Updates – Page 16 – NuttyGrass

Ask a Farmer at the Smithsonian

Last week Dad and I got to take advantage of quite the opportunity. We were asked by the US Farmer and Rancher’s Alliance if we would come speak on a panel at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. The panel was called, Ask a Farmer: Family Farms, Family History. We were joined by two other farm families. Evergreen Diary from St. John’s Michigan, represented by Carla Wardin and her mom Cherie Anderson. And Cooley Farms, a chicken and beef farm from Roberta, Georgia. Who had three generations there representing, Larry, Leighton and Lawson Cooley.

The event was featured within an exhibit called “Enterprise” which looks at history through the eyes of business. Including the business of agriculture, which as we all know has shaped many ways that our country operates still today. The panel’s moderator started off by asking some great questions, hitting on topics including the struggles and joys of working with family in business. Also touching on how the younger generation decided that they even wanted to come back to the farm. For one, Leighton Cooley, it took only 6 months off the farm to realize it’s where he wanted to be. For Carla Wardin it took starting a whole career in marketing and living completely away from the dairy for years with her husband to decide to make the call home to ask her parents, “Please don’t sell the cows!” They wanted to give it a go. And then for me, a college degree from Loyola Marymount University, a lot of concrete life in LA, and I was ready to be back in the dirt.

We were also asked questions from the audience, which included an awesome group of school kids. Asking everything from, “How do worms make holes in the ground?” to “Do farms have names?” All in all it was truly a great event. The panel itself was recorded and will be available in a few weeks, stay tuned and I’ll share that once it’s up and running.

I think the best part for me was getting a chance to meet other farmers from across the nation who also have a passion for agriculture and doing what they love with the people that they love everyday. We had no problem all becoming fast friends.

While I was heading off across the country things at the farm didn’t slow down. The crew was at home finishing up our swiss chard harvest, getting things all switched over for wheat and also keeping all our fresh crops irrigated. So it obviously wasn’t ideal to take off, but since it was only 36 hours away from the farm, since it was the Smithsonian, and since I got to go talk about what I love the most, family and farming, it was an opportunity that I knew I couldn’t pass up!

I want to thank the USFRA and the Smithsonian for this wonderful chance to spread my family’s farm story!

To learn more about Carla Wardin you can follow her on her blog, Truth or Dairy.
And Cooley farms has quite a large role in the movie Farmland. For another look at their family operation check out this commercial from Farm Credit.

Harvest Excited, Harvest Tired

I finally sat down and took a deep breath today. We are in the heart of harvest here and there’s a part of me that thrives on all that we accomplish in a day. And there’s a part of me that’s just exhausted and wishes I could sleep for days. I am harvest excited and I am harvest tired.

Catching a quick lunch in the shade of our seed truck.

There’s a part of me that sees harvest as dragging on forever then there’s a part of me that laughs at that part because we aren’t even close to being done. There’s a part of me that gets so excited with good yields and very frustrated with fields that aren’t producing. Because for us, this is it, this is when it all either happens or doesn’t for our whole year.

A very rough, very awful cabbage field….wondering where the crop is? So were we unfortunately.

Harvest has been long, long days, long nights. Days filled with paperwork that still has to get finished, bills that still need to be paid. Logistics of who goes where and what needs to get done, what fields to irrigate, what fields to harvest…a constant triage of priorities. Then evening comes, the boys in tow, and dinners and family time out in the field. Which moves us straight into nights of infant cries, and the many needs of a toddler at 3am. We are smiling, because that crazy spirit in us, that now 4 generations of harvest, heat, dust and dirt…we just can’t shake it.

And the truth is, I already know I’ll be sitting in the same pickup, watching the same beautiful sunset next year, looking forward to the harvest on the horizon. I am continually excited at the potential, and feeling of a years worth of hard work, just hoping it all pays off. This farming thing, it isn’t easy, it’s tough on levels that you put your heart and soul into. It’s something that maybe only a farmer understands and only a farmer would sign up for. It’s our life though, at times it’s beautiful, at times hard…but either way here we go again for another day!

Crop Farm Tour

Here in Oregon, we grow over 250 different crops. So it’s no wonder that in our soil this year we have 10 different crops growing. And while in the next three months they will all get harvested, currently everything is at all different stages. Some crops are just getting planted, some starting to flower, some are pollinating, and others are already ready to be harvested!

So here is your photo tour of our farm and the 10 crops we are raising.

First stop the grasses, both perennial and tall fescue are grown on our farm.