What Scottish agritourism can offer farm businesses with Caroline Millar

On the podcast this week, we learn about the value of agritourism and diversification in Scotland with Dundee farmer Caroline Millar. Escaping from the world to a farm's tranquil surroundings in the Angus countryside could be the ideal answer for any couple seeking a romantic weekend getaway, with the diversification working hand-in-hand alongside the farm. The Hideaway Experience at Balkello Farm, run by Scottish farmers Caroline and Ross Millar alongside their two children Finlay and Sophie, is a collection of self-catering holiday lodges in Dundee offering bespoke luxury features including saunas and hot tubs. Guests can also enjoy the food which is produced on-farm during their stay. Rated five-stars by Scotland's national tourist organisation VisitScotland, guests can also relish the comforting surroundings of a log burning fire during winter, grill delicious red meat on a gas BBQ during summer and enjoy the wildlife surroundings of the Angus countryside in holiday lodges. The farm has two units across the 263-hectare mixed arable business, with around 120 breeding cows including Aberdeen-Angus and Herefords, and growing cereals. Branching into the world of agritourism, an agricultural operation which attracts tourists to a farm, in 2005, Caroline said her farming background has played a valuable role in her strong work ethic. Enjoy the pod!

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Long days, long nights, and an ever changing landscape at the NFU. We understand what it means to be a farmer. That's why our community of over 45,000 British farmers and growers trust us for expert support and guidance. Every step of the way. Together we are stronger. Visit NFU online.com. Hello everybody. I'm Chris Bradford and this is the Farmers Garden podcast. A very warm welcome to all our listeners far and wide on the podcast this week we're joined by none other than Caroline Miller. So Caroline runs Balclutha Farm in Dundee alongside her husband Ross, and their two children. She's diversified the business to host a five star accredited tourism business on farm called The Hideaway Experience. I had the absolute pleasure to visit, to stay in the lodges. You know, self-catering lodges with luxury features including saunas, steam rooms, wet rooms, you name it, log burners. They had it. It was fun tastic. But we talk about how Caroline and Ross, how they got to the point where they are now, and just the importance of diversification to farming businesses and how it helps them alongside, you know, to to let the business farming business thrive, which, you know, you'll hear during the course of the interview. This interview was recorded before Caroline and under the wonderful team, managed to win the bid to host the world's on group tourism conference, in Scotland in 2026. It's just going to be a fantastic opportunity where global leaders from across the world get to see Scottish farms, their businesses, what they offer, what they can provide, how they've diversified and made, you know, a lasting contribution in so many areas of, of Scotland. So please do enjoy listening to the podcast and, is is Caroline. I'm very well today. Glad the sun is shining and there's no wind. And we're here at one of our hideaways, at Volcano Farm just outside Dundee. Could you tell us just a little bit about yourself, please? Because I believe originally. Or a farmer's daughter. yeah. I was brought up on the family farm in Perthshire. we had, tenant farm, and we we grew a lot of potatoes, and we had, beef and sheep. And then, after that, I am my ambition not to marry a farmer went out the window. and, I've been living here at a local farm with my husband, Ross, since we came home from our overseas trips, and New Zealand back in 1997. Tell me what it was like growing up on a farm when you were when you were little. What was that experience like? well, it was it was fantastic. Although it was it was hard work. I think my dad invented the concept of work. we pretty much did everything we could do with potatoes from row going to left dung. And then my least favorite job was dressing in the winter time. But, but we had a great, great, what we call great banter, was the family and our kind of wider employees and things and lots of freedom on the farm. So we had ponies, not not, you know, don't have any sort of concept of some sort of posh horse outfit. We had a baler towing and we went to a local shop and a band name and went for ice cream and things. So, yeah, we had we had a great childhood on the farm. can imagine there was also a lot of, challenges that yellow faced, on the farm as well. Is that right? Yeah. So I think that, I think farming is as a great way of life. And, we are businesses at the end of the day as well. And, yeah, I think, you know, it's it's challenging to have the scale of agricultural enterprise these days. with the returns that we, we get sometimes from the marketplace to make it, you know, give a financial viability to not just for one person, but for multiple people and the family. So, yeah, I mean, I think there's, you know, it's a shame that we don't get more return from, from the market, but I know there's a lot of work going on to try and change that. Yeah. from, conversations over the past few days, you've held various positions within the agricultural industry. would you be able to tell us some of that, including your work with the NFU at, yeah. So, I mean, I think that I've always enjoyed, you know, mixing with others, having that network. And I really enjoy the company of other people, and I've really enjoyed learning from other people, and my career. And I think I was a worked off farm for for ten years, and a commercial role for, a port company and gained a lot of skills. They are. But I guess one of the things I enjoyed was, as I say, that kind of network and, you know, that ability to, to work together as a team and sometimes you don't get that. And, and I kind of smaller and one man band business, so, yeah, some of the things that I've got involved with that I've really enjoyed, would be the Oxford Farming Conference, where I was a director and then a chair of of that. I really enjoyed that. And then I've also, I've just, been a director with NFU Scotland for three years. and yeah, I really enjoyed that experience and I'm hoping to continue to support NFU Scotland to, do various things, including at the moment, approve a project or an increase in diversity in organization. Wonderful. tell us a little bit about public health of farm. Can you tell us a bit of the the history behind it? Yeah. So this is a little farm and the also we have the neighboring North Bludgeon Farm and North region goes up to 480m. so it's the highest point in the, the little hills which stretch from Perth to Dundee. So there's two farming units here next door to each other. There's about 650 acres here. we have about 120 breeding cows, a mixture of Aberdeen Angus and Hereford which they're calving just now were just, got about ten, ten to go. And then we have two flocks of, of sheep. we have one here, at this farm and then, we are we're fortunate to be able to have, to have another farm that we managed to buy, three years ago, which is kind of our succession plan. so there's some more sheep over there, just snow farming as well. And then we grow, about 600 acres of, of cereals here to, wonderful. It's, I've seen it from myself, too. It's a real family affair. Yeah. On the farm, isn't it? Yeah. They're all working together. It's the lovely family dynamic that plays such an important role on on farm. Such as this one. Yeah. yeah. Yeah. So, so a husband draws his, full time farm and more than full time at the moment. and our children, Sophie is 16 and he's 19, so they are they're very involved in the farm, and they always have been, as children, grown up. But the they really, get stuck in and and enjoy, you know, taking a really active role and, and, and advising us what we should be doing. So that's, that's I think that's a good, excellent. diversification has played a really important role on the farm. I've had the absolute pleasure to stay in one of your hide away experiences called The Lovers. Could you tell us a bit about how the farm is diversified and, and a little bit more about the handover experience? Yeah. So, I mean, I think, what I think whatever you do, if you, if you have an interest in something, you that's a, that's a basic for if you can go forward and think if you've got a real interest and, and, and passion for something, you will be more successful than if you, you have. And so, we've always enjoyed traveling. And as I say, we spent a couple of years travel around New Zealand and Australia. But I've also traveled a lot around the world for various roles and and jobs and wherever I've gone since I've been 17, I've had a book and I've written down what I like about different accommodation of what I don't like. and, you know, that's, that's sort of built my knowledge up. And when we started to think about what else, what we could do on the farm to bring in additional income, I had my job, but I wanted to, you know, I had two children, two small children, and I was commuting to, to Grangemouth, which is about an hour and ten minutes from here. So we set up one property, the first hideaway, and we now have five. And yes, I still I enjoy the business. We have, but 3000 guests a year or so of high end five star guests who are coming to this area. and, you know, it's now and now a business that employs, one full time manager, a bit of my time and about six part time staff. and we really, you know, it's made a huge difference to our family just giving us an extra income stream. am I right in thinking the Hideaway Experiences was built in 2005? So the first, the first, the first cottage on the farm, the old bothy was the one that we converted in 2005 and then in 2010, wee wee wee. Eventually. And it took a long time, to raise the funds to, build the, The Honeymooners and the dreamers. But we it took us 18 months to get 50% of the funding out of the bank. it took the only reason we managed that was because back in those days, we had a steep grant. So we had capital grants. and if we hadn't had that capital grant back in 2010, there's no way that the bank would have warned us the money, as a separate business to the farm and the you know, it was sort of were both ran as a standalone. So, so I feel very strongly about young people having access to capital grants. they can always go to their parents and say, could you fund this new venture to allow us to have an income stream? So, that was critical for us. And then we built, the lovers in this 1 in 2017, and the stargazers in 2021. There's some rather fantastic facilities that are involved in each, experience, which makes them even more unique. And, and it's very impressive to see what what is not on offer to help with, you know, real luck. So whatever needs it is for the customers, it's purely amazing. Just oh thank you. I'm glad you've enjoyed your stay. But I think sometimes that people overlook, the service element. You know, it's not all about accommodation. So I think it is about the, you know, these beautiful views that we have here. You know, we're setting, all the hideaways are separate from each other, and that's critical, privacy. But then, you know, we're looking right down to to East and West Lomond down. well, even there, we're looking straight down to five, so. And there's you can hear all the birds singing in the trees. So people are that's what people are paying for as well as, the service, the way we respond to people before they stay, during their stay. And hopefully we don't need to stop them too much. But, yeah, I think the service element and then there's the facilities are looking for. So it's only one couple, but we have 80m² here. So it's quite a large area. But it's meant to be, sort of hotel suite, a penthouse hotel suite, sitting on its own. So we do have all the spa facilities and. Thanks. People really like their own. You know, I think when you go to a hotel and you're sitting in the sun on, you know, some days you're listening to somebody tell you about the divorce or something, you know, I mean, now here you can just sit and talk, but you don't focus. But, you know, you can just be on your own in the sauna, just the two of you. Or you can sit in the bar so you can be in the hot tub, or you can, you know, there's lots of different there's the steam room here as well. So, people say they can fill their day by just they say it's like an adult. An adult playground. There's a trampoline there. the hammock. So there's plenty to do. It's it's just been incredible from from my own kind of experience of it. It's just been so quiet. I could probably have made as much noise as I wanted to, and nobody would have known. So it's been fantastic in that sense and just the beautiful scenery. I really can't stress just how incredible it is just for, the, you know, the relaxation element and just and the, the, the customer service side of it, that's, that's really important, isn't it? And I guess it can come with challenges as well. Diversification projects can't they as well. Yeah. Thank if anyone if anyone is looking at sort of going into to tutors, they're not they're not a people person. They don't they don't enjoy the company of, of people. and it's not really for them. And also, I think that you have to respond to people straight away. So if someone for you to see the can't get the barbecues to work, or you know, something else, you can't, you can't just say, oh, I'll go out tomorrow morning or oh, you know, and you'll actually have to go within five minutes. so if you're not there as a family, you need to make sure you've got a staff team in place that can respond, as quickly as that. So I think that's critical. And, you know, there's things that we don't get right. There's things that happen that, you know, you can't foresee there happening. And that's how you deal with a situation. You all know you're you know yourself if you go somewhere and there's something not quite right, it's how it's rectified. but time is critical all the time to, to rectify something. And the way that you address it and the way that you kind of apologize and put something in place, and sometimes you can actually make a really good situation out of a, a bad situation. Can you tell me about the, the importance of, of agritourism and what that means both to farms like yourself or whether it's to the local, both the local and, national economy as well. It plays such a vital role in and almost selling, you know, where in Scotland it really does help to sell Scotland to people who might not, you know, have known this may have been here or, you know, would you say that's right. Yeah. Well, I mean, I've, I've been, I've been so interested in agritourism. we've been campaigning for recognition for what the sector does deliver. I've been actively campaigning for that since 2008 with a number of others. And I think it's because, I don't really like the word diversification, because I think that farmers, our business people, we're all entrepreneurs. We might not see ourselves like that sometimes. And we sometimes farmers are hesitant to profile themselves as entrepreneurs or use the words. But ultimately we're business people. And, I don't think there's anything wrong with farmers, doing other things and adding value to their, their kind of farm. And I say by adding different things on that was actually the topic of my Nuffield Scholarship in 2012. I didn't value to your farmland farming assets. And so it's, you know, as I say, I the tourism is just one example of what else you can do. But I think if you have the, you know, the particular location that you might need for that type of ag tourism, if you have, consumer focus yourself, if you understand the market for the type of thing that you're going into, then, it absolutely delivers so much for both family businesses, but also for the wider rural economy. So we have people come in here, international visitors. We have a lot of UK visitors. We have people, flying up from London, to, to Dundee Airport. But we have a lot of people coming by train and we're only 15 minutes from Dundee train station, where six hours to London on the train. So, you know, and we have a lot of Scottish city dwellers, so our biggest demographic would be, couples from Aberdeen, Glasgow or Edinburgh. And so they can get here in an hour, roughly at about an hour and a half from Glasgow, an hour from Edinburgh, now from Aberdeen. And you know, there just if you, if you love, if you've got neighbors at home or you know, any sort of other stuff going on your life, you just come here and you just are completely on your own. So, I think actually tourism is very underdeveloped in Scotland compared to some other European countries and some other countries globally. And we're building up a lot more, data on how other countries are performing. And I think that we have we have a long way to go, but I think we've got a really high quality offering in Scotland, and we've got a fantastic network. We have such a strong network of entrepreneurial farmers and agri tourism. and we can really build on that. Yeah, I think that's, that's really important as well to, to recognize the, the strength, the resilience, the passion and the hard work that that farmers are doing in order to make, businesses viable. And even, you know, that and to, to make them successful, it's it's really important to recognize the role that that farmers do play in. yeah, I should say as well, like with our farm and business, you know, the farming business, you know, my husband does an amazing job at running that business. And as a profits full on, very viable business. And the tourism element has only used one acre. so we've actually we haven't we haven't. We've actually improve the performance of the farming business over the 20 years that we've had the tourism. and, you know, we've added another business on which, as you know, as I say, employing, full and part time people and, you know, turning over a 400,000 pounds. So it's it's not about farm versus tourism or anything else, but I think you can I think I do a lot of work with family businesses and, succession. And I think that, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, to sort of diversification chart at the moment. I feel in some quarters and, I feel very strongly that the what the challenge is, is the farm can be profitable and it can, absolutely generate a profit and have enough perhaps for, for one family member or a couple, ehm, to, to get a decent income out of it. But most farms have multiple family members involved, so there's the previous generation. There might be, you know, brother and sister working alongside. They might be married, they might have kids. So how do you, how do you make a living and a decent living? Because people should have, I think the salary that they would have if they left or if they were all farm. So if you if you were going to be off farm and and 50,000 pounds, why shouldn't you have, be able to be based at home on the farm and have a salary of 50,000 pounds? it's not enough to be at home on the farm, earning 10,000 pounds instead of what you could earn outside. So. Yeah. So I think it's about making the pie bigger and making a decent income for everybody. And the amount of farms I've come across who have no provision for pension, and then they can't retire. So that means that they can't pass down the farm and they can't go and have a decent, quality of retirement because the farm is not had enough money to, to let that happen. And then that causes a lot of friction with the younger generation trying to have their time to run the farm and business. So, it's not everybody's solution, but I think that something like IP tourism can help make the pie bigger, and give everybody a decent income. Oh. Very interesting. I think it's really important to also state the, the leading role that you have, bringing forward, you know, the importance of Scottish agritourism. Could you tell us a bit about co rural roles. yeah. So I mean rural as the sort of consumer facing arm of the, of Scottish agri tourism. so go rural is the campaign that we use to encourage, all types of visitors to come to farm. So whether that's, someone you know, was going down the roads in Dundee or whether it's an international visitor, go rural as how we sort of, promote farm shops, farm cafes to our wedding venues, accommodation, lots of different types of things. So, that is working really well and we have really good engagement with that campaign and we, we would like to do more, but I think that, people, respond well to, I frequently am Scottish agri tourism, is the sort of the network the way that we bring together are very, strong network. And we have 275 businesses working together across Scotland just now. who are members of Scottish agri tourism. We formed and with four years ago and we're not even four years old. and I think that, yeah, as I say, I've been involved since 2008 campaigning for agri tourism to be recognized. I think, I spoke to any MSP, MP, local councilor, industry body that would that would lessen. And even if they wouldn't less, then I went back again and spoke to them again. So I think the we've now got to a stage where, lots of different people, not just the core network, but lots of different people recognize the opportunity that agritourism presents to rural Scotland. there's no reason why it can't be a huge opportunity as well for other parts of the rest of the UK. I think that's something that we would like to help develop those networks in other parts of the UK, but ultimately, yeah, we've, we've had a lot of kind of blood, sweat and tears along the way. But during the rural Leadership program in 2011, doing Mansfield Scholarship and been able to bring back, data and research from other countries. and then this, you know, campaigning, has kind of ultimately led to the Scottish Government adopting agri tourism as part of its program for government, producing the strategy. And now I co-chaired the implementation of the National Strategy Board with a similar equation in the Cabinet secretary. And so my role in between meetings is to kind of work with the different agencies that are helping to deliver the the growth and actually to, to some. So it's not about one person or one agency doing everything. It's about. if VisitScotland are doing some marketing campaigns to bring international visitors to Scotland to stay on farms, they're doing that bit that month or that backwater, it could be the local authorities are helping with something, or in Scotland, food and drink or a system with development of food, tourism and actually tourism. So there's lots of different agencies that are doing things, and we have an ambitious target to, almost double the number of farms and actually tourism by 2030. So huge target. But we're, we're working hard to, to do that. Excellent. Our time is very, very sadly nearly over. Could I just lastly ask why you're passionate about working in agriculture? Why do you enjoy working with like minded individuals who are entrepreneurs at heart? But I just so they've got so many skills, experiences and knowledge and, you know, it makes it one of the best industries in the world. Yeah, absolutely. As the best understand the world. And I think that, you know, I'm a big appreciator and lover of food and drink. I, hopefully haven't told you my home cooking over the last couple of days. I grew up, did a lot of cooking with my mum, my gran, who I was very close to on the farm, and she did farmhouse, bed and breakfast and dinner. Bed and breakfast start as that moment. So, you know, we're very fortunate as farmers to have all those kind of skills and making a good pot of broth, or knowing how to cook a good roast beef and and using our own meat. we're so lucky that we're so close to the wonderful food and drink that we that we grow and that we read on farms and, and I think that that the food and drink element and that love of, of food and drink and trying to, bring that to other people and give them there's a lot of joy through to, through food and drink. And I think that bringing people on to farms to let them enjoy that, as it's, it's hugely, rewarding. I think the agricultural sector is full of can do, positive people who ultimately enjoy each other's company tremendously. And I think you need to get together with other people and absolutely talk about business and how things are going, but you need to have a lot of fun as well. And, we have a lot of fun. So I think that's that's what life's all about. We've always got to have a bit of fun in life. Caroline, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Thanks to Caroline for all the help in recording the pod for this week. That's it from us. Hope you catch us again for next week's podcast. But in the meantime, have a great week and let's catch up again next time. Bye.