In 1825 Craig acquired from George Fairholme the long lease of land near the village of Gordon (about sixteen miles east of Galashiels), close to the Eden Water. This did not quite make him the ‘Gordon laird’ he jested of becoming but he was keen to develop a plantation that would add to the ‘value & beauty of the muir’. He later told James Laidlaw that he had ‘sunk’ all his money ‘about Gordon and here’ (meaning Galashiels). References occur in his correspondence to ‘Mr Craig's plantations’ and stones on the land suitable for use in building dyke walls. He also insured his twenty-six acres in Gordon with his own Caledonian Insurance Office.

Craig stocked and farmed the land. Having bought lambs at St Boswells Fair in 1827, he sold them complaining that they ‘had eaten as much grass as I could have paid £8 for’. A decade later he was employing the labourer William Kirkwood to look after the property. His duties included killing moles and repairing dykes. In 1838, he ordered Kirkwood to discover who had stolen some young trees from the plantation, instructing him to ‘get Mr Wilson [the local schoolteacher] to write out the advertisements & offer a reward of half a guinea’.

Personal experience of the concerns of the smallholder helped Craig as he exerted influence on the landscape far beyond Gordon. This chapter will focus on how Craig made a difference in this context, in Galashiels and on the estates for which he had responsibility as factor, including Cockburn and Torquhan. Part of being a good agent was finding able tenants and identifying competent farmers, shepherds, millers, spinners, weavers, gamekeepers and dykers. Craig seems to have gone out of his way to meet people and talk to them on his travels and his letters reflect only a fraction of the intelligence he gathered about land and people.

A letter to Alexander Monro illustrates his observational skills. Having been informed that his tenant, George Logan, had acquired a pair of lurchers, Monro was concerned about the threat to local game.