On a bad winter, some of the lanes on her rounds simply aren’t passable by van. So she keeps an old tractor at the practice, permanently fitted out with everything she needs for an emergency call, and uses it without a second thought.

A practice built around the terrain

Twenty years in, she knows which farms have gates too narrow for a standard vehicle, which lanes flood first, and which farmers will already have the kettle on by the time she arrives. “You learn the land as much as you learn the animals,” she says.

The calls that stick with her

Not the dramatic ones, she says — the quiet ones. An elderly farmer calling about a sick dog rather than livestock, clearly needing the company as much as the visit. “That’s most of the job that people don’t see. Half of it is medicine. The other half is just showing up.”

Why she stays rural

She trained in the city and could easily have stayed. “I like that everyone here knows their own animals properly. In a city practice, you’re a stranger every time. Out here, you’re part of the story.”