Nominee Summary
Milton of Tulliemet Farm is 6,000 acres of pasture and hill located in Highland Perthshire. It is a beef and sheep farm that is being managed with regenerative outcomes in mind. The transition to regenerative agriculture has been ongoing since Jane Bonsor took over the family farm in 2018. Farm managers Tom and May McIntyre joined the team in 2022, working alongside Jane and regenerative agriculture consultant Caroline Grindrod to manage the changes in farming practices that Jane considered were necessary to sustain it for future generations. Key outcomes are financial and climate resilience and building soil health and biodiversity.
The approach of your nominee
When preparing to take over the family farm in 2018, Jane was faced with a £300,000-plus bill in works to the aging cattle shed and failing silage pit. The farm accounts showed that profitability had been touch and go for most years. The precariousness of the situation spurred Jane to look beyond conventional farming practices to provide a more financially viable future. Jane was new to farming and questioned everything such as the role of sheep on the farm and whether cattle could live outside all year instead of needing expensive barns and feed. After researching regenerative farming, the more she considered that it was the right thing to do. In 2020 she started working with regenerative agriculture consultant Caroline Grindrod to review the farm’s options to see if it could be returned to profitability. Caroline’s proposal was quite radical: take the sheep off the hills so the ancient pine forest, which is part of the designated Forest of Clunie SSSI, could regenerate naturally; replace the suckler herd of 100 suckler continental cows with hardy native Aberdeen Angus cows that could cope with winters outside; and bring in a new farm manager with regenerative farming experience that could drive the new regime. They also decided to sell the 700 white-faced park mule ewes and bring the flock of 500 Blackface sheep down to the inbye lower fields to help the pine forest regenerate.
Overcoming Challenges
Selling the cattle was an emotional trial for Jane, as the family had spent 40 years building up the herd. However, together with the money from the sale of the park sheep, it gave the finances to start the transition to a regenerative style of farming. Although the costs had reduced, in the beginning there was no income for at least two years except for the lamb sales as they were starting from scratch with the new suckler herd. The regenerative journey was more expensive than Jane first envisaged with a lot of capital expenditure on repairing fencing and supplying water to the fields but now they have reached full herd numbers with a suckler herd of over 100, the farm has returned to profit.
The impact of innovation
In recent years, farm managers Tom and May have put the cattle on the hill in the summer to get them used to foraging heather and grasses and this has had a profound effect on the biodiversity of the uplands as well as the natural regeneration of the pines. The cattle’s dung has led to an explosion in insect life on the hills compared to when the sheep were there as their dung was effectively sterilised by worming. There are swarms of bugs across the farm, which are also attracting lots of song birds, which in turn attract birds of prey. There are fields full of curlews this year, which haven’t been seen for years, and we’ve also seen lapwings return. The grazing management involves allowing fields to rest. the sheep are given a rotational grazing pattern so that they don’t come back to the same field for at least 30-45 days and the cattle are mobgrazed for a maximum of a week in each field. We move the cattle onto a new field or strip each day, which allows them to graze some of the grass, trample a bit and leave some tall grass still standing, so, by the end of the summer, there is still a good amount of grass which lasts into winter. The trampled long grass acts as a ‘thatch’, as it keeps the ground warm and extends our growing season in the harsh highland climate and equally protects the grass against drought in the summer.
