A singing sheep farmer has racked up thousands of hits on social media after penning a song about his trusted trailer.

Internet sensation John Hughes has received 11.000 views of his latest music video in which he croons about his Ifor Williams-brand trailer, alongside his loyal sheep dog Poppy.

The 61-year-old guitar player, known as the Singing Farmer, now earns most of his income from performing at private gigs across Powys while continuing to tend to his 140-strong flock of Chamois sheep and Limousin cattle at his farm in Meifod, near Welshpool.

He racked up thousands of hits on his Facebook page with daily video posts throughout the pandemic of songs about life on the farm.

The grandad-of-two, who returned to his first love of music 10 years ago when his old school band Storm reformed for his 50th birthday party, acquired his Ifor Williams livestock trailer from a fellow farmer 15 years ago in exchange for cattle, and has now been inspired to write a song about it.

“Farmers can turn their hands to most things, like welding, plumbing, electrics – why not singing?” said the dad-of-four, who is married to wife Jayne.

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE:

"As soon as lockdown happened, I started doing a song a day. We put them on Facebook, just me and my dog – well, you try to get the dog involved but she wasn’t really cooperative. I had a job to get her to sit beside me because she doesn’t like the sun in her eyes!

“Quite often I find myself sitting in a queue of Ifor Williams trailers, on the way to market, and singing songs to myself. That’s when I had the idea – and people are always telling me to sing about what I know.

“I literally got up Sunday morning and wrote it and we recorded it in about 20 minutes. I was really pleased with the line ‘I’m content with what God sent”. You have to catch people’s attention early in a song.

“Everyone wants my trailer. It carries all the amps, lights and speakers to my shows. When my daughter moved out, it carried all her junk off to Oswestry. It has been very reliable.”

It is not the first time one of John’s songs has become an overnight internet star.

A few years ago, he penned a song about the Wales Rugby Union team taking on Ireland in the Six Nations Championship.

County Times:

John and his trusty companion Poppy

“It was a song of the moment and if you get the timing right it’s everything. We’ve been up in the 10,000s and 15,000s a few times,” he said.

“It’s good exercise for my brain to put the words and the tune together. I love it.

“I think people appreciate I’m not in a recording studio. It’s just a guitar and a voice and about putting an idea out there. It could be more polished but to be really polished you need to be singing it to a live audience.

“I wrote one called Fireflies and sang it in front of one of our bulls. He was standing there right behind me grunting and stamping his feet and I was sitting there thinking ‘I hope he doesn’t take me out!”

“I’ve had 10,300 views since Sunday on this one. I went to the pub last night and the guy in there was raving about it. Farmers are very quiet people but they have their ear to the ground and know what’s going on.”

John switched from dairy farming to sheep and cattle a decade ago. Around the same time, he held a party to celebrate his 50th birthday where he reunited with two of his former school band members; twins Mark and Iain Jones, and opportunity struck.

“Music is communication. I’m quite a quiet, shy person but I can communicate through music and that’s a beautiful thing.

“I was singing in a home in Shrewsbury one day. There was a lady in a cot bed with her carer beside her. The carer was crying her eyes out and I was wondering why. I went over to ask her if everything was ok and she explained this lady had been in the home for five years and had never spoken to anybody but she had sung every single song with me. It was enough to make me cry. Music is a way of reaching out and connecting with people.”

My Ifor Williams Trailer by John Hughes

Oh, I’ll never be a seaman, or a sailor

I’ll never be a teaman or a tailor

I’m content with all God’s sent

And my Ifor Williams Trailer

I wake ups Monday morning as I’m rounding up the sheep

A load bound for Welshpool market, 20 miles per hour down the road

When my daughter left home, Ifor Williams lent a hand

There was hair straighteners, there were cupboards, there was hair dye

There was even ironing board, here was beds, there was pillows

There was tables, there was mirrors, there was even a magic wand

There was more room in the trailers that there was in her new house

Chorus

Mrs say she wants a campervan, I said: that’s a failure

If you want a holiday, we’ll sleep in an Ifor Williams Trailer

It’s lovely to look at it