Rathillet Farm

14/12/2024

Any farmers or people working in Agriculture, if you could spare a few minutes of your time to complete this survey on mental health within agriculture, it would be greatly appreciated!
The survey is completely anonymous. Your insight would be invaluable and will help deepen our understanding of the unique challenges faced in this field. The link is below.
Thank you in advance for your time and support.
Please forward or share with anyone you feel may be willing to participate.

04/11/2024

01/11/2024

Labour has shamefully betrayed British farmers with The Family Farm Tax. Sign up to stop it.

04/05/2024

Please share Facebook friends!

12/04/2024

Our potatoes in the local Tesco store today 🥔🥔🥔

10/03/2023

• • WE ARE HIRING • •
PART TIME SHOP ASSISTANT • FIFE

Crop Services (Scotland) Ltd, a thriving country store who specialise in animal care, equestrian and agricultural goods is looking to employ a part-time shop assistant for the Pitscottie branch.

The successful candidate will join a small, friendly team whose responsibilities include; serving and assisting customers in the store, operating the till, restocking the store, checking in product deliveries and stock rotation.

The candidate must have:

• A good level of customer service

• Some shop work experience

• Enthusiastic with a friendly manner

• Able to work as part of a team and independently
when required

• Some knowledge of equine/agricultural feeding
would help but not essential

• Must have ability to lift and handle 20kg bags
of feed during stock rotation

The position will be for 15 hours per week with changeable shifts on differing days (including Saturday mornings) – so rota flexibility is essential. Our staff are given rotas in advance every month.

There will also be an opportunity for additional hours to cover staff holidays and potential to further progress within the company in future.

• Training specific to our systems will be provided

• Competitive rate of pay available based on experience

Please apply with a CV and a covering letter to:

Sarah Stephen, Crop Services Scotland Limited, Spylaw Road, Kelso TD5 8DL

Or Email: [email protected]

29/12/2021

Utterly brilliant talk, short and science-packed. As we face the next onslaught of anti-meat corruption, this could really help with getting the reality out ...

01/10/2021

Rathillet Farm potatoes in Durham Tesco today 🥔🥔🥔

11/03/2021

A late night arrival! 🐮

25/12/2020

A little Christmas calf 🎄🐮

03/11/2020

Every time we grow a crop and harvest it, we are taking a little bit of goodness away from that land. Infact so much so that some studies have claimed that due to intensive arable farming practices we could be down to out last 80 harvests around the world. Soil degradation is increasing at an alarming rate and what was once fertile land is now becoming lifeless desert.
I’m proud that UK farmers have mostly recognised this and the importance of sustainable farming practices, and hope that the government stands by our efforts in the upcoming Agriculture Bill to help maintain our efforts and lead the way in the future of sustainable farming and food production.
We are now regularly testing all of our land to not only ensure that we have the nutrients to grow the crops that we plant, but also to preserve and enhance the soil structure and life within it. A spoon full of healthy soil should contain more living organisms than the population of the world!
We aim to ensure that the soil has the correct ph, nutrients, minerals and trace elements, and the correct balance between them all. We want to build on the organic matter within the soil, the building block for regeneration of topsoil, which not only creates the perfect medium for growing crops, but also enhances the potential of the soil as a carbon sink, reducing our atmospheric carbon levels and improving the environment as a whole. Infact, if we were able to increase soil carbon levels by just 2% across the worlds farmland, then we would be able to offset all the carbon emissions going into the atmosphere!
Improving soil organic matter also improves the soils ability to hold water, preventing run off and flooding while reducing g the risk of crop failures or to drought. Just a 0.1% increase in organic matter has the ability to to hold and make available 16800 litres of water per Ha!
There’s no doubt that historically farming has caused many problems for our environment, and in certain areas around the world it continues to do so. When done correctly though, farming has the answer to our sustainable future, for food, for nature and for the environment.

19/10/2020

Now that’s what I call the perfect heap of spuds! If you’re anything like me, you rummage around the bag and pick out the big ones first as they’re the easiest to peel..... what’s left at the bottom is all the small ones which I leave much to the annoyance of Mrs G!

The reality is however is that this “perfect” heap of potatoes is far from perfect in the eyes of the supermarkets. In fact so much so that they have been rejected and will end up as nothing more than animal feed, and not because they’ve any major defect or problem, but because they’re bigger than what the supermarkets would like! The farmer will receive next to nothing at best for these perfectly good potatoes.

The one small piece of good that has come from this, is that one individual took it on themselves to collect used bags from a local chip shop in Bude, where this happened, and filled them with 450kg of potatoes which they then delivered to the local food bank. How many people have been fed with those 450kg? How many people could be fed with that whole heap!!!

Meanwhile, footballer Marcus Rashford is campaigning for an extension to free school meals during the holidays so that innocent children from families in universal credit are able to receive at least 1 good meal a day. This is not in the third world..... this is here, in the UK!!! All that wasted food, and at a time when a reported 8.4 million people are now classed as being in food poverty! 14% of families with children have experienced food insecurity in the last 6 months, and charities have reported an increase of 89% in the number of food parcels that had to be distributed.

What has happened to our society? Supermarkets are able to throw food away because it’s not the right size or shape but perfectly good while making billions of pounds profits! Meanwhile farmers are being financially penalised by not being paid for these, and at a time when farm incomes are at crippling lows, and millions of people, many of which children, are going hungry because they can’t afford to eat satisfactorily!

What has happened?