If you are familiar with the pangs of parental guilt, then you can relate to owning a farm. Take that gut-wrenching, often irrational feeling, amplify it, and welcome to being a farmer. From the moment you’re born into a family farm, there’s a weight of expectation on you to look after it, to put it before yourself, to uphold your family’s pride. All farm kids know they don’t open presents on Christmas morning until the animals are fed, that parents miss special occasions because cows are calving, and that hopes of a foreign holiday are almost nil, at least on a livestock farm such as mine.

Owning a farm is like playing a game of pass the parcel with a valuable gift, but the one who unwraps the present is very much the loser of the bunch. From an early age, it’s drilled into you that the farm, the land and its legacy are things you carry and pass on to your children. We don’t see the farms we inhabit as truly ours: they’re generational assets that produce food for the masses. That is why farmers are putting up a huge fight against the government’s new inheritance tax changes. It’s hard not to feel as though this policy is a land grab by ministers who have no idea about how farming works.

Farmers want empathy and recognition for the public goods we provide and care for: food, the environment and rural communities. So last Tuesday, when I stood on stage in front of more than 10,000 other farmers in Westminster and spoke of my own family’s struggles, both financial and emotional, I hope it helped those who don’t work in agriculture to appreciate the weight that we carry on our shoulders. Farming isn’t what we do, it’s who we are. Our self-worth and mental health are tied to our ability to pass on our farms to the next generation. We feel huge pride at being food producers and nourishing the country. And we want – dare I say it – to feel as though the government respects us.

I spoke of my struggles to buy school shoes last harvest time, because the tractor had broken down and landed us with a surprise £7,000 bill. I spoke about how the harvest was a third of what it should have been due to the extreme weather last spring, and how I’d lost so many lambs in the spring floods I had nothing left to sell. I felt such a failure as a mother, yet none of those things were really in my control. The farm and our personal lives are so tightly intertwined that when one falters, the other does, too. I hope my experience helped people to see the human side of family farms, and the reality of living on a low income. I have very little money, but I also feel a sense of deep fulfilment and meaning, and am doing a job I love.