Sarah Broom from Yarcombe YFC won the NFYFC Scotland Scholarship. Here she writes about her experience of farming in Scotland.

My two week Scholarship started in Edinburgh at the

beginning of June. From the airport I hopped on a tram

which took me reasonably close to the Hostel where I and

the other scholarship delegates were staying.

There were 14 of us in total travelling from all over the world from as

far as Australia, Canada and Switzerland.

Over the next three days we went on various farm tours and explored

Edinburgh. We were invited by SAYYFC for a drinks

reception and John Scott, a Conservative MP showed us

round the Parliament which was very interesting.

The next day we went on a trip to see the Kelpies, a

Scottish Landmark and spent the rest of the day touring

around the countryside. In the evening we all got dropped

off at a restaurant where we met a member from our host

family.

I was staying with Kayleigh who is the Secretary of

Biggar YFC. She lived on a mixed commercial sheep and

beef farm in Wiston near Biggar.

It was a beautiful area and very rural which I enjoyed. I was treated as one of the

family and felt very at home there.

For the rest of the week we went out with a different Club

within Lanarkshire each day. It was a great way to see the

different areas of the County and meet lots of different

YFC members.

I have so many highlights from that week.

One of them was visiting a hill farm just outside of Biggar

which stocked 6000 sheep and a herd of pedigree

Charollais cattle. It was a very different and vast

environment; it was really interesting to see and hear

how they farmed the hills.

 

A few of my other highlights from this week were

a tour around Tennent’s lager, taking part in a YFC

Stock Judging competition and visiting Edinburgh’s

Botanical Gardens.

We also went on a boat trip around Loch Lowman which was brilliant along with

a bike ride around an island followed by visiting a

very large dairy farm.

We finished off the two weeks visiting the Highland Show

back in Edinburgh. The show was a great end to our

Scholarship with plenty to see and do. Once the show was

over for the day we headed to the YFC Show Dance which

was a fantastic chance to say goodbye to everyone before

heading home.

The whole experience was a once in a life time trip.

Meeting like minded people from all over the world was

brilliant and getting to experience and see things that

you would never normally have the chance to see. It

was a great mix between sightseeing, tours, landmarks

and socialising.

If there is anyone out there thinking of

applying…DO IT! It’s a free farming holiday with amazing

people, what’s not to like?