Diagnosed with autism and dyslexia, Joe explains that animals are his passion and his therapy. In two years, he acquired a dozen hens and sheep which he presents at the Lincolnshire Show agricultural fair, thus becoming the youngest exhibitor in the history of the show.
Nicknamed Farmer Joe, Joe Trofer-Cook, a resident of Billinghay in England, is 11 years old and he is becoming the darling of the British press which, from Times at the BBC, multiplies the reports and portraits on him. And his story is indeed exceptional. It begins in 2020, in full anti-Covid confinement.
>> United States: Designated “teacher of the year”, this math teacher motivates her students with the exercise of “the positive thing”
Joe has just been diagnosed with autism and is experiencing the situation very badly. He wallows in silence and decides to spend most of his time outside, in the garden. His grandfather therefore has an original idea: send him packets of vegetable seeds, and the adventure begins.
Joe sows them, watches them sprout, nurtures them, then harvests them. Turnips, cabbage or even carrots that he aims to sell in front of his house. The parents give their agreement, he sets up his stand, quickly attracts the curiosity of the neighborhood and sells all his vegetables. He repeats the operation a few days later and decides to realize his dream with the money earned: buy his first hens. Over the months, the whole neighborhood will support him: in addition to vegetables, we buy his eggs, which allows him to acquire a sheep, then two, we give him agricultural equipment, a farmer rents him for a sum symbolically a piece of meadow. Today, Joe can boast of having 37 sheep, 12 hens, 2 cows, and above all one certainty: he will be a farmer.
The youngest exhibitor at the Lincolnshire Show
He repeats it at length of interviews, it is his passion, and his therapy: to be with animals “among whichhe said to Times, I can’t have a favorite, because they are all absolutely unique“. Joe goes through the gestures with disconcerting ease, from distributing hay to handling tools, lately he learned to spin the wool of his sheep, but he says that what he likes the most “it is to welcome new lives, to attend the birth of the little ones and to see them grow then“.
Do not seek the influence of parents, they are not farmers. Her father is a metalworker and her mother a cleaner. Today, Joe is in the news because he has become the youngest exhibitor at the Lincolnshire Show, the local variant of the Agricultural Show, in its 138-year history. The 2023 edition starts this Wednesday. In the end, he is neither happy nor unhappy to be on TV, he just says to everyone who is overwhelmed by the dizzying question “what do you want to do later?“: “listen to yourself, and follow your dreams, you necessarily have some.“