Now that’s what I call horse power!
It was the photo that lit up a gloomy week – the shire horses still used by a farmer who shuns tractors. ROBERT HARDMAN picks up the reins
tHEY were a charming antidote to the turbulence of the world beyond — a reminder of a simpler Britain. This week, as we suddenly found ourselves thrust into a snap election campaign on top of all the uncertainties and upheavals in France, Turkey and the Korean peninsula, the Mail offered readers a wonderful distraction.
Our photographs showed Devon farmer Jonathan Waterer working his fields, as he has always done, with a Herculean team of Shire horses instead of tractors. The images proved such a welcome tonic for readers everywhere that the phone has hardly stopped ringing since at Higher Biddacott Farm, near Barnstaple.
Everyone from documentary makers to horse lovers all over the world wants a chat or a photo or further details about Jonathan and his horses.
With the unflappable stoicism of a man who was born on a farm and has spent most of the subsequent 57 years working on the land, he is rather surprised by all the fuss.
After all, as far as he is concerned, there is nothing unusual about harnessing several tons of obedient horseflesh to a harrow or plough or mower or seed machine.
It might not be quite as quick or comfortable as performing the same task by tractor but, in Jonathan’s view, it is not merely more satisfying, it’s also a heck of a lot better for the soil.
Yet to millions of us struggling to keep pace with the demands and impositions of our click- driven, digitally dependent worlds, Jonathan’s way of life is, somehow, deeply reassuring.
And there is nothing quite like a day here to lift the soul, particularly when — like me — you are holding the reins of a team of Shire horses as they rip open the soil beneath your feet with extraordinary grace and power. In the distance looms St Hieritha’s, Chittlehampton, the finest church tower in Devon. It is a magical setting.
For starters, I join Jonathan on foot and learn to steer a steady trio — Bobby, 14, William, six, and Samson, ten. I walk behind them as they heave a harrow, a sort of upturned comb the size of a picnic blanket, up and down Quarry Field. This uproots all the weeds before this six-acre field can be sown with spring wheat.
It’s like driving a very sensitive, very powerful vintage racing car. You know it could take off at any moment. You just hope it won’t.
Even more exhilarating is the next part of the process, the disc harrows. This involves sitting on top of two rows of heavy rotating blades pulled by a team of half a dozen horses — with only two reins to control the lot of them.
The original three have been joined by their stablemates — Jack, five, President, four, and Billy, 20. Beautifully trained, they move as one as they churn up tons of rocks, weeds and compacted soil while also dragging me behind them.
Most impressive of the lot is Jack since, unlike the others, he is not a Shire horse. In fact, he is not a horse at all, but a Dales pony who merrily pulls above his weight.
Jonathan is not some dreamy eco-warrior clinging to a lost way of life. He is an intelligent, practical man with a delightful family running a mixed farming operation ranging from top quality beef production to specialist wheat to providing cattle and horse-drawn vehicles for productions such as Poldark and Pride And Prejudice.
But his passion — and his core business — is training horses.
Pop stars and the Prince of Wales — who asked Jonathan to mow his wildflower meadow at Highgrove — have sought his advice and help. But then so, too, have countless ordinary people, not least an Exmoor farmer with a precious cow facing a slow death in a bog.
‘There was no way he was going to get a tractor anywhere near that animal, but we got her out with a horse — and she gave birth a month later,’ he says proudly.
We are sitting in the kitchen of the family farmhouse where a couple have turned up with a frisky
young horse for Jonathan to break in. As with thousands of horses and ponies before this one, he will soon have the animal ready and roadworthy for driving or riding.
And he will do so without a single crack of the whip — for the simple reason that he won’t use one.
‘You don’t need a stick or a loud voice to train a horse,’ says Jonathan, an old friend of Monty Roberts, the celebrated American ‘horse whisperer’.
He prefers not to use this title. ‘I don’t whisper to horses. But I can usually tell in a few minutes exactly how they are going to turn out. And the bigger they are, the easier they tend to be.’
It’s a busy kitchen. His wife, Fiona, is juggling plates of egg and bacon for her B&B guests while fielding a call from a lady in Hampshire seeking a DVD of heavy horses. No sooner does she hang up than there is a call from the local paper wanting to know how the new local celebrities at Higher Biddacott are planning to vote in this election from which they have become such a popular diversion.
‘I haven’t made up my mind,’ says Fiona. Jonathan, for his part, says he is not remotely political, but reckons Theresa May is the candidate best suited to sorting out Brexit.
The couple’s grown-up children, both former agricultural students, are at home today. Son Harry, 26, is on holiday from Holland, where he works in food products and commodities. Daughter Tiggy, 22, is completing a stunning range of pheasant-feathered artwork and mirrors, which she will unveil at the Badminton Horse Trials.
As Jonathan points out, when the pressure is on — be it harvest time or a busy filming schedule — the whole family mucks in. When I ask him about his greatest starring moments, he’s a bit vague. ‘I think I once drove Reese Witherspoon to the station,’ he laughs.
He is much more animated discussing the pitfalls facing his industry. ‘People think farming will collapse after Brexit without subsidies,’ he says.
‘But farmers will just get on with it like they always have.’
The Waterers, for example, have just invested in a new hearse for horse- drawn funerals. Horsedrawn weddings are another of their sidelines. Jonathan thinks farming’s biggest challenge is tackling the cumulative effect of years of automative farming combined with the use of more and more chemicals.
Airless soil that has been pressed and pressed again by machinery and chemically deprived of its natural ingredients will, in due course, become sterile.
‘If you read some studies, then this country has only about 50 harvests left at this rate. We need to think about growing things differently,’ he says.
Jonathan is the first to acknowledge that big farming operations could not possibly compete if, like him, they used horses instead of machinery.
Nor is he an evangelical advocate for organic food, saying it is an expensive, niche market.
But he is a firm believer that farming needs to be less intensive — using a single tractor journey to perform three tasks rather than three trips round the field.
He has a tractor — a scruffy 41year-old model — but uses it only when he has to. ‘There are some tasks when it makes sense, such as shifting bales around.’
But when it comes to growing the crops on the 100-acre farm, with its 40 head of cattle, he insists on doing all the tasks in the traditional way.
He grows his own straw, hay and oats. But he’s also dedicated 16 acres to growing wheat for
specialist artisanal bakeries in London, which can fetch £2,000 a ton at a ton per acre.
It’s a new direction inspired by pop star-turned-farmer Andy Cato. Having had hits such as I See You Baby with Groove Armada, Cato moved his family to a farm in South-West France where he grows his crops in the oldfashioned way.
He asked Jonathan over to help him with the horse side of things and the two are now in frequent contact.
‘ His knowledge is just phenomenal and so are the results,’ says Jonathan. ‘His wheat is four or five inches taller than the wheat next door.’
He is also a great admirer of Prince Charles, whom he met when he was invited to drive his horse-drawn mower over the Highgrove meadow.
The official book on the royal Gloucestershire estate includes a photograph of Jonathan and the Prince hard at work in 1999.
‘The Prince wanted to know all about how it worked and asked if he could have a go himself. Not a single wonky line,’ says Jonathan approvingly.
The Prince spent a couple of hours alongside him on the mower and, he says, they discussed everything under the sun.
‘He’s a real thinker. He even asked me what I thought about prison reform.’
Jonathan went on to help the Highgrove farm staff find some heavy horses of their own.
We head to the stone stables where the Shire horses live. Some, like Bobby and Samson, were bred locally. Others, like Jack the Dales pony, ended up here because his owner could no longer cope.
They all have a story. A particular favourite was Abraham, who was discovered chained to a tree near Bristol without food and water. The RSPCA asked if Jonathan could help.
‘He was all over the place when he arrived,’ he says. ‘But he was one of the best we’ve ever had.’ Abraham spent the rest of his life here, reaching the ripe old age of 32.
Jonathan’s love of these gentle giants began in his youth on the family farm in Berkshire where he found an old harness for a draft horse and was hooked on learning more.
After boarding school at Radley, he went to work on a ranch in Canada where they still used heavy horses for farming and forestry.
He returned home and started doing the same on a small farm on Exmoor. It was there that he met Fiona, a nurse running an old people’s home.
Pooling their resources and with a bank loan, they bought Higher Biddacott in 1996 and have never looked back.
‘It doesn’t matter what sort of a day you’re having,’ says Fiona as we watch Jonathan set off across Quarry Field on his disc harrows behind his six beautiful animals. ‘When you’re watching this, you soon feel better.’
‘The Prince didn’t make a single wonky line’