We nearly lost the farm. So we changed the milk.
Mossgiel was never built from a clever business plan. It started with a family farm, a milk price that did not work and a decision to find a better way.
Back in 2015, it was not looking good
Bryce was the third generation of the Cunningham family to work the tenanted land at Mossgiel. The milk price had dropped to 15p a litre and the farm was losing around £10,000 every month.
That could not carry on. The cows, the land, the farm and our family home were all on the line.
We did not need a nicer press release. We needed a different way to keep farming.
So we stepped out of the usual milk chain
We installed a pasteuriser at Mossgiel Farm and started selling our own non-homogenised milk. We kept the cream where it belongs, at the top of the bottle, and packed it in glass that could come back and be used again.
At that point the milk was processed on the farm. That is an important part of our history, but it is not the full picture today.
Mossgiel today
Today our main milk range comes from four organic family farms: Wester Manbeen, Milton of Connage, Auchlea and West Mossgiel. Gold comes only from Mossgiel Farm.
We work with them because they care about the same things we do: good farming, healthy soil, properly looked after cows and milk worth being proud of. Every drop stays traceable back to the farms that produced it.
A farm with a bit of history
The Mossgiel Girls still graze the same historic ground where Robert Burns once farmed and wrote a few reasonably well-known poems and songs.
We are proud of that history, but we are not living in it. The next chapter is about giving small organic farms a stronger future and getting proper milk back onto doorsteps.