Nominee Summary
From a farming family, Beth is 26 and from Kinross. She has been a shepherdess since leaving school, combining it with a career in curling as a part-time and then fully professional athlete for three years. She works at Parks of Aldie as a full-time shepherdess, managing 1000 ewes, and assists farm manager Alan Sim with other duties. She began working with Alan on a self-employed basis five years ago and has been fully employed there since February 2025. Having been the chair of Kinross JAC, she is now vice chair of Fife and Kinross District of Young Farmers Clubs.
Nominee – Qualities
As a Young Farmers’ Club office bearer, Beth has taken on a leadership role, and uses her communication skills which she learned through the team sport of curling. This ties in well with Young Farmers’ and at work as she’s often communicating with non-farming landowners. She is empathetic and understands and appreciates how different people communicate and like to be communicated with. Beth has a high attention to detail when it comes to looking after sheep. She has adopted a forward-thinking approach, trying to integrate new ideas that make things better without doing too much differently, and is focused on data recording, which makes things easier to manage.
Nominee - Sectoral Impact
When it comes to her role in Young Farmers’, Beth tries to do as much as she can: “You get out what you put in with YFC.” After an interview process, she was amongst those chosen from 80 people to go on an agri study trip to Texas. When she returned, she tried to inspire the younger members at YFC to put themselves forward for a study tour, and hopes that having someone in the club who puts themselves out there, as she does, will give them the confidence to go for it. Beth was a 2024 Young Farmer of the Year runner-up after someone else put her name forward. She initially didn’t want to do it, but says you can’t preach it unless you put yourself in that position. Younger girls in Kinross JAC had never seen a female chair and now want to follow in Beth’s footsteps. Beth was involved in Kinross Show when she was JAC chair and also volunteers with RHET. She has been fundraising for FarmStrong and is encouraged by their efforts to get farmers to stay active and social. She was part of the ‘Run to Norfolk’, which raised £800, through farmers running locally the equivalent miles between Kinross and Norfolk, and the Christmas charity tractor run. This saw 50 tractors go through Kinross and raised £1500.
Nominee - Going the extra mile
Beth believes in throwing yourself in at all times, and has really led the way with this when it comes to Young Farmers’. The club has helped Beth because it’s community-based. All her friends have been made through Young Farmers’, but a lot don’t work on farms, so it’s given her the opportunity to meet people from different backgrounds, as has her career in sport. “Practice what you preach. Put yourself in that position,” she says, when it comes to encouraging others to be active and social. Speaking up and voicing your experiences to encourage others are also important to Beth. Whether it’s YFC or encouraging school children to consider rural jobs, Beth is setting an example to young people in the countryside. “Just say yes – you don’t know where it’ll lead.”