Welcome to Mossgiel Farm – Family Farming for a Sustainable Future

Farming the land ploughed by a rather famous former tenant, Robert Burns, farmer Bryce Cunningham and his family are bringing natural, whole, Ayrshire foods back to the plates of our communities.

Being the third generation of our family to sign the lease of the land at Mossgiel Farm, Farmer Bryce was desperate to secure a sustainable future for our farm.

Soon after taking over the reigns of the business, his father died of lung cancer and the UK dairy industry entered the worst downfall in prices for generations.  Faced with losing the ‘family jewels’ and being forced to leave our farm, Farmer Bryce decided to work with nature to ensure a sustainable and ethical future for our environment, our community and of course – our Ayrshire cows.

OUR STORY IS UNIQUE

Our sustainable farming dream began in 2015.

Farmer Bryce, the third generation of the Cunningham family to work the lands of the tenanted farm of Mossgiel, was fed up being controlled by an unforgiving dairy industry, controlled by mega-dairies.  Being paid just 15p per litre of milk to look after the ‘Mossgiel Girls’ (the herd of AWESOME Ayrshire cows who live on the farm with us) and provide an income for our family: meant we were losing £10,000 per month, it wasn’t sustainable – the future of our land, the girls and our home was under threat; all while our son, Boss Arran, was just 1 year old.  Things had to change!

We took charge – we notified the dairy we would no longer be supplying them and decided we would offer the Mossgiel Girls awesome, non-homogenised milk directly; a pasteuriser was installed on-farm to reduce food miles to zero and we signed up to become an Organic dairy farm – we were ready to go!

Starting with a few hugely enthusiastic supporters, in our native county of Ayrshire and quickly finding ourselves supplying some of the most highly regarded speciality coffee shops all across Scotland – we couldn’t believe how much support the girls non-homogenised milk attracted. Of course its not all about us and some white stuff – the Mossgiel Girls are at the very heart of our family farming story; eating what they should be – a purely Organic, grass based diet.  Spending the damp Ayrshire summers grazing the free-range historic pastures of Mossgiel Farm – the very farm that a mildly famous Scottish farmer by the name of ‘Robert Burns’ once wrote a few poems and songs.

We are very excited to be on our journey to a sustainable, organic future – but we have many more chapters of our story to come……