As the sun glistens off the January frost, 90 cows huddle for warmth in a Leicestershire barn. Each cow weighs almost a tonne but the South Devon breed is a docile one, with names like Patience and Fidget. Just as well, given the man rearing them made his name as one of the toughest props this country has ever produced. This is Crabtree Farm, owned by England’s 2003 World Cup winner Julian White, and if any of those cows lose their temper then they will have him to deal with.

White has owned the farm with his wife, Sara, since his playing days, when he combined the duties of scrummaging in the front row for Leicester Tigers with scrummaging with cows in the back fields. The 51-year-old is a first-generation, self-taught farmer who has built everything in view on this 140-acre plot from scratch. White owns 600 sheep alongside the 90 cows, which will all be sold eventually as meat, as well as five dogs; three of which are for herding sheep, which he trained himself.

White is no hobbyist, and rebukes any notion of The Good Life, despite the farm’s bucolic beauty; life has been hard since his playing retirement. Thankfully, the former tighthead, one of the most destructive scrummagers in rugby history, has channelled the hard-headed determination he possessed as a player into his life in the country.

“It’s been really tough,” White, who won 51 caps for England and another four for the Lions, tells Telegraph Sport. “If it wasn’t for Sara... it’s tough now: bills to pay. We have a wood-burner, some little heaters. Not centrally heated. We have WiFi because Sara works. It’s 4G, not cable. I’ve had alopecia through stress. People say ‘you’re a tough rugby player’, but after a while it gets you. It grinds you down. If I wasn’t so bloody stubborn and determined, I’d have given up. We are lucky in that we bought some land and it has a value; we could sell it and I’d go and do something else. But that’s not me. I get p----- off but I’m determined to try to make this work.

“It was fantastic at Leicester but I started thinking about life after rugby. I rented a field, had a few sheep. And if you just have one thing to focus on – just rugby – it’s not healthy. You need something else to think about; well, I certainly did. It wasn’t like I was going to be a doctor or lawyer. We had to start creating the farm, making mistakes, building the number up. It’s taken a lot of time, money and effort to get to where we are now. There have been huge setbacks. We had the ‘Beast from the East’ during lambing season and suddenly all my lambs were frozen in the pens, stuff like that. You were struggling to break even anyway and then you have that to deal with. Floods. It can be an absolute b------.

“We have friends around, you listen, you read, you make cock-ups. If you’re passionate, you learn quickly. But farmers are bloody... in New Zealand, they all share and talk, with discussion groups. But over here it’s a sign of weakness. A lot of them are quite cagey. And, because I was a rugby player, they have this bizarre idea that I’m some sort of multi-millionaire, but I’m nowhere near that. They all think I’m a hobbyist. It’s probably a bit the way I am, too, but I feel like I have to prove myself all the time.

“I don’t want to sound like one of these moany farmers. I love what I do. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be doing it. The bottom line is that, financially, it can be very stressful. We both have two jobs. The Government has basically said that you have to subsidise your farming by doing another job, so we run a glamping site now, too. We bought this plot of land – the best thing we did – so it’s a bit of a nest egg in the worst-case scenario but I don’t want that, which drives you on a bit. I just want to be the best. When I go to market, I want to try to get the best price for lambs.”

‘You can’t do the job that he does unless you’re absolutely passionate about it’

On how tough it is, White again pays tribute to his wife. Sara, who combines her time on the farm with a proof-reading job, adds: “You can’t do the job that he does unless you’re absolutely passionate about it. It’s such a grind, such a hard job. Julian does it all alone. He’s so competitive, an all-or-nothing person. That’s why he does this job. He is not a relaxed person. He’s just not. He’s constantly doing... something. He can’t settle. I don’t know when we last woke up together?”

“Years!” White laughs. “I always get up early anyway. It’s just the way I am. On holiday, I wake up and then I go for a drive by myself.”

“We never go on holiday,” Sara adds.

“You went away this year!” White replies.

“I did,” Sara says wryly.

There is a pause and a grin from White as he turns to say: “No, I never go.”

Despite the arduous nature of farming, the Whites are a glass-half-full family. The recent inheritance tax storm has not affected them – “it’s the first time that being a first-generation farmer has been beneficial to us,” Sara says – but what they describe as fuzzy thinking around farming has been a hindrance. They are both huge fans of the light that Clarkson’s Farm has shone on the plight of farmers.

The stoicism is unwavering, however. And it is such heart-on-your-sleeve optimism, alongside White’s dry, softly spoken mien, which has risen to prominence on the former prop’s most recent venture: Instagram.

“I do Instagram to try to be positive,” White says. “No one would want to hear me saying I’m down. It was Sara and the girls’ idea and, you know what, I was thinking this the other day: if you were in a boat, paddling across the Atlantic, and you got halfway across and suddenly developed a leak, would you bail or would you just sink? That’s what I think about Instagram. If it helps the farm and creates a bit of interest then great. If people find me interesting then I’ll keep doing it. I’ve done it sporadically but then people like Joe Marler have got hold of it, and Phil Vickery, and they’ve been very kind. Suddenly you’ve got a gazillion more followers. It’s a bit addictive.”

It is more than a decade since White’s final appearance for Leicester, where he spent nine years after spells at Bridgend, Saracens and Bristol. White, a Devon native, dreamed of representing Salcombe 1st XV; little did he know that his rugby career would finish with him as a World Cup winner – albeit one known for turning up to Tigers training with cows in a trailer.

“When Pat Howard was at Tigers, I was always late,” White says. “They said: ‘To make this work, Whitey, we know you need to do two jobs rather than just rugby. Would it help if we gave you a part-time contract?’ For the last three years, I got in early, met the fitness coach at 5.30am, then trained, and I’d be finished by 8am. Then I’d go home and work. I’d go to the games and the boys would say: ‘I can’t believe you’ve been working all morning, Whitey.’ But I found that I was fitter! And normally I was late so I’d end up arriving really pumped up for it. It worked for me. I classed myself as an amateur player who played professional rugby.

‘It was so cut-throat, one bad game and you were out’

“One time, towards the end, I went and bought some cattle at the Melton Mowbray market and I pulled into training at Oval Park with them in the trailer.

“Things fell into place and I don’t regret any of it. If I hadn’t played rugby, I wouldn’t be sitting here now. This is all ours! And rugby gave me the opportunity to do this. When I finished rugby, I wasn’t given any help to finish. When it stopped, it stopped. It was abrupt.

“From what I’ve said so far it sounds like I was a part-timer. But I was 110 per cent focused. The finals for Leicester... they were almost a bit anticlimactic. It’s the whole build-up, the players, the Saturday mornings, the tension. That’s what you miss. I enjoyed playing for Leicester a lot more than England. There was more pressure. I enjoyed it but it was so cut-throat. One bad game and you were out, that sort of thing.”

Although White enjoyed his days in the East Midlands more than at Pennyhill Park or Twickenham, his memories of that 2003 triumph in Sydney have not been tarnished with time; nor by the testimonies of some of his former team-mates – recently Vickery and Ben Cohen – whose recollections of English rugby’s greatest triumph are far from positive.

“It doesn’t sadden me”, White says. “That’s their opinion, and that’s fine. I went into the World Cup on the back of an injury and hadn’t played much rugby. I was very fortunate to go. It was amazing. We have these dinners now where we get together and I remember how fortunate I was. I might have stayed in Salcombe my whole life and not done anything – not that there’s anything wrong with that! It’s great we get the chance to meet up now.

“We went to Twickenham a few months ago, even if some of us looked like old gits staggering around the pitch – ‘let it go!’ An open-top bus around London... Can you regret that? How can you? It was bloody fantastic.”

It would be a dereliction of duty to chat rugby with White without mentioning the hot-headedness which, alongside his fearsome scrummaging reputation, became his hallmarks. Searching White’s name on YouTube and some of his highlights would be better suited to the recently retired Tyson Fury than any rugby player. Two of the most notorious both occurred on the Welford Road pitch: the decking of Andrew Sheridan – no shrinking violet himself – and a full-blown combination of shots to Malcolm O’Kelly.

“They’re not moments I’m necessarily proud of, but it was a different game,” White says. “I was picked for my physicality, I enjoyed that, and that’s what it was about.”

Later, he adds: “I never really got Malcolm O’Kelly with a decent shot, that was the thing… Sometimes you just thought: ‘If I’m going to go, I’m going to go big time.’

“I have not spoken to Andrew Sheridan since, which is a great shame! We used to be mates – we went to each other’s weddings – but it was just unfortunate. That game was built up... we were... things were... yeah.”

With most of his time sapped by the farm, White’s only involvement with rugby now, after finding the draw impossible to withstand, is coaching his son with Market Harborough under-11s but there is a rugby fire still firmly lit inside White which has shown few signs of being extinguished. Naturally, his views on scrummaging are essential reading.

“Absolutely not, we don’t [respect the scrum enough in England],” White says. “The scrum is very different now. It frustrates me that the set-up takes so long. A dominant scrum can change the game.

“The thing is with scrummaging, it’s about getting everyone to buy in and focus together. I had Ben Kay behind me...” White pulls a cheeky face before continuing: “No comment. I would have loved to have played with Danny Grewcock or Simon Shaw every week. I was always looking behind me going: ‘Come on!’”

On passing on his knowledge, he adds: “I used to chat to Boris [Stankovich] when he was scrum coach and he’d say he’d had such a busy week planning this session and structuring that. And I’d just think: ‘Really?’ I was quite frustrated that no one asked me to come and help out. I had a call once where they said: ‘Could you come to Japan tomorrow?’ Obviously not, because of the farm. I’m still passionate, nothing changes; if you have motivation, you have motivation.”

In rugby, life and farming – no one could ever accuse White of lacking that.