About Cromar Sheep & Pigs

The Greenlaw family have been farming on Royal Deeside in the north east of Scotland since 1944.

Our names are Marion and Ronald.

We were married in 1965 and after a few years in a family partnership rearing cattle, sheep and pigs we diversified on our own into market gardening and soft fruit production. As the farm was situated next to a sawmill, sawdust and woodchips could be obtained fairly reasonably, a large greenhouse and wood burner were set up for the early production of tomatoes and bedding plants. This continued for the next few years.

When the tenancy became available on a larger sheep unit near Tarland, the urge to move was too hard to resist and our offer was accepted in November 1986.

West Pett was to be our home for the next 20 years, initially running a mixed flock of around 2,000 cheviot, blackface and cross ewes. All lambs produced were then fattened on the farm.

As the farm was situated over 1000ft above see level it could be very stormy in the winter, therefore, in 1995 it was decided to change to Lleyn ewes.

This was to be one of our best decisions, as this breed proved to be very easy to work with and produced many more lambs and being docile, easy to lamb and milky they changed our whole way of life.

In 2005, with Lleyn numbers now reaching 1400 and retirement looming we decided it was time to downsize the flock.

We moved to Wester Strathweltie, a small farm which we had been running in conjunction with West Pett.
Wester Strathweltie, which is also part of the MacRobert Trust Estate, is situated 1 mile west of Tarland in the renowned Howe O’ Cromar.
The area is well known for the quality of stock it produces and animals are known to thrive when moved to lower parts of the country since weather conditions can be quite harsh and prolonged here.

You can visit our rare breed Mangalitza Pigs website here.