Love is in the air this weekend as local farmers take to the roads around Tavistock.

The ‘We Love our Farmers’ Valentine’s tractor run on Sunday is raising funds to support the Farming Community Network but mostly to show love for our farming community.

Organised by the Spooners and West Dartmoor Hunt, the tractor run will start at 11am at Plasterdown and follow a one and a half to two hour route.

There’s still time to enter tractors for the event which also offers a prize for the best-dressed tractor sponsored by local company RM Builders and Contractors.

Organiser Sandra Vallance, a tenant farmer in Calstock, said: “Times are seriously hard. It will be good to see people together because they’ll be all there talking about their tractors, what they’ve done through this week and how many sheep they’ve got to lamb this year. It’s just good to talk.”

The Farming Community Network is a cause close to Sandra’s heart. As part of the Dartmoor Farmers Wellbeing Group, she hosts a free breakfast club to support farmers, with a pre-lambing breakfast this Saturday at Brentor Village Hall ahead of the tractor run.

“I’ll turn up on Saturday armed with bacon, sausage, hogs pudding, eggs, tomatoes, baked beans, and bread and just cook! It’s a drop in for breakfast, teas, coffees and a chat. The more the merrier,” said Sandra. She knows the importance of these social gatherings for farmers, many of whom may not see a single other person during their working day.

“It’s important to try and get people talking,” she said explaining the ethos around the breakfasts. “You go to a breakfast and you say to your neighbour, well I lost a bloody cow this week, I don’t know what he died of, and then your neighbour says something like, well actually so did I. So then you don’t feel so bad about the fact that you lost one – we all lose cows.”

A farmer of beef and sheep herself, she added: “We had problems up on the farm this week with sheep and you think, Christ, why am I bothering, but of course you’re going to bother. It’s in your blood, it’s your life, it’s what we know.”

With money from the tractor run going to the FCN, Sandra is a passionate advocate of their work. The group was set up in 1995 as the Farm Crisis Network but changed names to the Farming Community Network. It is run by volunteers who used to be in farming or have family still involved.

FCN regional director Stephen Dennis explained that the South West was one of busiest regions due to the abundance of smaller, mainly family run farms. He said: “We’re there to listen firstly but then to help farmers to create their options and for them to know who they need to go to for help.

“We speak the language of farmers, and we ‘walk with’ farmers through whatever their challenges are. We’re all about trying to value the farming family we’re all a part of.”