Aithsetter Croft – Beef

Our Family have been working the Croft at Aithsetter (or Aister as the locals call it) for around 500 years!

We take care to breed, birth, rear, grow and produce our fine food. We believe in ‘slow food’ as it takes a few years to grow the perfect beef. We have a variety of cattle breeds on our Croft: Aberdeen Angus, Saler, Simmental, Belted Galloway & Charolais. We rear our calves until about 2 year old which gives a richer fuller flavour – slow food! Shetland has quite a short growing season (approx. 90 -100 days) so we winter our cattle inside for 7 months of the year. This means we grow many acres of silage plus meadow hay, Shetland kale (cabbage), neeps (turnips) to feed them. They also have bagged cereals of barley & wheat, which is brought into the Croft.