Barbara Girvan
I'm Barbara Girvan, and together with my husband and his parents, we farm a 8000 acre upland farm In the north of Scotland. We have 140 stabiliser cattle and 750 lleyn sheep. Over the last 6 years we have diversified into opening our farm up for public events, and we welcome over 10000 visitors to our annual PYO Sunflower and Pumpkin events in Autumn. We also produce cut flowers to sell wholesale to florists, and direct to consumer through our online shop.
Tessa Berridge
Tessa has been working at The Prince’s Countryside Fund for four years, initially as part of the communications team, and has recently moved across to the farming team as the Senior Programmes Manger. She looks after the work within the PCF’s ‘Enabling Family Farms to Thrive’ strategic pillar, which includes the Farm Resilience Programme, Farm for the Future programme (funded by Defra’s Future Farm Resilience Fund) and the Farm Support Groups Initiative. Tessa is from a family farming background and loves spending time back on the farm when she can. She currently lives in London and enjoys the hustle and bustle for now!
Emily Mee
Emily Mee is Business Development Manager at Mee Farmers, an arable and blueberry farm, who won Family Farming Business of the Year Award 2022. Emily is a chartered accountant, previously working in financial audit in London with PwC, before moving to Ellacotts agricultural accounts team in Kettering. In 2020, the first Covid lockdown, Emily was working from home during the blueberry harvest and could see all the ripe blueberries that were being graded out and sent away as pig feed. With a view to reducing food waste, Emily suggested this fruit was frozen and sold locally through social media advertising, sharing the health benefits of this superfruit with the local community. Over time this has progressed to a full range of food and drink products under the brand Mee Blueberries and Emily is now working at home full time.
Mee Farmers are an arable farm based in Nassington, Northamptonshire, who farm 490ha including their contract farms, store 8,000t grain for Frontier Agriculture (including 1000t of low pesticide wheat), and now have 15ha blueberries on site with their own BRC level packhouse.