As the daughter of an Ohio hog and grain farmer, I've always been
passionate about my family's work. I never could understand how people
could be so stereotypical about something they've never encountered,
like agriculture. From a young age, I was taught that the best way to
help people learn about farming and livestock, was to be proactive about
it. For many years, the easiest way to do that was to
tell my classmates about the animals I showed at the fair, or to give
them a tour of our farm. As I got older, the challenge got harder
however. Three huge things happened in February of 2008 that I will
elaborate on on a little.
In the early part of February, my dad sat us all down and told us that
the hog farm we'd been used to was going to change. Instead of having a
300 sow (mother pig) farrow to wean operation, we'd be converting to a
wean to finish farm. The amount of hands on work, the birth of the
piglets, and the monthly weaning that I'd grown so used to over 17 years
was about to end. When the semi came to take away our sows, I felt like
a part of me had died. It may not seem like much to you, but not waking
up to sows screeching every morning for feed was heartrending.
The second major event that changed my life, happened during the morning
of February 28. My agriculture education class was hosting
representatives from Chipotle restaurant. In a series of presentations
and questions and answers, we were able to share our opinions on
Chipotle's stance on agriculture. Basically, unless our animals were
kept outside and fed grass, we were considered "factory farmers". This
attack was personal. That morning changed the way I looked at my life.
No longer was I going to be able to skate by on assuming people knew the
truth about farming; I was going to have to fight for it.
At 3:30 in the afternoon on that same day, February 28th, we got a call.
My 53 year old father, the rock of my life and the inspiration for my
love of farming, had collapsed while grinding feed. 2 hours later, he
was gone. In the months that followed, my mom sold off her half of the
partnership to my uncle for security reasons. While we still live at the
farm, most of the time it seems like a shell of it's former self. After
that, I've felt sometimes like a poser in the agriculture world. I no
longer have the direct contact I'd grown up with and for some reason,
this made me feel like I had no authority to speak about ag. Obviously,
this isn't true, but for four years, I've had difficulty speaking up.
The time for that is over; I was born a farm girl and I will always be a
farm girl. I'm finally stepping up to use my God given talents to
spread the word and the truth.
I plan on creating a daily photoblog filled with photos I've taken and
facts I've gathered to share the truth about America's number one
industry. The posts will be from my heart and from the perspective of
someone who has lived the agriculture life. I hope you'll come on this
journey with me!
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