Across some of the most beautiful and remote landscapes
of the British Isles...
There's not many views like that.
It's absolutely stunning.
..Scotland's farmers work day and night,
producing our milk...
Come on.
..and our meat.
Trying out new ideas...
If buffalo doesn't want to do something, you're going to find it very difficult. Hey!
..and striving to turn a profit in tough economic times.
We're struggling. We are definitely struggling.
A wee rosette. Over the course of a year,
six very different families let cameras onto their farms...
Everything that could have gone wrong there went wrong.
The idea of lying on a beach - bliss.
..to share their struggles...
We have to get her out or she's going to die.
..and their triumphs.
Thank you!
It's not about the paycheque, it's about the lifestyle.
Midsummer in Scotland.
In Appin, on the north-west coast,
daylight stretches for up to 20 hours.
For some, it's a time for holidays and relaxation.
Not so for Scotland's farmers.
The job we do, it's all-consuming.
You live and breathe it. If you weren't brought up with it,
you'd find it very difficult to adapt to the way of life,
the job we do.
Hill farmers David and Sandra Colthart
keep 540 Blackface sheep across 3,200 acres.
Lie down, Chance.
For them, summer sun is a valuable resource.
When you have some good weather,
you tend to try and get as much done as possible.
So we're just about to start the, kind of, main shearing spell
and we've got some sheep in which we're hoping to get done
if the weather continues on over the next few days.
Sheep are sheared in batches over a month.
First into the shed are the hogs,
young sheep with fast-growing fleeces.
They're last year's lambs,
and they don't have lambs till next year,
so this is a real start of the summer task, is the hog shearing,
and then, in another month's time, we'll do their mothers.
Come on, hoggies, come on.
Oh, the boss comes now,
so need to be showing I'm doing something before Sandra arrives.
Shearing is hot, hard labour.
Oh! What a job.
Sandra packs as David and neighbour Jamie clip.
Lucky that we've got a few guys around here to help us when we need them
cos I don't think David would be a very happy camper if he was
sitting in here on his own clipping today.
Particularly as it's a year
since he last sheared.
When you're not used to regularly
doing it, it's quite hard work.
For me, anyway, it's quite a painful experience at times.
Hogs... Ewe hogs, this is the first time they've been clipped.
They've got a lot of wool everywhere.
Not such a good one to clip, this one.
It's quite a tight clip, the wool.
You need a rise, which is the new season's wool coming in to push the old fleece up.
And between that, the shears go.
Also helping out is David's nephew, Robert.
Robert is what you call a crogger.
He catches the sheep in the pen, brings them out and turns them over.
If you had to catch it yourself and turn it over,
you'd be knackered halfway through.
My trousers. Aah! Oh!
Horn's in my trousers.
Here, Robert.
Thank you, sheep.
Got a new ventilation...
which I didn't have before.
There's 110 in this batch to get through.
Maybe three hours solid clipping.
A professional clipper would do that in no time at all.
For all this work,
there's little reward.
Blackface wool is course,
used mostly in carpets, and demand has fallen through the floor.
It's absolutely terrible that there's...
There's really not any money.
It's... It's almost more hassle than it's worth.
A Blackface fleece will fetch between 90p and £2.
But however small the profit, shearing still has to be done.
For the animal's welfare, you have to remove the fleece,
so you just grin and bear it.
We're getting there, bags are getting fuller.
Probably lost about 3lbs tonight.
Today. Sweat.
A holiday round about now would go down quite nicely.
For 18 years, he's promised us a summer holiday
and we haven't had one.
Sandra wants to go on a holiday.
So that's probably...
MACHINERY WHIRS LOUDLY
SHOUTING: It's probably something that I want to do, as well.
Go on a holiday!
130 miles south on the Dumfries and Galloway Coast,
Stuart and Aylett Roan are also working through the summer rain.
Go on! There you go.
That's it, get going.
They're persuading Geordie,
the Charolais bull, to take a working holiday.
Up!
Psst!
You go to the gate, open the gate.
Get on.
Quickly.
Oh, for goodness' sake!
Geordie's normally on duty at Stuart and Aylett's farm.
Today, he's heading three miles down the road to the partner farm,
run by Stuart's brother, Steven.
Basically, he just wants to stay out with the girls.
I tried to have a wee chat with him while we were up at the gate,
but he kind of looks at you like, shut up.
Like most men.
The Roan family has run dairy herds for six generations.
Milk is their main business,
but they also breed some beef cattle,
and to produce good beef calves,
you need to cross dairy cows with a strong, beefy bull.
A Charolais will produce a good beef calf from a dairy cow.
You know, it's just pure muscle and meat
onto a feminine type animal so the calf will be a good beef cross.
Any calves born from him will be fattened for beef, male or female.
Before he joins the new herd,
Geordie's vaccinations need updating.
Didn't like that.
You might not be that chuffed if I rammed a needle into your bottom, either, so...
For most of the year, Steven's Holsteins are served by artificial insemination, or AI.
The cows carry sensors to indicate when they're in heat,
so Steven can monitor the breeding programme.
But come summer, Steven prefers to let nature run its course.
For six weeks, in the summertime,
I choose to put a bull in with the cows.
It just gets a few cows served that maybe wouldn't be getting served
to AI, they just don't show any signs at all.
And also, if you're busy maybe doing silage,
it's nice just to be able to kind of forget about AI for a bit
and just know that there's a bull with the cows.
It's afternoon milking and Geordie's already causing a stir.
You see this cow, 148, you see how sort of sweaty she is?
She's jumping on him just cos she's in heat and she's just excited.
He doesn't seem that bothered now, does he, but...
Poor bull, he'll never get any peace.
Steven follows the herd back to the grazing.
Come on.
With 100 cows vying for Geordie's attention,
Steven's keen for him to get on with the job.
Hopefully he'll be getting that 148 served.
Aye, he's serving her there, I would say.
He's knocked her right over.
He seems to be getting on fine, yeah.
In Argyll, David and his dog, Chance, are heading into the hills.
He's sorting out the sheep, ready for the next shearing.
It's a lovely feeling of just kind of...
Just the weight comes off you because you enjoy doing it.
You're away from the hustle and bustle down in the village,
the farm, and it's just a lovely place.
A very, very special place to us.
The ewes with lambs have been gathered in from the high tops.
The milk ewes are the ewes that have reared lambs and
because they're reared lambs it's taking a wee bit more out of them.
They're not ready to shear until, probably, usually
about the middle of July onwards.
A ewe's energy is spent raising its lambs,
so its fleece is slower growing.
These will be the last sheep to be sheared this summer.
David has penned the sheep
to ensure that all the ewes are paired up with their lambs.
Lie down, stay there.
But something's wrong.
Oh, heaven's sake!
A ewe is trapped under a gate.
Oh, hell!
Oh, hell, come on.
Come on.
Oh, you're all right.
And it looks like she's been there for a while.
Because there's quite a bit of dung from the sheep,
she's been here probably since yesterday evening.
The bottom bar of the gate was pressed against its back
and she'll have been struggling and she's probably hurt her back.
David must assess her injuries.
Stupid sheep.
If the ewe's seriously injured, she may have to be put down.
Right, come on.
Oh!
There's nothing broken.
Just her hocks are swollen cos she's trying to dig in with her back feet
into the ground like that and just got stuck.
Right, come on, girl, it's not very graceful, but...
I'll pull you back.
Pressure off the bottom bar on her back and the way her legs were,
she probably bruised her nerves.
Now, if she was going along there dragging her back legs without being
able to move them, then that would be a more serious issue,
but she's managing to stand.
The ewe's no longer in immediate danger.
But her lamb is somewhere in the flock, needing its mother's milk.
I'm just going to walk up there.
They'll fill the gap here.
And there should be only one lamb standing with a ewe.
If he's careful, David can herd the other sheep away
without scaring the lamb from its mother.
The plan works.
That's her lamb, all right. It's not a total disaster.
It's wee things that give you a wee kick.
Reuniting with its lamb.
Giving her a gentle massage to help her.
"It feels better than a gate, I can tell you," that's what she said.
David wants to leave the ewe and lamb alone in the pen to recover.
But if he opens the gate,
he risks the lamb running out with the rest of the flock...
..which is when the traditional shepherd's crook comes in handy.
The crook's curved head is designed to catch a sheep or lamb by its neck or leg.
Oh, you little brute!
At least, that's the theory.
Easier said than done.
Oh!
Hey, lambie. Right.
Stick comes in handy at times.
It's now Chance's job to flush out the flock,
leaving the injured ewe in the pen.
Lie down. Stay there.
Lie down. Lie down!
Lie down.
The ewe and her lamb are safe.
But for David, the job's not done yet.
What was ideally going to be a nice,
quiet day means a trip to Oban to get stuff, some anti-inflammatory.
Just a wee bit of painkiller, basically, just to...
She'll be fine. She's just very sore.
That could have happened out on the hill and the only thing you'd find maybe is some bones and a fleece.
I don't think she truly appreciates what we've done today.
Eh, Chance, what do you think?
In the far north,
in Sutherland, the sun is shining.
But for Highland crofters Robin and Penny Calvert,
it's not yet time to make hay.
A wet winter and dry spring has delayed the growth of the meadow grass.
We're in the last week of June.
I mean, by... Some years, by this time of the year,
we've actually had a hay crop out,
but as you can see behind us,
we're still waiting for this meadow hay to grow a lot.
I've got a suspicion that we've lost an awful lot of the nutrients
last winter with the volume of water we had.
It's coming, but it's nowhere near where it should be.
These are natural upland hay meadows,
an increasingly rare and important habitat.
Rich in herbs and wild flowers,
late cutting allows the flowers to recede and regenerate.
Right, we'll go and get the pony.
With the hay cut on hold,
Robin takes a rare opportunity to relax with Highland pony JoJo.
A nice, sunny afternoon for a change.
It's not blowing too hard...
..and there's not an awful lot happening at the moment
whilst we're waiting for the grass to grow,
before we start cutting the hay.
Good girl.
Come on.
There's a good girl.
Good girl.
In you come, Jo. Round you come.
Round you come.
Right, time to give you a big brush up now.
You look back on the old records, this place, there's been a lot,
a lot of horses here over the years,
all working.
This one doesn't have to work for a living,
she's just pure entertainment. But,
you know, they are an intrinsic part of what the croft was.
I've had her about two and a half years now.
She's a bit of an indulgence, really.
You know, anybody can have a diesel engine, but...
you know, the horses are what have been on the crofts for centuries.
I'm impressed. I couldn't do that.
I was only showing off.
Good girl.
This way.
When he said that he was going to get a horse,
I didn't even know he rode.
I've lived with him for 50 years.
Well, 40 years, anyway.
It's wonderful. Yeah, I really...
It really gives me quite a funny sort of buzz.
As far as, you know, this is the old road up into the croft.
I mean, the road we'd normally use is a relatively recent one.
I mean, this road's been here for hundreds,
if not thousands of years, and they...
The horses that have been up and down here over the years...
It's a wonderful feeling of continuity.
That's one of the things I like about the crofts, you know,
it keeps the continuity of the generations going.
Penny's out on foot, foraging for some of the croft's hidden treasures.
It's called eyebright. You boil them up, make some sort of an eye tonic.
Just about everything that grows on these crofts has been used for one thing or another.
You've got the bugle, you've got clover, yarrow,
valerian, bird's-foot trefoil,
and here's some purple field gentians.
Gilly. Gilly, Gilly, Gilly.
So the first project we did when we took over the croft was building this bridge.
The croft was abandoned when Penny and Robin arrived 25 years ago.
Since then, they've transformed it.
When we took this place on at first, it was an absolute wilderness.
It was covered in rushes,
it was covered in bracken, there was no hay parks,
there was no fencing, nothing like that,
but we've got it going very much in the direction of how the crofts used to be run.
As far as we can, we use it to sustain ourselves in food and fuel and all this sort of thing.
Penny's searching the birch woods for chanterelle mushrooms,
a favourite delicacy.
Because we've ran the croft, we've learnt a lot.
Just being able to nip out and go and get enough for supper is really great.
These are chanterelles - aren't they the most delicious colour?
You can tell they're chanterelles -
the markings go like an umbrella, right the way through.
They don't have two parts, they don't have a lid and a stalk.
Utterly delicious.
I've known them sell at Harrods for about £23 a kilo.
You can get it wrong and pick a false chanterelle, which is poisonous,
so you've got to be careful you don't get the wrong ones.
The chanterelles are a precious resource
and Penny's disappointed with the picking.
I came down here six days ago...
and it was just one sea of mushrooms across.
And now there aren't any.
I could have filled this basket.
Somebody's come for a walk around the wood,
which they're perfectly allowed to do,
they've seen the funguses
and they've come back with buckets and gathered the whole lot
and not left us with any.
Nature gives you enough for yourself for a picking.
It doesn't give you enough for making money out of it,
and that's what the annoyance is,
that they should leave a little bit for somebody else,
and they've not, they've wiped it clean.
Penny was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease three years ago.
It means her energy levels run low.
I've done a lot today and I haven't had an afternoon sleep.
It's a blooming nuisance.
We're both getting older and I think it's now time
to maybe just slow down a wee bit, both of us, as well.
I'm getting old. I've got a lot of rheumatism in my hands and that sort of thing.
I haven't got the stamina I used to have, or the strength I used to have.
But we've still got the enthusiasm for the place.
We love this place to death. We're hefted to it, it's part of us.
But, bottom line, you know, if we don't have health, it's nothing, is it?
Farming has an ageing workforce.
In Scotland, the average age of a farmer is 59.
And the number of younger farm holders under 40 is dropping.
The future of farming depends on new talent coming in.
But the availability of land and the cost of stock and equipment
can be prohibitive.
On the Fife coast,
one young farmer has gambled his future
on some very untraditional farm animals.
Water buffalo.
Driving around them at this time of year,
it's definitely the number-one perk of the job, you know.
Especially when they're clearly well acclimatised to being out in the fields in Scotland.
You know, they absolutely love it.
You can see they're caked in mud,
they're growing like... I mean,
these calves were just babies when we put them out into this field and now they're big, sturdy,
strong calves that have done brilliantly well,
so it's a very rewarding part of the job.
In just ten years,
Stevie Mitchell has built up Scotland's biggest herd to over 400 head...
and created a new customer base for his buffalo meat.
I feel we've really conquered that now.
We've won awards for our buffalo meat and we've got
regular customers buying it week in, week out.
This is where the front of my pick-up gets damaged.
Stevie's doing well,
but to beef up his business, he's turning to another buffalo product -
cheese.
I think most people associate buffalo with famous buffalo mozzarella from Italy,
and I just think it could be an absolutely amazing opportunity
to produce buffalo mozzarella, but from Scotland.
There is a huge demand for it.
We get asked all the time for buffalo mozzarella.
It's an ambitious plan.
He'll need a new milking herd, a creamery, and, to house it all, a bigger farm.
He's put in a bid on the perfect place and it's right next door.
It's a scary amount of money.
You know, it's a serious, serious project.
Mortgaging myself to the hilt and putting every penny and every hour that I work at into this.
It is a gamble, to an extent.
Added to that, Stevie comes from a long line of stockman.
He may know his beef, but he has no idea how to make cheese...
..so he's planning an educational excursion to the masters of mozzarella.
Going to go and visit Italy, which is obviously the home of buffalo,
really, certainly in Europe.
It'll be a great chance for me to speak to some Italian buffalo farmers in my brilliant Italian.
I guess I'm looking for a little bit of kind of reassurance
that what we're stepping into is going to work out.
In the south-west of Scotland,
the Roan family has already gone for boom or bust.
Stuart's herd of 140 Holstein cows
now provides milk for Roan branded cream,
milkshakes and doorstep deliveries.
Today, he's delivering milk to his favourite customers.
Come on, girls.
Grunt, grunt. Come on.
His three pet pigs.
They love a bit of milk, so they do.
They get their chops right on it.
These two are in pig, they're very close.
You can see how low their belly is and how prominent their teats are.
How many piglets do you think are in there?
How many's in there?
Eh?
Two pigs are about to farrow, or give birth.
Stuart's wife, Aylett, is preparing a maternity pen.
The perils of strawing the byre.
It's horrible.
Putting the two pigs in, getting ready to farrow,
so very close,
so we'll make them a nice bed and get them inside just in case.
Right. Up the yard.
Come on, then, let's go.
Come on. Come on.
Tummy full with little piggies.
They tend to go off on their own, nest down a bit,
get a bit more restless, they're uncomfortable.
Like a human, basically.
It's not warm enough at nights for the piglets when they're born and if they're out in the big field,
if one sort of wanders off, it's just...
They need to be in a more enclosed area for the moment.
She'll probably not pig for a week now we've brought her in.
The pigs are a hobby that could be getting out of hand.
Once they're here, they are cute and they're quite fun to watch,
but why we're having piglets, I have no idea.
It's the last thing that we need to be doing is doing all this.
On David and Sandra's farm,
another pet project has recently borne fruit.
Sandra's mare, Mabel, has a month-old foal.
Today is his first day at school.
Today's little lesson is going to be showing him that people are to be trusted and not to be terrified of.
They can be scared to start with.
Hi, Mabel.
Highland ponies are one of two breeds native to the Scottish Highlands and Islands.
Are you coming up, Mabes?
Sandra's been breeding them for 22 years.
Come on, little guy.
We have two young men on the other side of the gate hoping to get lucky.
That's the father of the foal.
That's your son. What do you think?
Are you proud of him?
If the foal's to grow into a good riding pony,
he must first get used to people.
You're better on the other side, actually.
Well, no, probably from behind because he's less offended if you're at his bum.
Just gently, gently, gently.
Hey.
The foal needs to associate handling by us as not a bad experience,
so we'll have to be quite careful that we don't push it too far or give him a fright.
He's been really sweet.
Oh, yes.
Oh, you enjoying that?
A wee scratch. Oh, that feels good.
That feels good. Yes, yes, that feels good.
You always know they're relaxing when they start giving a reciprocal
scratch, like that, with their mouth.
Slowly touch near his head, so he gets used to getting his head touched.
But you have to do it very slowly.
Small steps. You can tell when he's nervous, he starts...
His little bum starts shaking.
Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
It's all right, buddy.
All right. It's OK. He didn't like his head being touched.
Man, he's sweating. Yeah, he's nervous.
There's a good boy. Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Go back over there.
You can see he's getting ready to spook.
Just hold on a second.
Take your hand off him.
Horses are herd animals,
hard-wired to run at any sign of danger.
There's only so much you can do with young animals and then they actually
start switching off and they stop learning,
and sometimes it's better just
to leave it on a good note where he's happy and he's calm.
The main thing is that he's accepting being handled
and he's starting to trust.
I'm not the big, bad farmer you thought I was, hey?
Come on. Where are you going?
Stuart's also indulging his softer side with a pen full of new piglets.
This one's got seven and that one did have nine,
but then she lost one.
There was one tiny, wee one basically that didn't make it,
so she's got eight still.
They literally do grow every day.
It's amazing how quick they get bigger.
Quite entertaining. They're fun.
They either fall asleep all rolled up on their mother with a teat in their mouth
or they just drop off to sleep,
or you find them stacked up in a pile two or three deep.
There's one in the bucket here!
Inside here.
They're like cheeky, wee kids, basically.
They're just a bit of fun. I just quite enjoy having them.
I just always fancied having a pig, for some reason.
Today, these little piggies are getting their first injections.
Right, come on. Go.
An iron dose to prevent anaemia.
It's like taking your children for their injections.
PIGLET SQUEALS
It's OK.
The noise is a lot worse than the reality.
Smile for the camera.
Just one more.
Watch your hand. Come on.
Are we finished? Right, last one.
Finished. Go!
Right.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
All done successfully.
Well, he didn't inject his wife.
I know. I didn't manage to jag Aylett, so that's a bonus.
Cos if you thought the pigs were loud, it would have been even louder, I'm sure.
I would hurt a lot more and he would suffer the consequences of that.
Campania, south-west Italy.
A far cry from Fife.
Home to 280,000 buffalo.
And the mother lode of mozzarella cheese.
Stevie dreams of becoming Scotland's first buffalo dairy farmer.
And he's come up with a cunning plan.
Mixing buffalo business with the other love of his life.
I managed to sell this trip as a wee holiday for my fiance, Sarah,
to come, as well.
And it's not Sarah's first buffalo-themed break.
We've been to Ireland and Amsterdam now, so...
Yeah. We have had the odd holiday that wasn't...
That wasn't involving buffalo.
Yeah.
Well, one. We went to Singapore.
Yeah, one.
Today, they're meeting buffalo breeder and mozzarella maker Giuseppe.
You know the... HE GRUNTS
Oh, the noise. The moo.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
HE IMITATES A WATER BUFFALO GRUNT
This is the... Probably different from Scottish.
I find with my buffalo, they know when strangers are here.
Yeah. It changes their personality.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think if Giuseppe was here by himself,
the buffalo would be more relaxed and less...
Probably. They are... They recognise the human, yes.
Mediterranean Italian buffalo is famous in the world
for the best milk to produce mozzarella.
In the south of Italy,
a lot of tradition in the mozzarella production
and the buffalo breeding.
We are seeing a man who's obviously one of the best in Italy at keeping
buffalo and so getting the chance to ask lots of questions, it's great.
So what are these guys eating just now?
This is...
This is a mixture of mixed silage and hay.
Straw? Straw also, yes.
Straw. And a little concentrate.
They are all pregnant, yeah.
Waiting for their new baby.
To keep the milk flowing, the buffalo calve all year round.
Buffalo are stronger and more destructive than dairy cows,
so their milking parlour is reinforced.
Every day, Giuseppe sends 875 litres of milk to his small state-of-the-art creamery
to be turned into 225 kilos of mozzarella cheese.
It's exactly the sort of facility Stevie wants to build back in Fife.
We warm the milk at 40 degrees and after this pasteurises in this machine,
the milk goes into this tank.
The good skills are to know the moment when to make mozzarella.
You have to know the exact time it's starting to produce.
Incredible, eh?
And after three hours, three hours and a half of maturation,
with hot water, 95 degrees, we cook.
And then, with the machine, the balls of various sizes.
This is 25, 50, 100g.
More than a kilo, they do by hand.
Giuseppe's team have been making cheese for over 20 years.
Amazing.
Oh, I don't think I'd manage.
No, no.
I give up.
No, Giuseppe can't do it either, I'm not so bad.
I feel a bit better, I was quite concerned there.
Stevie's in buffalo paradise.
Two days of tours and tastings.
It's really good, eh?
And it's inspired him.
This trip's definitely given me loads to think about,
but most importantly it's given me the confidence to go and build this
business plan. We could do this.
I'm not sure we could create the warm climate consistently enough as they do here in the south of Italy,
unfortunately, but it's certainly put the bar very high to what to strive for in the future.
Back in Scotland, the weather is playing havoc with the harvest.
An early morning shower has put a dampener on Robin's plans to start the final cut of hay.
He assesses the damage with neighbouring crofter John McDonald.
It's just a bit tacky, isn't it? It'll be all right, as long as I get it well wrapped.
A bit green, I think. It's quite green.
Come on, girl.
Come on.
Good girl.
It may be too damp to store as hay,
but they can still make an excellent winter feed for their livestock.
So this hay was cut five days ago, something like that.
It's now been turned a couple of times, so it's just off-green.
It will be bailed and then wrapped to make haylage, rather than hay.
It's not going to be dry enough for that.
A lovely halfway point, is haylage, between silage and hay.
The cattle absolutely love it.
It's sweet as a nut, if you get it right.
Robin's in his tractor, spreading the cut hay into rows.
John's brought his baler.
Sharing equipment and labour is traditional on these Highland crofts,
where the land is less productive and profits are tight.
It's not our croft, isn't this.
This belongs to a widower crofter who doesn't cut her own hay.
The deal is that we cut this between us,
split the costs on that, and Charlotte gets a certain proportion for herself,
for her sheep and a bit to sell, and we split the rest between us.
It works very nicely. It's just reciprocal crofting, that's all, you know.
It's rather nice.
Hay-making's great. You know,
when you're looking at rows of hay and it's all working and the machinery's working,
it's just a good feeling.
And you know then that you've got feed for the winter,
so that your animals are safe for another year.
The bales are wrapped.
The plastic keeps the rain out and prevents the haylage from rotting.
Yeah, it's an old wrapper, is this.
And it's a very old tractor, but they both do this job perfectly, so...
It's always nice to get to this stage.
You've got... There's nothing on the ground.
You've got it all on the bail.
You got it all in the wrap, you've got it in the barns,
you've got it in the sheds and it can now snow for all I care.
Take the battery out, otherwise it dies.
It's been a good tractor, has this.
It's past its best now, but it's still a good engine.
The croft is set up to survive another winter.
But Robin and Penny are facing a less certain future.
The big decision will come if Robin gets too arthritic.
And having built up the croft,
we've now got it up and running the way we want it
and if he cuts back on the work that he does on the croft,
it'll get overgrown, and so the question is,
do we cut our losses and leave it
when it's really, really in its peak,
or do we sit and watch it crumbling?
Because that's the reality of things, as you get older.
It's just a cause of discussion at the moment,
but it has to be faced some time.
On the Isle of Mull,
Janet and Alastair Taylor are five years into their farming adventure.
Like Robin and Penny,
they took over a rundown property and are slowly building it up.
This summer, they've raised 120 lambs and seven Highland calves.
Helping keep an eye on them all are their nine dogs.
Here, good boy.
And it's dinner time.
I'm making turmeric golden paste for the dogs.
It's got turmeric and water and some black pepper in it,
and it's very good for their joints, especially old dogs.
The coconut oil gives them a great shine to their coat, as well.
They all get slightly different foods.
I've got a board with all the instructions on it.
That's mainly for when Alastair feeds them.
There's joint supplements for everyone
and then anti-inflammatory ones.
Seaweed and parsley for teeth and Stroppy Bitch for Pip and Bria.
That's what I make Janet's tea out of!
Yeah, I get a lot of that.
It seems to keep them more hormonally balanced.
Yoghurt for their digestion.
It's good.
Mm!
Oh, someone can hear their food being made!
Once it's done, you get peace.
The dogs eat like kings, but Janet and Alastair live a more frugal life.
Their rented farm will only make £4,000 from livestock sales this year,
so they have to take on contract work across the island.
It's hard cos, you know, we're getting pulled in every direction,
cos we want to be on our own farm,
doing things to help improve it and doing work here,
but that's not where we make the money.
The way it is, everything on the side is supporting the farm,
and from the looks of the next couple of years, it's only going to get worse.
The farm's going to start costing money and everything else is going to be supporting it,
and I don't imagine Brexit's going to make land prices go up.
Janet and Alastair want to stay on the Isle of Mull,
but to keep farming, they may have to leave.
If we did look at moving farm, we'd probably look at a mainland farm.
You instantly remove so many hurdles.
You've not got the ferries,
so you haven't got that added cost of everything you bring in and everything you put away,
and the cost on feed and hay and things like that for the ferry is just huge.
If it gets to the stage where we are struggling to survive,
then something might have to change.
I think some people might consider our income struggling to survive!
Shhh, see, I think we live really comfortably.
I think we live comfortably.
When you think about the things we don't spend money on, I mean,
when was the last time we bought new clothes and things like that,
you know? It would be nice to have a holiday,
but it's not going to happen.
You'd miss your dogs if you went away. Yeah, the dogs have to come.
They work as hard as we do, they have to come on holiday.
A week's holiday may be out of the questions,
but well within reach is a stunning beach at the edge of the farm.
Come down to the beach for the night, a bottle of Prosecco,
steaks on the barbecue and we spend the night down here.
So...
Catch, dogs!
No-one goes for it!
Dogs, you suck!
Nice glasses! Yeah, you can get more in them.
Across on the mainland,
the long summer evenings give David the opportunity to take a break
from the daily routine...
..and reflect on farming life.
This place means so much to me.
It's a very important part of my life.
I could never give this life up,
unless through bad health or something like that.
I honestly couldn't visualise myself doing anything else.
But if there's one certainty in farming, it's the constant threat of change.
The future for hill farming at the moment is very much up in the air.
And with Brexit, it's up in the air with farm support.
Farm support is a huge part of keeping us here.
We've got a couple of years left of that and we don't know what's happening after that.
But there's far easier ways, probably, to make money than doing what we do.
You're not going to make a fortune doing it,
and the scenery doesn't pay the bills.
From unpredictable weather to an uncertain economic climate,
farmers must adapt to survive.
The Roan's dairy business was struggling financially.
With milk prices low, they took a gamble,
investing hard cash and long hours in building their own milk brand
and selling direct to doorstep customers,
and it seems to be paying off.
There you go, there's some fresh strawberries and that's with cream
from our very own herd of cows down in Dumfries and Galloway.
Tracy and Aylett are at their biggest showcase for Scottish farming,
the annual Royal Highland Show in Edinburgh.
Absolutely yum.
We started pasteurising our own milk and cream just under two years ago
and this is our first year kind of showcasing at the Highland Show.
Business is booming, basically.
It proves that it's a business that has legs and can keep on going,
if we keep on investing the time. I don't know if we can keep going!
Yeah, if we keep on investing the time in it, then, yeah,
there's the scope for it. People want the delivery back on their doorstep,
and that seems to be where the business is definitely going to.
The future looks pink. Aye!
The Royal Highland Show runs across four days.
Over 190,000 visitors mix business with pleasure.
Among them are David and Sandra.
So much machinery and so little money to buy it.
Show field's so big, you're walking miles backwards and forwards to find stuff.
Are we going the right way? Yeah.
In the show ring, reputations are made winning a Royal Highland rosette.
Mel and Martin Irvine are here,
with the best bulls and heifers from their pedigree herd of Limousin cattle.
Look, there's Daddy, there's Daddy.
Daddy.
You join us at the Limousin cattle judging...
But this year, things have changed.
Since Erin's come along, it's been a bit different.
She's my responsibility, really.
So she comes first, so I kind of have to play the mummy role first
and look after her, but Martin will cope fine.
I need Mel, I miss Mel.
Yeah, because Mel's thinking like me and she cares what I need.
I'm just getting a bit rushed at the end -
they're not as well-dressed as I like them to be.
We have the final results for the Limousin bull class 276...
Out in the ring, Martin wins third place.
Third, number 663.
If Mel has her way,
it won't be long before another Irvine follows in his footsteps.
One day she'll be out there
and I'll be going from the ringside going, "Do this, do that,"
won't I?
Nearby, flipping buffalo burgers, Stevie's also thinking about the future.
The biggest change of his farming life is on the horizon.
It gave us a lot of food for thought, Italy.
It was an incredible trip.
I think we've definitely room in the market for some Scottish mozzarella,
no question about that.
It's just a matter of trying to make that happen now.
Back in Fife, Stevie's taken a huge step towards turning his dreams into reality.
He's found the place where he can make mozzarella.
But it's going to be a while before he can bring in the buffalo.
A roofless byre. You can still see the old stalls where they would have
had the dairy cows probably chained up.
I don't think this will be salvageable.
After months of planning, negotiations and paperwork,
Stevie now owns a dairy farm.
I've actually got the old milking tank in here,
from the original dairy farm, that stored the milk.
Bankhead Farm is next door to the land he rents for his beef unit.
I think it's fair to say with everything here,
we need quite a lot of imagination.
We are hoping to obviously have the kind of retail and the farm shop kind of experience here.
The actual cheese plant will be a modern, new building.
It's a very, very big investment.
As much as we've got these lovely ideas, it's...
The fear is how we can turn them into reality
without bankrupting ourselves, basically!
I'm not maybe as daunted by it, but maybe I'm less realistic.
Stevie and Sarah are taking a massive gamble.
As well as breathing new life into an abandoned farmhouse...
We're going to obviously be keeping these curtains.
And the carpets. Glad they're thrown into the deal!
..they must also buy a new milking herd, build a dairy,
launch a cheese business and sell more buffalo meat to pay for it all.
It's the beginning of their next farming adventure.
There's so much potential,
there's so much here to get our teeth into
and we'll do whatever it takes to kind of make this happen.
We will produce Scottish mozzarella up here, that's for sure!