Longford's own Farmer Phil harvests his ongoing YouTube success

Killashee man Philip Stewart, aka Farmer Phil, stands in his yard early on a Monday morning, hours of work already behind him.

On one side of him, there’s the makings of a building that will one day be a shop, cafe, and vintage museum, while on the other side, there’s a large pumpkin patch sitting alongside a field of sunflowers that attracts families in their droves and school tours by the bus load.

Read more: Longford Halloween disco for preschoolers and national school children

Behind him is an impressive looking tractor he was able to purchase with earnings accrued from his hugely successful YouTube channel. His website shop stewartfamilyfarmlongford.com sells farm-fresh food and, much to the delight of his following, merchandise emblazoned with the Farmer Phil branding.

Then there’s his slew of social media channels which themselves attract farm brand type collaborations. Farmer Phil is an innovative powerhouse and he’s not even 30!

Without doubt, there's many a micro influencer that would pay good money to know Philip's social media strategy, but the fact is, none such plan exists.

“I don't take the whole thing very seriously at all” he explains. “I probably should, but I don’t.

What I do is farming, contracting, and no matter how much money I'd have, that’s what I’d always be at. I wouldn't spend a lot of time filming.

I rarely go out of my way to make content or to stop what I'm doing to get that perfect shot or get a certain angle.

If I think I have time to put the camera somewhere, I will. And if I don't, I don't bother.

The most time consuming bit, especially when making the short form videos from long form ones, is the editing of it, and thankfully my wife Olivia does all of that. What I do is the easy part.”

Read more: Longford Pride’s secretary takes home Volunteer of the Year Award

Part of the appeal of Farmer Phil’s content lies in the fact that it's not showing farm life through a filtered lens.

If something goes wrong, be it machinery breaking down, cattle breaking out, hens going awol, he shows it.

“We're warts and all, we show it how it is,” he explains. “And I always put that down because we don't have time to do it any other way.”

Profits, whether they’re from social media, the website shop, the farm, or the on site farm shop, are all pumped back into the business, primarily to try and get the new building up and running.

As savvy in business as he is in social media, Philip has found a variety of creative ways to generate multiple income streams from his farm and there’s more to come too.

“We opened the farm shop in to 2021 so that my wife could work on the farm full time and earn a living from that.

We're still in the process of building the new premises which will have the farm shop, a cafe, and a vintage machinery museum.

It'll probably be two years before it's fully finished. There's a lot of money to be spent and we probably didn't take out enough money to do it, so we'll do it as we go along.”

On the farm. there is a pumpkin patch spanning 6 acres. Now in its fifth year, it has proven a hit with the public, particularly families as kids can enjoy exploring their way through the rows of pumpkins using miniature wheelbarrows available on site.
As the biggest challenge was parking, Philip set up an online system whereby people wishing to visit the patch - be it just to view or to select pumpkins to buy - can book a time slot on his website.

Last year, around 1,200 families booked in to view and shop the pumpkins. Meanwhile, the 2 year old sunflower patch next to it was the summer visitor attraction with some of the flowers standing well over six feet.

Read more: Down Memory Lane | Glamour and style galore as Christine is crowned Miss Longford winner

Speaking about the vintage museum he hopes to create, Philip explains what inspired the idea. “We have a lot of vintage tractors and old machinery so our plan is to put some of them on display alongside a lot of other vintage items.

We’re doing up an old farmhouse here on the farm; it’s over 200 years old and there's a lot of stuff that's come out of it that we think should be on display as it would be of interest to people.”

Philip is indeed the living embodiment of Arthur Ashe’s great words of advice, “start where you are, use what you have, and do what you can.”