front of the camera, speaking directly to the viewer and manages to get some important messages across. In the video about the quad, he’s insistent about wearing a helmet and being careful.
YouTube has become one of the internet’s most powerful search engines (second only to Google) and the third-most-visited website in the world.
Sam can now be referred to as a ‘YouTuber’ which is basically someone who uploads, produces, or appears in videos on the site.
As the trend of abandoning television and other forms of traditional entertainment in favour of social media platforms and apps continues unabated, people are clearly moving to places such as YouTube to consume their media. YouTube users now watch over 4 billion videos each day and over 6 billion hours of videos each month, so Sam is certainly tapping into a growth market with his brand of authentic farming life videos.
Sam explained: “A lot of farming videos on YouTube are about arable farming. There are not too many people doing hill farm sheep videos like me so I suppose you could say I’ve managed to tap into a bit of a niche market.
“It takes three full days with good weather to shoot three really good videos you’d want to watch. It then takes me about two and a half hours to edit the piece.
“If I find something interesting on the farm then I’ll video it. I only create videos that I’d want to view myself.
“I receive loads of supportive comments from my followers. The YouTube farming community is quite big now and there’s a lot of interest from young people with no link to the industry.”
Born after the millennium, Sam has grown up alongside the rise in popularity of social media sites such as YouTube. Ask him to cast his mind back six years to when he was just 10 and he can recall memories of watching videos about creating model farms. Believe it or not, one of these videos about toy tractors has been viewed 2.5 million times.
You may have also heard your kids talk about the Grassmen of County Antrim. These are real YouTube superstars and have inspired the likes of Sam.
Their videos show silage contracting in all its glory, in their words ‘the sunshine, the rain, the breakdowns and the craic.’
Their videos have been viewed 47,725,539 times and 124,220 subscribe to their channel. Go on their website and their online shop is awash with Grassmen branded gifts and DVDS.
Part with £65 and your kids can return to school with a Grassmen school bag, lunch bag, holdall, beanie hat, pen, pencil, keyring and school sticker set. This is merchandising on a scale historically restricted to pop stars and footballers.
It’s therefore hardly surprising they’ve become role models for young farmers up and down the country.
The short term goal for Sam Hutchinson is to reach 10,000 subscribers and 100,000 views on one video. Having joined YouTube in March 2014, Sam’s videos have now been watched 1,045,154 times.
The family farm, where the videos are shot, belongs to Sam’s granddad Harry Hutchinson. Brigg Farm is 175 acres and home to 350 pure Swaledale ewes.
The former Kirkby Stephen Grammar School pupil added: “Grandad has appeared in many of my videos as have a lot of my friends and family. I don’t think they mind being on camera which is good news because it would be pretty impossible to create one without involving them.
“The family has always had involvement in the media. Grandad Harry regularly represented the industry in local news bulletins and dad Wayne is a breed photographer for nine societies and a contributor to farming publications Farmers Guardian and Farmers Weekly.
“Dad inspired me to get started and it will take me a lot of time and effort to get to his level but in the future I’d love for people to refer to him as Sam’s dad instead of me being commonly known as Wayne’s son.”
The press reported recently that a six-year-old YouTube star from South Korea bought a house worth 6.5 million with the proceeds from her toy review and vlog channels. Could that be Sam?
“I’m beginning to receive a little bit of money from advertising but its tiny amounts at the moment,” laughed Sam.
- To view some of Sam’s videos,visit his YouTube channel.