Home

A small family farm in the Scottish Highlands using nature friendly practices to produce food and fibre from our heritage breed animals and our heritage variety orchard. Welcome!

Hirsel:
1. Scottish : a flock of sheep
2. Scottish : the land grazed by a flock of sheep
– http://www.merriam-webster.com

The Hirsel:
A small family farm in the Scottish Highlands, farming with nature for a sustainable future.

The Hirsel is a small mosaic farm in Ardgay, Scotland: a mix of bog, ancient woodland, rough grazing and native meadows. We work with organic methods, avoiding pesticides, herbicides, and petroleum-based fertilizers. Instead, fertilizers come direct from our native Hebridean sheep in a rotational grazing system, and from seaweed, green manures, compost – and our free-range Scots Dumpy chickens. Older, nature-friendly farming practices are enhanced by modern lessons, and in 2019, we expanded on this work with the help of a Scottish government Agri-Environment scheme covering our bog area, and portions of our grazing and woodland areas. The lessons learned from the four years of the scheme have spread across the farm since. Our success is measured by the health of our soils and livestock, the wildlife that has come to share the Hirsel with us – and by a “Highly Commended” from the RBST 2022 Scottish Sustainable Food Producers Awards. Also in 2022, we began hosting Highland Wool CIC, which was founded to support a sustainable wool industry in Scotland. In 2025, Highland Wool won the RBST’s Sustainable Product award.

In 2015, we began reclaiming the farm from 30 years of neglect, balancing the need to cultivate enough land to tend to ourselves and our domestic animals, but leaving as much wild as we can to encourage various species of birds and small mammals to take up residence with us. Field margins, birch copses, ancient woodland and the far reaches of our small bog host passing dear, fox, buzzards and woodpeckers, red squirrels, rebel pheasants, and shy hedgehogs. We’re learning as we go, and doing all we can to help our land, livestock, and wildlife flourish on The Hirsel.

We raise pure bred Hebridean sheep for their wool, meat, and conservation grazing benefits. A native Scottish breed, these sheep have survived near extinction, and are gaining in popularity again. We breed both the modern HSS registered (small black, usually 2-horned) lines, as well as our Rebel Heb line, sporting the old more varied colours: reddish (‘raddie’), greys (‘silverback’), and whites (very rare, due to historical culling practices). In the autumn of 2021 we added a 4-horned ram to our flock. Though most keepers breed for 2-horns now, in 2022 we were very pleased to welcome our first batch of 4-horned lambs to the Hirsel.

They’re here!

The Bees arrived in July 2022, and we still have a lot to learn, but love having them on the farm. We leave the bees most of their honey, but in 2024 started enjoying small amounts of Hirsel Honey on our toast.

Our Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs – Basil, Ginger and Saffron – joined us in the autumn of 2019. This docile and hardy breed is perfect for our mixed terrain farm, and for our style of animal husbandry. They settled in nicely, free ranging through one of our rougher bits of wet/woodland, turning it up and opening up the overgrowth – making room for more critters to set up housekeeping with us.

In February 2022, we brought 3 hens and a cockerel onto the farm. Scots Dumpys are another native species that nearly went extinct. Saved by dedicated fans, this dual-use breed is still on the RBST watchlist – though we don’t see why they aren’t more popular, given their great characters, striking plumage…and a propensity to multiply – by September 2022 our little flock had grown to 14!

Located in an area of outstanding natural beauty, the Hirsel enjoys stunning views across the farm to the Dornoch Firth.