OUR STORY
Hello! We are Marguerite and Frank; life’s journey brought to rural Aberdeenshire in 2015. We are both from urban city backgrounds but that didn't stop us from building up a smallholding croft of thriving plants and animals.
We now have a menagerie of sheep, poultry, bees, cats and dogs! We grow some vegetables and a large coppice of willow.
Photo courtesy of Cairn Media
OUR CRAFT BUSINESS
We have a small breeding flock of rare breed sheep - Boreray, Hebridean and Icelandic sheep. Wool is a cornerstone of our business. On seeing our first sheep being shorn, I wanted to use the beautiful material of raw fleece to produce yarns that are true to our sheep and landscape. Our yarns are spun from carefully selected fleeces, from our own flock and from neighbouring farms and smallholders. All our fleece raw materials have clear Scottish provenance, spinning is outsourced to hand spinners or mills to produce our 100% wool or alpaca yarns. I also weave woollen rugs from the natural fleeces.
Frank has rejuvenated willow and hazel coppices on our land and we annually harvest rods for making baskets and willow structures. Our goal is to be as sustainable as possible in terms of food, fuel and enhancing the raw materials of wool and willow that we harvest from Westfield Croft.