Ruby and Annabel, two gorgeous Tamworth sows, are sunning themselves outside their hut. In the distance, a rare Welsh Black cow sits on the grass, her coat so shiny it looks as if it has been washed and conditioned. Behind her, the top two floors of one of Britain's most famous privately owned country houses can be seen just above the oak trees. It is a spectacular view, and one that Prince Charles could only dream about when he bought Highgrove in 1980 and decided to set up an organic farm on the estate.
Duchy Home Farm was responsible for the Prince's first organic food product: a humble wheat and oat biscuit. Now, the Duchy Originals range includes bread, bacon, sausages, jams, cheese, and, of course, organic milk from Highgrove's 160 Ayrshire cows. The latest addition - to be found on the shelves of your local Sainsbury's or Waitrose - is crisps made from the farm's organic vegetables, £1.59 a packet. Or, for £38, you can order a Highgrove Aberdeen Angus filet at The Ritz in London.
All of this is from the man they accused of indulging in alternative therapies and talking to plants. Now, it is those who still dismiss him as a gullible, New Age fool who look rather old-fashioned and out of touch. Time, health awareness and the huge growth of the organic movement are in step with Prince Charles, proving him to be not so barking after all. And, with his Duchy Originals food company boasting a turnover of £23 million this year, he has certainly had the last laugh. He's been eating organically for decades; now we're all catching up and the critics are shutting up.
Anyone who doubts his passion and commitment to living, and promoting, a more natural way of life, should wangle a visit to Highgrove's Duchy Home Farm. When the Prince says, 'I have put my heart and soul into Highgrove. All the things I have tried to do in this small corner of Gloucestershire have been the physical expression of a personal philosophy,' it is an understatement.
Duchy Home is truly a model farm, one that you see only in children's books or on the Disney screen: poker-straight fences, immaculately painted farm buildings, glossy animals, chickens pecking round the swept yard and not a discarded piece of rusting machinery in sight.
Once past the police guard and up the drive to the house, a large painted notice greets the visitor: 'Caution. You are entering a GMO-free zone.' This acreage will never knowingly grow a GM seed, something the Prince describes as 'an acute threat to organic farmers and all those consumers who actually wish to exercise a right of choice about what they eat'.
The broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby, who is president of the Soil Association, is a frequent visitor: 'The farm itself is a complete delight. I've been there many times with a lot of sceptics and I've never seen one of them walk out of there still saying that organic principles are rubbish. The operation is a formidable achievement. The Prince has had to overcome a lot of cynicism, but his support is the reason why it functions as it does today.'
Twenty-three years ago, when the Prince purchased Highgrove with an initial 25 acres, organic was not the obsession it is today. Although he had a curiosity and interest in farming there was no talk initially of going organic. His aim was 'biologically sustainable farming'. In the early Eighties, the Duchy began to purchase surrounding farms and parcels of land, and the Prince went looking for a farm manager. David Wilson remembers being asked at his interview if he was interested in organic farming and automatically saying yes, although he wasn't entirely sure what it was. 'We've been learning together since 1985,' he says.
A lanky, energetic man with a staff of seven, Wilson, 49, shares the gloomy outlook of most farmers, despite the deep pockets of his boss. Milk prices are down and the rural economy is still reeling from the after-effects of foot and mouth. The farm is not in profit this year, although it has been in the past.
He finds it dispiriting that people are now so distanced from the source of their food. 'Ninety-eight per cent of the population have nothing to do with the land,' he says. 'Food has never been so cheap - now costing 10 per cent of the average income - so it isn't worth anything in people's minds and they take it for granted like spoiled children. I think everybody should be starved of food for three days. That would make them think differently.'
He is equally emphatic in his opposition to genetically modified food which he thinks is being propelled by the multinationals. When he first consulted his old agricultural college books for organic advice, Wilson was shocked to see many of the set texts were sponsored by companies such as ICI and Bayer.
Everyone seems to agree that Wilson was one of the Prince's better choices when it comes to hiring staff. He is the reason that William Kendall decided that organic was the way forward. When Kendall set up the innovative New Covent Garden Soup company he got in touch with the Prince, and visited Highgrove, because he wanted to produce a Balmoral mushroom soup with the Prince's approval. Kendall, whose family had farmed conventionally for years in Bedfordshire, liked what he saw but that was it. Ten years later, and now the chief executive of the Green & Black's organic chocolate company, he met David Wilson at Duchy Home farm. 'It is both astonishingly beautiful and financially viable. It was that visit that did it! David made me realise I wanted to farm organically.' Kendall now owns an 350-acre farm in Suffolk which is in its last stages of conversion. 'I took a friend of mine who works for McDonald's to Highgrove. As a result the fast food chain now uses organic milk.'
The Prince's food company, Duchy Originals, was founded 13 years ago as a retail outlet for the farm's surplus wheat which went into the Oaten Biscuit. Now it is a profitable business with a range that has doubled in the past year, to nearly 100 different items that even includes garden furniture made from sustainable wood. All the profits - £2 million so far - go to the Prince's charitable trusts, and the company has just launched a campaign with schools to get children involved in growing vegetables from seed. The farm supplies milk from its Ayrshire herd for Duchy Originals milk, vegetables for crisps, oats and wheat for biscuits, pigs for bacon and sausages and barley for ale. There is a box scheme of fresh, organic vegetables locally. There would be plenty of takers further afield, but the farm doesn't have the manpower to run it. Duchy honey comes from Balmoral (the Prince got there first, before his mother started up her own, much smaller scale farm shop at Windsor).
The Aberdeen Angus beef on the menu at The Ritz is sold for a short season at Fortnum & Mason. Along with the lamb and pork, it is organic, grazed on the rich clover mix meadows.
'This clover is the underpinning of everything,' says Wilson. 'This is what I point out to visiting farmers who are thinking of converting to organic. It puts nitrogen back into the soil and makes wonderful grazing for the animals.'
Disrespectfully grubbing up most of their clover are Ruby and Annabel; they greet Wilson with cheery grunts and trot up to have their backs scratched. On Christmas Eve, 19 of the Tamworths escaped and ran into Tetbury and one remained at large until New Year's Day. The Tamworths, with their prick ears and nimble feet, closely resemble the wild boar from whom they are directly descended. The nearby Large Black pigs are much more cumbersome. But they're all rare breeds (Prince Charles is patron of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust), in need of preserving and building up stocks. They're not particularly expensive to acquire - Wilson swapped some flour for one of the Northamptonshire Tamworths, and disapproved of the recent hoo-ha over a Welsh ram that sold for the price of a BMW.
Other rare breeds on the farm are Hebridean and Cotswold sheep; Shetland, Irish Moiled, Gloucester, Welsh Black, Aubrac and Sussex cattle; and two Suffolk Punch heavy horses, used for ploughing, hauling timber, and cart-pulling.
On the day we're there, some of the rare cattle are grazing in the paddock directly behind the house. The fact that they're turned out alongside the Prince's hunters and polo ponies brings home the fact that this is very much a private home. And the occasional post and rails jumps are a reminder that it's an estate where the Beaufort is encouraged to hunt. There's also an impressive stretch of hedge feathering - a sort of weaving to make it stockproof - done by the Prince who has planted over 10 miles of hedging in the last few years, believing the destruction of hedgerows depletes wildlife. Another of his successful schemes is Highgrove's natural sewage system, where the drains are filtered through bark, reed and willow beds, via a pond to resulting clean water. It works so well that they are now building one for the dairy.
The livestock are all treated homeopathically if they're ill, although Wilson will use antibiotics if there is no alternative. Provided the animal is not slaughtered or milked within the specified period, its organic status remains. The farm has started to grow herbs in consultation with the Chelsea Physic Garden - echinacea and St John's Wort so far. It's something Duchy Originals may market.
However, the reality is that a large proportion of organic food on sale in this country is imported. Only three per cent of cultivated land in the UK is organic, although Wilson says there would still be enough food to feed the population if every farm in the country went organic .
This is a view shared by the Prince. His critics, of course, can and do level accusations that he is one of the very few farmers in this country who do not need to make a profit, but this is missing the point. The Prince's farm has become the benchmark of workable organic practice that has converted many of the farmers that have been his guests.
'The prince is very intuitive,' says Wilson. 'The British countryside is very dear to him. He's an artist - he sees the landscape, he sees it change and he cares deeply, just as he cares about the quality of food.'
