A serious illness and two family tragedies have given Jurby West farmer Thomase Cleator a new sideline as a filmmaker.

Thomase, who is just 20, is planning to start filming a documentary following local farmers through the year from September 2020. He put out a call on Facebook recently for farmers who would like to take part and now has four confirmed.

Thomase’s interest in filming began quite accidentally in 2012 when he was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome (ME).

He recalls: ’From being very active on the family farm I needed assistance to be able to go outside, and assistance to stand up.

’I would take my iPad out and film bits on the farm and then put it together to watch it in bed.’

A serious accident gave Thomase’s filming another purpose, as he explains: ’Then my grandfather, Roy Cleator, was paralysed from the neck down in a farming accident. He was taken to Southport spinal injuries centre.

’It became a thing, filming everything on the farm to send to him to keep him in touch with what was happening on the farm.’

Gradually the idea grew to film the whole of the Manx farming year: ’to capture what it means to be a farmer on the Isle of Man’.

It didn’t happen straightaway.

Thomase says: ’It took me a while to get together the energy and the courage to get the project going.

’But when I did I could never have expected this positive response from so many people.’

He has already arranged to show the completed film at the Mountain View centre where they have agreed to hold a series of screenings in March 2021.

Now he is also planning a documentary following the Manx SPCA in June, July and August this year.

He says: ’I’ve gone from making one farming-related film to doing documentaries for other people.’

In the meantime his health has improved.

I’m a lot better,’ he says. ’I still need to rest and take my time. This is a project and a business where I can work at my own pace and now my heath has got to the point where it’s workable.

’It’s very much just a managing illness, no one knows what triggers it, no one knows what it is really.’

His family farms at Ballamenagh, Sandygate, which is run by his uncle, Andrew Cleator.

Thomase helps there when he can but also has his own farm, Ballakeenan at Jurby West, where he keeps 60-70 breeding ewes, producing pedigree Dorsets.

So far, Thomase is also managing to hold his own with his health while looking after his sheep.

’It was a big thing for me that I didn’t want to ever give them up,’ he says and he goes on to explain that there is a very poignant reason why they are so important to him.

When his great uncle, Derek Cleator, who also kept pedigree Dorsets, was suffering from prostate cancer he knew of Thomase’s passion for the breed and gave him a cheque to set him up with his own flock, saying: ’Do it properly and do it for me.’

He sadly died just under a year ago.

As Thomase says of his life recently: ’It’s been quite a few trials and it’s definitely been life-changing.’

â?¢ You can find out more about Thomase’s films on his Facebook page Thomases’s Productions.