Tag: Faces of Farming & Ranching

Thank You for All your Support!!!

Well the results are in for the winners of the Faces of Farming & Ranching! And unfortunately being a finalist was as far as I got in the competition. The winners are Will Gilmer, Katie Pratt, Bo Stone & Chris Chinn! You can find out more about the announcement and follow along with the campaign by going to the Faces of Farming & Ranching website. Congratulations to you all!!

I wanted to take a quick moment and truly thank all of you for your support. It was funny going through this process, mainly because everyone I saw during this voting period would come up to me to say hi and instantly proceed with “I voted for you today!”, “Shoot I forgot to vote!”, or “I’ve been trying to vote every day, but sometimes I forget.” The last one is my favorite mainly because I’m just about one of the busiest people you will ever meet, so forgetting to vote for me a few days here and there is no huge confession my friends J

I do want to say though that I’ve been amazed at how much people love this whole idea. I agree that agriculture has needed for years now to come together, and in a way that truly bridges that urban rural gap that we feel so strongly when we are fighting for our rights to farm in this country. But it’s tough battle, and I come from a state where it’s even more difficult because we are so diversified in what we can grow, a blessing and a curse. Not all farmers grow the same crops, (our county alone grows over 200 different crops), we don’t all use the same practices to get our crop growing and to market, and we definitely don’t all use the same market. And while being from a diversified state for our farm is a great advantage, at times it can leave us with more issues as a state, because as the saying goes, “united we stand, divided we fall.”

This group of farmers will do great and I’m excited where this adventure takes them over the next year. I’m also excited to see how this bridge gets formed to link rural and urban life. At the same time I will still keep doing what I’m doing to share my story of ag and continue the conversation about how we grow food for the world. As I said in my application video, “I have already signed up to be a dedicated agent to tell the story of agriculture!” So thank you everyone for all your votes, tried to votes, and sometimes votes, but mostly thank you for thinking of me and supporting me as someone who you would be proud to represent you as the face of farming in Oregon. This is just the beginning, I’m here to farm in Oregon, I can’t move the land and the soil, so I will fight to make sure that I can stay here and farm, and this legacy that was started to many years ago continues on!

Faces of Farming & Ranching

Well I can finally tell you all, after holding it in for a month…I am lucky enough to be in the final 9 for US Farmers & Ranchers Alliance’s (USFRA) search for the Faces of Farming & Ranching!  This en devour stared a few months back, right in the heat of harvest.  A few folks from Oregon Farm Bureau saw that the USFRA was looking for candidates to become spokesmen & women to share their story of agriculture to consumers.

We submitted a 3 minute video which answers to questions like, “Why do you think sharing your story of agriculture is important?” or “How do you share your story already?”  Then it was cut down to 9 finalists who we got to finally meet this weekend in New York City!  Now you may be thinking…NEW YORK CITY?! Darlin’ We’re goin to have to shut you down!! Or more accurately, “wow…what a strange place to have a conversation with farmers about food.”  But indeed this turns out is just the point, bridging the gap between consumers and farmers and bringing the conversation of what is on their table right into their own backyard.

The event itself was very interesting, even or more interesting as a producer.  Lots of great conversation about how food is grown, if its portrayal in the media is harmful or positive, are antibiotics an imperative tool for livestock, do GMO’s make sense or are they dangerous to humans, etc.  I learned so much just being here for two days with these incredible people.  The finalists are all very amazing people as well. Although we didn’t participate in this specific panel for this food dialogue, I imagine it won’t be too far into the future when we will be a large part of the conversation.

So here is where you…my loyal followers come in…you can go to the website and if you register you can vote on who you think should be the Face of Farming & Ranching!  You can vote once per day from now until December 15th.  After that the votes will be tallied, our interview scores will be added up, and the winners will be announced in January!  I’m not saying you have to vote for me…but I would really appreciate your support!  Like I said, all the candidates are incredibly qualified and I’m excited to even have met them and made those connections with them!

I’m sure you will hear more on this in the weeks to come!  Again thanks for all your support, without all of you helping make my blog successful I doubt I would have ever been gutsy enough to even give this whole thing a shot!

 
***If you have a hard time logging in, they are having some technical issues & hopefully will have everything working soon!  But you can e-mail your vote to rinne@usfraonline.org for the time being and it will be tallied!  Thanks!

Please Vote in the Faces of Farming & Ranching Contest!!