Janey Van Stone joined Euroforest in July 2023 having previously worked in an office based role doing payroll in the construction industry. She is based in the Stirling office and covers the West Argyll area.
Although having a family background of foresters, Janey wasn’t immediately drawn to forestry growing up and pursued other interests, however she quickly discovered that working in an office wasn’t really for herand applied for the role of Contract Supervisor at Euroforest when she saw it advertised.
Janey has been enjoying her time at Euroforest. She enjoys the continuous learning involved in her role and loves the fact that her colleagues are so friendly and accommodating, no matter how many questions she asks. Her favourite part of the role is going out and meeting different people every day and she loves driving around the beautiful countryside of Scotland visiting all the forestry sites she works on.
Janey’s advice to any women who are thinking about forestry as a career is to ‘just do it’. She says ‘don’t be scared’. Although a predominantly male environment, Janey says everyone at Euroforest is very welcoming, as are all the people she meets out and about on site.
Having finally made it into forestry, Janey says her parents are really proud of her. Her mother is a log buyer for a sawmill and her father is a grounds manager for an estate in Scotland. Finally, they all talk the same language in the Van-Stone household.
Janey describes a typical day as visiting two to three sites, taking stocks, checking the sites for anything new and any risks or hazards, talking to the operators and other people on site and completing site reports. She loves the variety of the role and being outside.
Janey loves learning and is keen on environmental factors. She can now recognise a badger set from ‘all the other holes inthe ground’ and her knowledge of tree species is constantly growing. She has found the training at Euroforest really good, especially the supervising hand cutters course and now finds it fascinating that she can identify how a tree has been cut since her training. She is looking forward to more training courses later in the year.
Overall, Janey would encourage more and more women to join forestry. “Forestry is a great industry to work in, being able to be outside most of the time is great, but the variety in your workday is what makes it challenging and exciting. There are also so many different career paths to choose from! ”
