BUFFALO SOLDIER
A pipe dream turned into reality for Steve Mitchell, proud owner of a buffalo herd based in Fife, who now produces Scotland’s first ever buffalo mozzarella, says Morag Bootland.
Meet the herd at Scotland's first buffalo mozzarella farm
What do you call a row of trucks covered in mozzarella? A cheesy pick-up line. This is the appropriate, but nevertheless hideously cheesy, joke that popped into my head and that I only just managed not to blurt out while I chatted to Steve Mitchell in his pick-up as we drove down the rutted track that leads to his herd of 400 water buffalo.
Although Steve has been farming buffalo in the beautiful Fife countryside near Auchtertool for 15 years now, he’s starting an exciting new chapter with the mighty beasts that are a more common sight roaming the rice fields of Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent.
The road to producing Scotland’s first mozzarella cheese has been as bumpy as the track that leads to the herd, but Steve’s passion for the animals and the business has seen him succeed against all the odds. Losing his father in a farming accident at the age of five and his mother when he was 15 years old was a huge challenge. But firmly believing that it is better to have good parents for a short time than bad parents for a long time, this didn’t stop him from
following in his father’s farming footsteps. Steve’s uncle owns Puddledub Pork and has supported him along the way. ‘I think it’s fair to say that I have farming in my blood. I’m learning that now with my own son,’ he tells me. ‘You can’t shake it off.’
Steve’s determination to make this project succeed has had some pretty high profile support. In fact, it was chef Gordon Ramsay who really lit the blue touchpaper under the mozzarella project. The farm featured on Ramsay’s TV show, The F Word and a visit from Ramsay saw the first batch of Scottish buffalo mozzarella being made in the farmhouse kitchen, sampled and lauded by the multi-Michelin starred chef.
The show initially approached Steve with a view to doing a segment on his buffalo meat, but disappointment loomed when the producer rang Steve back to say that an excess of meat on the schedule meant that The Buffalo Farm had been dropped. ‘He asked if there was any way we could do mozzarella instead,’ Steve tells me. ‘But I explained that this was just a dream for the future and we weren’t at that stage yet.’
With a heavy heart Steve hung up the phone before rallying and picking it up again. ‘I couldn’t let the opportunity go, so I called back and asked if Gordon could come to the farm and make a trial batch of Scottish buffalo mozzarella with me.
‘They thought that would really work so we went into the herd and looked for the buffalo with the biggest udders and started milking them. Miraculously it worked and Gordon and I made some really delicious cheese. I kind of regret not taking him up on his offer of investment, although I think perhaps it was a little tongue in cheek!’
Nick Nairn has also been a constant encouragement and is already using the buffalo mozzarella in his restaurant. The seed was well and truly planted and although it’s taken nine years to get the cheese into production it has been well worth the wait.
‘I’m really proud of the product,’ Steve tells me. ‘There’s a huge market for the cheese, especially when people taste the difference between buffalo mozzarella and some of the cheaper stuff. This is coming from a man who only started to eat salads over the last three or four years. I used to throw tomatoes off my plate, but now I’m thinking that with a bit of garlic and salt they’re frickin’ delicious. The mozzarella has made me realise that the people who eat this type of food aren’t as weird as I’d first thought.
‘It was chef Gordon Ramsay who really lit the blue touchpaper’
‘I have been lucky enough to tour some of the most respected buffalo farms in Italy, tasting their wonderful produce, and we wanted to create a product which put Scotland on the map and could be considered world-class.
‘Provenance is so important in food and never more so than in buffalo mozzarella.«Our cheese is produced in a matter of hours, from milking to finished balls of mozzarella. As a result, you can really smell and taste the freshness compared to one from an overseas producer that has had to travel for days.
‘I’m absolutely thrilled at the quality we have achieved. I would much rather produce small batches of world-class cheese than compromise what we have.
‘We have been given the opportunity to create something quite special and the team is determined to make Scotland a force to be reckoned with in the world buffalo mozzarella market.’
Currently producing around 1,000 balls of buffalo mozzarella every week, it’s just not enough to keep up with demand from restaurants and farm shops. Including Steve’s own busy shop and cafe at Boglily Steading where you can buy the cheese, buffalo meat and buffalo milk ice cream in an array of flavours.
That’s where the Founder’s Fund comes in. The crowdfunding-style investment scheme raised over £850,000 from around 600 individuals. The first 50 founders have been given the honour of naming one of the buffalo.
‘Unfortunately it has highlighted how poorly educated some of the public are because we got an awful lot of boy’s names! The plan is that we’ll get a league going and there will be prizes for the buffalo with the best milk production.
‘Thanks to this investment we now have over 80 staff across the business and we have lots of really awesome people around us,’ says Steve. ‘We have a custom-designed dairy parlour and mozzarella production facility. The other hugely powerful thing is the responsibility of the Founder’s Fund.
‘It feels like I’ve gone from not having a boss to having 600. One chap put in over £60,000 and several others invested over £10,000. It certainly gets you up and going in the morning.’
The next stage of the big cheese plan is to bring milking partners on board so that production can be increased to meet demand. Steve would like to be producing a tonne of mozzarella a week using milk provided by his own animals and other herds around Scotland.
Viewers of the BBC documentary This Farming Life may recognise Steve, who featured on the programme, which followed some of the highs and lows of the business. From investors pulling out resulting in losing his herd, to being gored by a buffalo, an experience that made Steve count himself lucky to be alive, it has been far from plain sailing.
But Steve fell in love with this part of Fife and this farm as a small boy, and there’s no chance that he was going to let something like looming financial ruin or a near-death experience get in the way of his dream. ‘It’s always been a life project,’ he explains. ‘It’s been a long wait, but it’s worth it.’
‘I would much rather produce small batches of world-class cheese than compromise what we have’