Wit and wisdom of a well- travelled farrier

If anyone ever tells you that there are no longer the characters there once were in the rural world don’t believe them. Get out and talk and you will find there are hundreds.

Jarvis Browning, resplendent with his trademark beard is The Fadmoor Farrier and has been plying his trade and a canny line in wit in Ryedale for 33 years. Next weekend he will once again be on hand at the ninth Pickering Game & Country Fair demonstrating his craft, which he began when he was 17 and has seen him travel the world shoeing horses.

It wasn’t his first choice of career, as he had thought of becoming a forester or joining the Navy. Unfortunately Jarvis wasn’t born with the best of hearing, but he was blessed with his own brand of humour and explains why both may not have been appropriate career moves.

“I wanted to join the Navy but because I’m hard of hearing I might have missed the call if anyone shouted ‘abandon ship’ and being a forester could have been even more embarrassing. Imagine someone shouting ‘timber’ and me not being able to hear! I might have cut out the middle man in the process and have been wrapped up in my own wooden coffin straight away.”

Jarvis had a difficult enough start to the world as he was born many weeks premature and it was touch and go as to whether he and his mother would survive. And as well as his hearing not being brilliant he has also had to live with a speech impediment.

But he has never let anything get in the way of enjoying life and has one of the sunniest of dispositions. His globetrotting has led him to New Zealand, Australia, Brunei, Sri Lanka and South Africa but getting into his profession saw him undertake a good deal of local travel in Gloucestershire where he grew up.

“When I decided to pursue a career as a farrier 43 years ago it was a difficult time to get in. The older generation were dying out and they weren’t taking on apprentices. I looked all around Wiltshire and Gloucestershire and eventually found a young chap, John McCormick, who had just started his own business. John, who was a Lancashire lad from Accrington, took me on and I served my time with him for the next six years.”

Jarvis’ wanderlust saw him spend the next four years after his apprenticeship travelling the globe and his first port of call was New Zealand.

“I went by boat and for the first months I worked in a coalyard, which had nothing to do with shoeing. I was shovelling coal out of wagons into bags. The work meant I earned money to be able to travel around both the North and South Islands. It was the coldest winter they’d had in 25 years, back in 1976 so I was shovelling a lot of coal.

“Australia was next and that’s when my farriery work saw me pick up my first job with a livery yard. I had been demonstrating at the Royal Melbourne Show, which is the equivalent of the Great Yorkshire Show but lasts for 10 days and I went to work in a yard that specialised in dressage horses.”

Further work followed on a cattle station in the Snowy Mountains in the south east of New South Wales, but a call that his father had been taken ill led to a swift homecoming. Unfortunately Jarvis’ return wasn’t quite swift enough as his father had passed away while he was en route.

A job offer for work as a farrier in America could not be followed up as Jarvis could not obtain a work permit at the time, but he was contacted by another livery yard in Melbourne and had 10 days to get back out otherwise his visa would be invalid. He travelled throughout the country before taking in New Zealand once again.

In 1980 Jarvis returned home having spent some time in the jungle in Brunei with the army, trekking in the bush for 10 days; and taking in Sri Lanka and life on a fruit farm in South Africa.

“I’m not sure how things happened now out I returned to London where my mother was living in Fulham, before landing in Ryedale where I have lived ever since.

“I came to live in Sinnington and had a forge at a house in Normanby. The house was sold where the forge was and I went mobile; that’s how I have been for years travelling around North Yorkshire up to a 35 mile radius from home.”

Romance blossomed for The Fadmoor Farrier, although he wasn’t at Fadmoor at the time, when he met hairdresser Dorothy at Ryedale Show.

They will have been together for 30 years when this year’s show comes around, and have a son Ben and daughter Lizzie. They lived at Nawton Station, near Beadlam for a number of years before settling in Fadmoor.

The massive increase in keeping horses and ponies for leisure use in the past three decades has ensured that Jarvis has always had a continuous flow of work, but he believes it has also increased employment in his sector.

“When I started out here 33 years ago there were 25 registered farriers in the whole of North Yorkshire, now there are 59 in the York postcode area alone. It is becoming a flooded market place, but you can’t blame people for wanting to come into the profession. It has certainly done me no harm and allows you to enjoy an outdoor life.”

In addition to Jarvis’ farriery work, that sees him travel up to a radius of 15 miles from home, he and Dorothy also have a camping and caravan club site that they started three years ago.

“It would be a lot busier if the pub was open, but The Plough closed three years ago and hasn’t reopened.”

Jarvis is one of many rural characters who will be demonstrating what they do at the Pickering Showfield next weekend.

“I will be showing people how to go about making a horseshoe, nothing fancy just a general purpose horseshoe, as that’s what I do.”

Pickering Game and Country Fair

Pickering Game & Country Fair 2013 takes place at Pickering Showground next Saturday and Sunday, May 18 and 19.

Mr Browning said: “People are always fascinated and will watch for ages. That’s why events such as the Pickering Game and County Fair are so good. I’ve been involved with it since it started and I’m looking forward to it.”

You’re bound to notice Jarvis, but you may not have noticed him two years ago – when he had his beard shaved off for charity at the Royal Oak in Gillamoor.