Georgia Finnis
Occupation: Dairy Farmer
Location: Parton
The Glenkens is home to many people with interesting stories and journeys that led them to the area, and in turn, to settling here. We met up with young dairy farmer Georgia Finnis to hear about what brought her to the area from Kent and if, after several years living and working here, she now considers the area to be her home.
Georgia wasn’t born into farming, nor did she dream of being a farmer when she was growing up. So how did she find her way to helping to run a large dairy farm near Glenlochar?
“I started off in school wanting to be an architect - I was really interested in the art side of things. I went away to do some work experience for that and realised it was all sitting in an office. So I quickly decided against that one! ... I've always been into horses and equestrian things and the yard, where I worked when I was younger with the horses, they had agricultural contractors running the farm. I did a summer's harvest with, and from then on that was it.”
“I went on to study farming for three years at the Royal Ag Uni in Cirencester, and then after that I moved straight up to Scotland with my first job.”
Initially Georgia was employed in agricultural sales around Dumfries and Galloway, but soon found she was better suited to farming. Through the contacts she made doing sales she took her first job as a farmer and hasn’t looked back.
“I really love the care of the cows, making sure that they're healthy. There's nothing better at the end of the day, like every evening we'd come in to check the cows, so you just walk around when the dairy is quiet. There's not a lot going on and we just look through the cows and you can see that they're happy or you can see, you know, what maybe needs work done and where needs improved. It's a nice, rewarding job.”
Georgia loves the Glenkens and thinks a lot of people don’t realise that it is not as remote as might be perceived from the outside looking in:
“The farm I work on now is near Glenlochar, in the Glenkens. It’s a five-minute drive from Castle Douglas, so it's not isolated; we're next to the town. And pretty close to routes to Glasgow and Edinburgh. It's a nice central location.”
The geographical location, career prospects and the tight-knit community helped her choose this area as a permanent home:
“I always liked the area, before I even had my first job here; I decided I was going to stay and then that was when I started looking for jobs. There's a big opportunity for careers around here. There's so much improving farming... people are looking for new farm managers and maybe new young ways of thinking as well. You know, they want new perspectives on things.”
Outside of her life as a farmer Georgia makes great use of the area for her recreation. She has a house in the picturesque village of Parton and keeps her horse nearby.
“It's a really good area to have a horse in, you've got really easy links if you want to get somewhere to compete. There's plenty of local competitions, but there's also the likes of Carlisle, which is really close, or the Cumberland Show, things like that. It's in easy proximity to all the other areas.”
Moving to the Glenkens from the South of England, Georgia knew she would have to reach out to the community in order to make friends and get the most out of her new life here. For her that was a simple message to the local Young Farmers group. They immediately whisked her up, and upon her first meeting with them, she ended up on the Isle of Bute for the weekend!
She also thinks the the agricultural shows are a fantastic way to bring everyone together in the summer:
“It's nice for the younger community...I have a good bunch of friends that I have met through the horses up here, but also through farming.... The shows have a really good atmosphere. It's kind of like everyone's celebration of the summer. It's nice.”
Having lived in the Glenkens for five or six years, Georgia has carved out a really contented life. On top of farming, social activities and riding, she is also a talented artist.
“I'm happy farming, but I would really like to improve on my art side of things, and try and make a business of that one day, maybe alongside farming ... get the two to work together. I've always painted... But I never really had any formal education in it. I kind of taught myself. I paint in oil paints, and it's mostly equestrian and cattle portraits.”
She thinks the Glenkens is a great area to be in as a young person:
“I like being in the Glenkens; the community is really good here. From someone that's an outsider, it really didn't take long to be welcomed around here. You’ve got your friends through work and you have your outside work friends as well… when you pop into the vets they all know you, they all ask about your life and what you're up to, and, you know, just people that you bump into on the day-to-day, they remember who you are and they're interested in your life. It's a really nice social place, I think, which people probably wouldn't always think of being in the countryside and being so rural, but it is. I think it means people know people better when you're in a smaller community!”
Does she ever think about moving back down South?
”I don't see myself going back. I still call that home, but to me that's home-home, just because that's where I'm from, but here now is home really. I couldn't see myself moving away from here now.”
