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Farmer Stories

Jock Gibson - A pasture-fed system in north-east Scotland

Scotland
Case Study
Cattle
direct selling
Livestock
Low-input farming
Genetics
native breeds
rotational grazing
herbal leys

All photos by Alexander Williamson

At Edinvale Farm, success is built on the connection between nature-friendly livestock farming and direct sales through a local butcher's shop.

Situated between the Moray Firth coast and the foothills of the Cairngorms is Edinvale Farm, a livestock operation run by NFFN farmer Jock Gibson. It comprises 100 acres owned by Jock and his wife Fiona, as well as a further 550 acres managed through seasonal grazing and tenancy agreements. The home farm has heavy soils and is situated on a hillside around 500ft above sea level.

Jock’s mum came from a farming family but his dad was a first-generation farmer. They bought Edinvale in the mid-1970s, and began rearing pedigree Highland cattle, selling the genetics around the world. In the 1980s, they bought a butcher's shop to increase the value they were getting from their meat. 

Growing up, taking over the farm business was not an option for Jock, so he went to university in Manchester before embarking on a career in engineering. During this time, he came to realise that the environmental sustainability aspect of his work was what he most enjoyed. He returned home in 2007 to help his mum run the butcher's shop, and in 2015, had to decide whether to continue or sell the farm after his parents died in quick succession.

Although Jock’s dad embraced some of the conventional agricultural thinking of his era, such as using sprays and fertilisers, he also resisted high-concentrate feed diets and adopted practices that were unusual for the time, like outwintering animals on forage crops. However, when Jock took over, he realised there were further nature-friendly changes that could be made to help the business prosper while better connecting with an increasingly discerning customer base. 

“When I started we had 30 breeding cows and 70 followers on 100 acres of owned ground and 80 acres of seasonal grazing,” he recalls. “We quickly discovered that just wasn’t enough to pay the bills. We had to increase numbers, but as we couldn’t really access any more land, we started looking into rotational grazing.”

“After we started rotational grazing, we began to look at a lot of other things, including cutting out chemicals and fertilisers and thinking about how we were using the land and integrating with the landscape and nature

Jock Gibson

Once Jock had taken this first step into regenerative farming practices, others quickly followed. “After we started rotational grazing, we began to look at a lot of other things, including cutting out chemicals and fertilisers and thinking about how we were using the land and integrating with the landscape and nature,” he says. “We started going more and more down that road.”

Edinvale Farm now has around 260 head of cattle, comprising around 100 suckler cows and heifers, and around 160 followers. They are a mixture of Highland, Shorthorn and Luing, the latter breed being a stabilised Beef Shorthorn and Highland cross. As a Pasture for Life-certified farm, the animals are 100% grass-fed. Jock says he has spent considerable time breeding animals that are well suited to their environment.

“When we took the farm on, there were Aberdeen Angus here, but I didn’t like them,” he says. “They were too big, too heavy, too greedy and the offspring were too energy-intensive. We brought in a Highland bull because we wanted smaller mature cows and greater winter hardiness, but we found the pure Highland calves took too long to get to the butchers. The Luing gives us more finishing speed while maintaining winter hardiness, while the Shorthorn is great for forage conversion and carcass quality.”

Jock has also considerably changed how Edinvale outwinters its animals. Around 100 mature cows are still outwintered, but the other 160 or so animals are housed indoors between December and March. The farm now uses deferred grazing with silage bales. “I was always bothered by how much topsoil we would lose in heavy winter rains,” he says. “I would watch rivers of mud going past the house or down the road. Moving away from forage crops means we have much less soil damage and increases our resilience.” An added benefit is that the farm is able to produce all its winter feed and silage in-house. 

The farm took its first steps into rotational grazing in 2018, breaking up a six-hectare paddock into six one- hectare blocks. While keeping grass in front of the cattle was not a problem, using mobile water troughs to ensure the cattle could drink (particularly important in what was an exceptionally dry year) proved a considerable challenge. Jock quickly invested in permanent infrastructure, building four concrete water troughs in that paddock and ensuring that, in subsequent years, water and electric infrastructure was in place whenever reseeding was carried out across the farm.

Initially the farm tried a 21-day rotation pattern, but has now settled on a system of at least 30 days. “Short rotations worked well for cattle performance, but it felt like they were chasing us round the farm a bit,” Jock says. “At 30 plus days, it feels a bit more relaxed for man and beast. We generally don’t have a parasite burden and we’ve got more resilience to weather extremes.”

The gradual process of reseeding has been an important part of Edinvale’s transition. By not using fertiliser once an area was reseeded, the farm was able to gradually reduce its inputs until Jock decided to go fertiliser-free in 2021 when the price reached £1,000 a tonne. Sprays haven’t been used since 2019, and the cattle are only medicated once problems such as worm burdens have been identified.

Short rotations worked well for cattle performance, but it felt like they were chasing us round the farm a bit. At 30 plus days, we generally don't have a parasite burden and we've got more resilience to weather extremes

Jock Gibson

The farm has gradually been reseeded with more diverse lays, with the latest reseed consisting of a base of white clover and ryegrass, alongside red clover, timothy, plantain and chicory. Jock is now gradually extending this approach across more of the farm’s tenancies so rotational grazing can be rolled out further.

While this approach has demanded changes, overall it has been worth it. “We now have to match our stocking rates much more closely with what we can get from our land, which is no bad thing,” Jock says

Building on his dad’s enthusiasm for planting trees and hedgerows, Jock has increased tree cover to around 10% and relaxed the cutting regime for the farm’s hedges so that some are always fruiting. They have now reached the stage of laying the first hedges his parents planted - an exciting milestone.

The primary outlet for Edinvale’s produce is Macbeth’s, the butcher's shop in Forres that serves as a hub for local, independent food. “I’m very proud that we cut and pack for other small businesses so they can find markets and that we seek out crofters and smallholders whose fantastic products won’t necessarily suit the wider market,” Jock says. “Although they are two separate entities, it would be hard for one to be commercially viable without the other.” The farm’s produce is also sold online and to restaurants and hotels.

For Jock, finding customers through the shop and Edinvale’s nature-friendly direction are connected. “It’s a chicken-and-egg situation,” he says. “The more we go down this road and talk about it, the more people whose values and ideas align with us come to us. That then encourages you to go further and changes your own perspective.”

Jock still has plans for Edinvale. He is looking to introduce the right breed of sheep to help tackle a thistle and dock problem, and he also wants to create riparian areas on the owned land. The farm is also about to begin the organic conversion process.

Jock says that the longer he farms, the more working in harmony with nature means to him. “When we first took on the farm, it was more about survival,” he says. “We were under pressure physically, emotionally and financially, and did what we needed to get out of that hole. It’s after that you can tweak things, change the landscape or give the landscape the scope to change itself. It‘s also given us the chance to change.”

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