Rainton Farm covers 850 acres or 340 hectares and is rough grassland, ideal grazing for sheep and cattle because the rugged terrain, rocky ground and damp climate make crop growing and mechanized harvesting difficult.  Today, Rainton is an all-grass, mixed livestock farm with around 650 sheep, 85 dairy cows and 12 beef cows. 

Rainton farm has been here in one shape or another for centuries. As you might imagine, it has changed a fair bit over the years. Several hundred years ago you wouldn’t have seen any of the hedgerows or dry stane dykes which enclose our fields today, as the land was common grazing ground for any local farmers to use.

The farm was mainly used for cereal growing up until the 19th century, when a combination of poor land and new competition from North America meant it was no longer profitable to grow oats and barley in Rainton’s rocky fields. The farm at that time was owned by the Cally Estate who realized they needed a new source of income, and it was they who converted the farm to sheep and cattle grazing, and most notably to cheese production.

Meanwhile, the Great Great Great Grandfather of Rainton's current farmer was a distillery owner in Kirkcudbright. Being a whisky maker he had lots of friends but no money!  His son, John Finlay moved to the parish of Borgue in 1830 and worked as a tenant dairy farmer.

Without the transportation systems that we have today produce from such a remote dairy farm could not easily be distributed throughout the region. Producing and selling milk was totally impractical so the Finlays produced Dunlop Cheddar Cheese as a way of preserving the milk and generating a product that could be sold months later. In 1927 the Finlay family took over tenancy of Rainton farm and have been farming here every since. 

Sadly the development of mass cheese manufacturing in the 1960s and 70s made farm cheese uneconomic and so cheese making at Rainton had to come to a close in 1972 - the last farm-made cheese in Scotland before the more recent revival.

With the launch of Cream o’ Galloway ice cream we went back to our roots to a certain extent, creating a delicious food product from our own milk and we’re looking forward to whatever the future brings.