About Press Mains Cottages

Emma, Peter, Jennie and Elizabeth would like to welcome you to Press Mains. We have farmed here since 1993 and have slowly developed the holiday cottages since then.

Here are some details about the farm:

• Press mains is a 1200-acre arable and beef farm.
• We grow Winter Wheat, which is used for animal feed, biscuit making.
• Winter Barley used for animal feed as well as in whisky and beer brewing.
• We grow 2 different types of Oil Seed Rape.
• One is used for the production of margarine and cooking oils.
• The other type of Oil seed is “Industrial”, which goes in to the production of things like cling film and hair conditioners.

On the farm we have 40 beef calves, which we rear from babies brought in from dairy farms. The calves are reared on milk. They then eat the grass behind the cottages in the summer. They are housed in the winter eating silage, which is pickled grass, barley straw and crushed barley all produced at Press Mains.

At Press Mains we enjoy the wildlife and try to farm in partnership with it. We are members of LEAF Linking environment and Farming. www.leafuk.org

The farm has been in the Countryside Stewardship Scheme for the past 6 years. We have created various wildlife havens from planting native species hedges, ponds and wetlands. Part of the farms grassland is conserved for wild flowers. A cutting and grazing policy is applied to maximise survival of ground nesting birds. The farm took part in The RSPB farm bird survey, recording yellow hammers, skylarks, song thrushes and linnets all of which are species of high conservation concern.

We have red squirrels around the farm but the population is under threat of invading Greys and the diseases they carry; we have adopted a control programme.

The chickens you will see roaming about the gardens belong to Elizabeth, and we have a grey pony, Harvey, company for our Bay horse Pepito.

We also have Goldie who is a Parson Russell Terrier.

We are members of the Scottish Borders Tourist Board are graded at 4 star. We are  members of Wild Scotland . The Scottish Wildlife Tourism Association.

We belong to the Green Tourism Business scheme and have gained the Gold award. Click here to view our green policy.