Find us
Blacketyside Farm
Leven, KY8 5PX
Our Boxes
Fruit & Veg
Hampers in Store
Menu
Blacketyside Farm
Leven, KY8 5PX
Fruit & Veg
Hampers in Store
Originally livestock farmers, we brought our pedigree cattle with us from Northern Ireland when we purchased Blacketyside Farm in 1992. We were attracted by the farm’s good quality land and great coastal location and our intention was to grow cereals, but as there were ten acres of strawberries and raspberries on the farm we decided to see how we would enjoy that type of farming too.
For the first 14 years at Blacketyside we sold our strawberries and raspberries from a green ‘mobile’ shop at the end of our farm road during the summer months.
In 2001 we opened a small farm shop at the farm which was open all year round, to ‘test the water’.
In 2007, after a struggle to obtain planning permission, we built our farm shop and tearoom just east of Leven, adjacent to the coastal road from Edinburgh to St Andrews.
We extended the building in 2011 to incorporate an in-house butchery, operated by Steve Mitchell of the Buffalo farm and an in-house florist, the Green room.
There has been a further extension in 2020 to include a takeaway food offering, covered outside seating area, ice cream counter and a larger fruit and vegetable area with a plant centre scheduled for 2021.
Our story is constantly evolving.
Situated on the A915, just east of Leven, we are open 6 days a week, 9am – 5pm. Here you can find a host of local produce and gifts, a fresh butchers counter, a florist and currently a takeaway counter offering scrumptious cakes and snacks. For our younger visitors, we have a large fort which hots and exciting playground. We are sure you’ll find lots of enjoy at Blacketyside Farm Shop and we look forward to seeing you very soon.
It was a steep learning curve in the first few years. The biggest challenge was working with lots of people instead of lots of animals but we survived the first season and decided to carry on and each year we have expanded the area of soft fruit grown and now also grow blackberries, blueberries and cherries. We soon realised Scotland has the perfect climate for soft fruit – the cooler summer temperatures and long daylight hours allow the fruit to ripen more slowly, which makes the berries sweeter. We aim to sell the finest Scottish soft fruit in our farm shop and to our other customers.
We have invested heavily in our soft fruit business. All of our strawberries are now grown in polytunnels on tabletop structures. This increases productivity and reduces the numbers of workers required which we consider to be critical as labour becomes more difficult to source. In addition we now have tunnels which are heated and this has extended the season so that we have strawberries available from late March to November each year .
We also grow potatoes and carrots, for sale in the farm shop, and oats, some of which are milled and sold in our shop while the rest of our oats are sold to large porridge oat millers.
