HER family have farmed the Scottish soil since the days when William Shakespeare strode the boards of the Globe Theatre.
Yet now Helen Stewart fears she and her contemporaries may be the last generation to till the land after a tragedy brought about by the failure of that most modern of devices - a computer system.
READ MORE: Tragic human cost of Scottish Government's failed farm subsidy payments has left farmers on the brink
In 2015 the Scottish Government rolled a new IT programme designed to apportion out money from the EU, subsidies worth hundreds of millions which farmers the length and breadth of Scotland rely on to make ends meet.
The project was a disaster, and hundreds of families were left without access to funds. Nicola Sturgeon has since apologised, watchdogs have criticised, and a new system of loans has been hastily established to save many from penury.
Yet, Ms Stewart warns that the human cost behind the figures and official pontificating, has been harsh.
The 22-year-old, whose family farm sheep in the hills near Pitlochry, Perthshire, was awarded the title of Young Thinker of the Year by the Scottish Review for an article she penned shining a light on the hardship the failure of the project had wrought.
The young farmer described sleepless nights, and the pain that only the fear of failure can bring.
She wrote: "I knew the stress was bad when I visited my parents from university and I would hear my dad getting up to redo his budgets at 1.30 every morning.
"There would be plan A, and plan B, and plan C, throughout the week. He said he couldn't look at the numbers by daylight.
"Yet, the sheep still have to be fed, vet bills still have to be paid, there is no telling the taxman that you're suddenly missing over half of your income.
"It hurt me to see my dad, after all of his hard work, being put in a position like this. We were constantly being told to get with the times and run the farm like a business. Yet what business does not know when, or even if, money is coming in?"
Growing up, Ms Stewart said that she learned about her duty as a steward of the land. The farm was to be put first, before all other considerations.
She joked that 'family time' saw her castrating sheep, and that she has no fear of getting her hands dirty.
But now things have changed. Ms Stewart wrote: "The financial disruption has shattered our 'farm first' image: farms are seen as a burden rather than a privilege – for who would want this for their children? When I complain, as I often do, about the dying farms people say: but isn't this great for you?; you will have more land, more opportunities, more subsidy for you. And this is what upsets me most.
"There are so few farmers in Scotland and yet we are expected to turn on each other. It's almost cannibalistic – a starving body breaking down its muscle mass only to survive.
"The loss of the stability of farming is a loss in culture, a loss in mental well-being, a long-term, long-reaching loss. It hurts all the more when we feel it is a loss we bear in silence."
With farming precarious, she is diversifying. Recently, the young entrepreneur joined the ranks of Scotland's craft gin makers, with her own gin distillery in the farm's grounds - Badvo Gin - which will soon go into full production.
But for now she wants her voice to be heard by those who tread the corridors of power and who also have a duty to safeguard Scotland's generations of farmers and ensure that rural life continues.
She said: "There are a lot of families who are now giving up, saying it's just not a stable life anymore and they do not want it for their children.
"When the system failed it didn't just cut farmers income, it threatened a whole way of life.
"And when a farm fails, it's not just putting them out of a job, it is putting them out of their homes."
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