The Buffalo Farm has Scotland’s largest herd of Water Buffalo and the buffalo roam the hills at Clentrie farm Auchtertool.

The business was set up in the spring of 2005 by Steven Mitchell, with the objective of producing superior quality meat to market directly to the public both through local door to door sales and on a wider scale through farmers markets.

The Buffalo Farm has developed into a full butchery business which includes a retail wholesale outlet at Boglily Steading as well as traditional butchery counters at Blacketyside Farm and Craigie’s Farm, a catering supply, event and private catering as well as an onsite café, the Bothy, at Boglily Steading.

Steven Mitchell, is the 6th generation of Mitchell’s farming in Fife, following in the footsteps of Robert Mitchell who began farming in the early 1800s.

As a child Steve’s passion was always cows, but, inspired by his uncle’s pork farm and its development into a retail business, which he found suited his personality and skills, he considered how his love for cattle could be developed into his own idea.

With Scotland having such a wealth of quality beef producers already on the market, it had to be something different and so the Buffalo Farm was born.

The attractions to water buffalo are countless – they produce very healthy meat that is lower in cholesterol, higher in mineral content and less than half the total fat content of conventional lean beef, and in the words of Chef Nick Nairn it tastes “pretty damn fantastic”.

Perhaps the reason for their excellent flavour is that they have not been subject to many of the modern intensive farming practices and so are technically the same animals they were thousands of years ago.