Women In Farming-Ruth Wills, Farmer Ruth

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I am really enjoying my Women In Farming feature and this month’s spotlight is on Ruth Wills, a 21 year old from Cornwall.

Ruth grew up on a sheep farm and was obsessed from a young age with ll things farming.
She says she has fond memories of been dressed up in a huge thick snowsuit, coat and wellies and waddling out to feed the tame lambs.

Her love of agriculture didn’t end there as I went on to study Agriculture and Rural Business Management at degree level. It was during this she met her partner, Jack who’s family run a organic dairy farm not far from where she lives.

It was helping out on Jack’s family farm were Ruth had her first go at milking and it turned out she loves cows too.

Ruth’s main ambition in life is to be an agricultural journalist which really excited me and with her blog, Farmer Ruth and her column in a new regional farming magazine called Modern Farmer, it seems she is well on her way to fulfilling that dream.

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Ruth’s family works a mixture of different sheep breeds and Jack’s family farms crossbred dairy cows on an organic system.

Ruth loves living in Cornwall as she says it is the best of both worlds-farm land and the fact that you are never far from the beach.

She prides herself in being a pretty organised person so makes good use of to-do lists and she tries to make one every morning.

“I just love the satisfaction of crossing a job off my list,” don’t we all Ruth. Don’t we all.

Not only is Ruth an all-round good egg, she is also an award winner. She only went and won the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers Farm Health Management Awards.

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“I never thought in a million years I would win an actual award with my actual name on it,” Ruth enthused.

“It was an amazing experience and it’s the first time I thought, maybe I am alright at this writing malarky.
“Just before Christmas 2016, I was chosen as one of NFU Fertile Minds blog competition winners, so that’s been really exciting too. I get to write four blogs for their website, so I’m really looking forward to seeing where that goes.” 

Ruth would like the general public to not believe everything you see about farming on Facebook and other social media propaganda,
“I recently saw people believing that milk is pink when it comes out of the udder and has to be altered to be white,” she said.

“Also don’t believe everything that PETA say, especially about sheep shearing, it really frustrates me to see people believing that shearing is basically skinning a sheep alive, it couldn’t be further from that.”

I for one agree with that. Infant it would be far more cruel to leave a sheep unsheared.

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Ruth loves the farming way of life. It is in her blood and she says she loves that each day is different, and there are always new things to be learnt. 
She does say it can be hard to get away from it, but it’s important to take breaks and holidays to recharge and refresh. 

I will be making Hubster read that last sentence.

You can follow Ruth on Twitter @FarmerRuth_ and please do check out her blog https://farmerruth.wordpress.com/

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