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Jody Schekter among his young organic cattle

IF you won the lottery how would you spend the money? Agriculturally, the question is answered when you visit Jody Schekter's 2,500-acre organic farm at Laverstoke Park in North Hampshire, which he calls "the biggest small holding in the world".

Schekter was a Formula 1 driver from 1972-80. He drove for McClaren,Tyrell and finally Ferrari, for whom he won the world championship in 1979. On retirement he went to America, where he started a hi-tec company and bought a farm, where he could spend the weekends. It was the farm life that eventually won out, and he sold the company for £100m, came to Britain and in 1996 bought a 500-acre farm so that he and his family could eat healthily But for the restless Schekter, expansion was needed to turn it into a full-time business, and he gradually added two nearby farms and has ended up with the 2,500-acre Laverstoke Park site. His restlessness also almost guarantees that it will be even more time before the operation, totally organic and run bio-dynamically arrives at a profit, because that slogan "the biggest smallholding in the world" reflects the myriad of enterprises that make up the farm as a whole.

The farm tour starts with a visit to the library, next door to the boardroom in the farm office The books look well thumbed and have been collected throughout the world, as well as from the internet. Among them the works of Friend Sykes, the Wiltshire farmer and racehorse breeder and specialist on organic grass leys, as well as valuable works from the 1800s on the same subject by Robert Elliott. Schekter admits that, having gone through the entire research period some time ago, he now confines his reading to magazines, pulling out the pieces that are relevant to the farm that he is running. Before we left the building he spelt out what he was aiming for: "To be self sufficient, self sustaining, selling only what we produce on the farm, and running not a farm shop but a shop on a farm. From the ground to the mouth."

We start the farm tour and Schekter says, "We're not bragging, we run it like a smallholding," and he is right. As the tour progresses project after project are added to my notebook. He speaks so quickly and enthusiastically that it is hard to get it all down in my stuttering Pitmans. Everything seems so new such as the recently-completed processing plant where no preservatives are used. Salamis, hams, dairy products like mozzarella cheese are all produced on site.

Next door is the year-old abbatoir built with the pre-killing period especially in mind, as well as providing special hanging rooms for afterwards where beef will be hung for at least 28 days. The cattle are housed in daylight under a slanting glass roof, and they stand in deep new straw. Until now it has been confined to organically-farmed animals, but because this only produced an average one day's work a week, it is to be opened to all-comers. The whole construction is airy and relaxing right down to the use of light colours.

Now we are on the way to the science laboratory, where microbiologist Dr Vinodh Krishnamurthy analyses soil from not only the farm, but from anyone who wants their soil analysed. and offering help to such organisations as golf courses and other sporting facilities, as well as giving education support. It is a fully equipped laboratory strategically placed out among the fields and overlooking the compost tea unit, and a whole field devoted to long neat piles of precious compost. The laboratory working out beforehand which sort of compost is right for a particular crop.

Scheckter explains: "We take green waste from outside. The laboratory works on, among other things, how we can grow better tasting better food."

As we move on he points out a burgeoning vineyard : "We planted a hectare of vines last year and eight more this May. For what will be our version of champagne."

He points proudly at another field by the road that stretches throughout the farm, saying that this is a good example of his reading from Robert Elliott and Friend Sykes about organic grass leys. "I call it our mixed salad' for our cattle. There is no rye grass in it, and half per cent of red clover. Mostly old variations of grass seed. In fact 31 variations of herbs, clovers and grasses."

He says of the farm's agricultural philosophy: "You follow nature very closely, big diversity, slow-growing animals and plants generally. The more diversity we can get in every element of the farm the better we like it."

Now he is fondling buffalo calves, and the background story as to how he came about bringing buffalo to Laverstoke sums up his single mindedness and his financial funds. "I went up country to see Bob Palmer. I liked him and bought his herd of 3-400. I asked him to work for me, which he now does, and we have 1,500 buffalo spread across four farms around here. We went to Italy and looked at mozzarella factories and parlours, and we've just got our buffalo burgers into Waitrose."

As he moves among the calves, he points out that they are very friendly, which indeed they are. Pretty as well, jet black and alert.

Next we are on to the pigs, which are out in the wilds enjoying themselves rooting up the land: "We move our pigs every two weeks. They are mainly large whites and middle whites. We breed backwards. as we also farm wild boar, so we put a wild boar onto an old breed of pig. We haven't needed a vet on our pigs for the last eight months."

We pass fields of cattle, which again he has collected with the obsession of the collector of anything from stamps to paintings. He explains: "Those are native Angus, they have short legs and flat backs. At one point there were only 45 left in the world, now we have a small herd. How do I get them? When someone gets a divorce," and he laughs.

He has also amassed a small herd of original Herefords. So why did he start collecting original cattle?. For once his motor racing career re-emerges: "The best meat I ever had was when I competed every year in the Argentine Grand Prix. We always went to the same restaurant, so when I started farming here I went back to Argentina, visited the same restaurant, found where their meat came from and visited the abbatoir. It was pure Hereford. It all goes back to slow growing."

He does keep another contact with Formula One with a contract to supply organic food to the Honda chefs when the Grand Prix circuit is in Europe.

He then takes me to a walled kitchen garden dating from Victorian days where he grows fruit, vegetables and an indoor tomato crop. He has also just bought a three-acre site in Lymington by the coast for further fruit growing. To keep all these various enterprises moving he employs 90 staff during the picking season, and 60 full-time staff the rest of the year. Now wonder he admits: "We're losing money all the time."

But profit is no longer a word that drives him on. It is seeing how many acres he can make bio-dynamic, and how he can prove that healthily produced food produces healthy humans.

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