A family meeting round the kitchen table almost 20 years ago was a pivotal moment for Ardross Farm.
Sisters Nikki and Tara were at university and Claire was soon to do the same.
Selling beef to supermarkets, their mother Fiona Pollock and late father Rob were struggling to make enough profit to support them.
Eldest of the siblings, Nikki Storrar, says: “It was pretty soul destroying.
“They were fed up working huge amounts of hours for basically nothing.
“We had a family meeting and Mum and Dad said we’re either going to have to give up and do something else or we’re going to have to make a diversification of some sort.”
The right product but the wrong buyers
They tried a few ventures, including producing compressed hay bales and making planters from old stone troughs.
But then Rob realised they already had the right product – just the wrong buyers.
Nikki, 40, says: “He said, ‘why don’t we try selling it direct?’ Us three girls laughed and said ‘why on earth would anyone want to buy from a farm when they can buy from a supermarket?’
“Luckily we were totally wrong.”
There were few farm shops around in 2005 when the Pollocks decided to try selling their beef from their farm near Elie.
Rob came home one day and said a butcher was hanging one of their cattle beasts for 21 days – they had three weeks to create a shop.
An old cart shed, a tin of red paint
It was all hands on deck to transform an old cart shed.
Nikki says: “We only had a tin of red paint so we painted the floor red. The walls were painted, it was all sanded down and whitewashed. We carried Mum’s kitchen table out. We had a calculator and we bought two freezers.
“We didn’t even know how much meat would be coming back. We didn’t know if we would get any customers.”
But on that first day a few customers did come.
Nikki says: “Our first sale was £25.73 and I remember Mum jumping up and down and saying ‘that’s it, we’re retailers’.”
A local St Monans football club looking for sponsorship was paid to deliver leaflets to households across the East Neuk.
More and more people started going to Ardross Farm to buy their beef, then broccoli and cabbage. They started asking for other things, and the family would do their best to source it from other local producers.
Family business now employs 19 people
The rest, as they say, is history.
Ardross Farm now employs 19 people – their ‘amazing’ team says Nikki – selling its own produce and that of other independent producers. This still includes ice cream from Doddington Dairy, their first ever external supplier.
That was quite a gamble, Nikki recalls, as the minimum order was £600-worth.
“That was a huge amount for us, we were terrified and we had to buy a new freezer to put it in but it was amazing and it’s still one of our best sellers today.”
Since then Ardross Farm has won several awards, including being named AgriScot Diversified Farm of the Year in 2022.
Sadly Rob died in 2019, but Fiona, Nikki, Tara Clark and Claire Sloan remain at the helm.
As the business took off the sisters turned their backs on other career plans to return to the fold.
Accountant Claire is now farmer
Claire, 33, was an accountant but is now the farmer. Nikki was about to start teacher training but is now shop and marketing manager.
Tara, 36, remains a teacher and works with the Royal Highland Education Trust but is on the farm when she’s not doing those roles.
Nikki says: “None of us wanted to be in farming. We all saw the long hours Dad did.
“I said I would never ever marry a farmer or be a farmer. I now manage the farm shop and I married a farmer!
“Claire said the same thing and she is the farmer!”
Traditionally farms passed from father to son, so it’s perhaps unusual that Ardross Farm has four women at the helm.
Although Nikki, who is Scottish Agritourism’s Fife destination leader, says farm diversification projects have brought more women to the fore.
‘It’s kept three girls in farming’
And diversifying at Ardross Farm prevented hundreds of years of farming in their family from coming to an end, she adds.
“It’s kept three girls in farming when they might not have stayed otherwise.”
So what’s it like working with your family day in day out?
“Because we are all so different, we get on really well,” says Nikki.
“I’m very arty-farty and really care about what people think. They would call me messy, I guess!
“Claire, the accountant, is very tidy. She loves figures, she loves the process.
“In our office upstairs my side is covered in piles of papers – although I know where everything is! – and there’s stuff stuck all over the walls.
“You turn round to Claire’s side and she has a calculator and her two computer screens.
When business meetings become family chinwags
“Tara is very practical and likes getting things done.
“Mum is very similar in that respect. She oversees everything and makes sure our standards don’t drop.
“We do have our moments, though.
“The most annoying thing is when we have a discussion it goes on for two hours and quite often we leave the table not having made a decision!”
Claire adds: “People tell us we should have a monthly meeting and make plans. We have a monthly meeting and we just sit round the table for hours and chat!
“I suppose we’re not very good at separating work from family time; we talk about work constantly.”
She agrees that their different skills and personalities are an asset.
All work but play too
“Everything I love to do, Nikki hates, and everything Nikki hates, I love!
“In some family businesses there are a lot of challenges but we are really lucky that we are all different. It makes it easy, everyone has different areas.”
Having spent all day together do they still spend leisure time together?
“We’re ridiculously close,” laughs Claire. “Our husbands get on at us for it.”
Nikki, who has two sons Robbie, 8, and Jamie, 5, says: “We were all paddleboarding on Tuesday night, when it was Claire’s birthday. Mum, our husbands, my children.
“I just really enjoy spending time with them. We do also have friends, we’re not that weird! But we do love a family meal.”
For Fiona, it’s incredibly rewarding to be able to continue generations of farming with her daughters and have that direct connection with customers.
‘Wonderful working with my daughters’
She says: “I absolutely love working with them. It’s just wonderful working in a family as they all give different things to it.
“We do have our disagreements but not an awful lot.”
“Only when you disagree with me!” jibes Nikki.
Fiona says: “We all have our own jobs and it works very well.
“We had to make it a success because we weren’t getting anywhere producing for the supermarkets.
“We had to cut out the middle man and it’s been such fun doing it.”
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