Welcoming Visitors to the Farm With Kathy McCaskill
FarmHouse
This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we’re joined by Kathy McCaskill, co-owner and operator of in Rembert, South Carolina. McCaskill originally hails from upstate New York, where she grew up on an out-of-operation dairy farm. After marrying, she and her husband bought their South Carolina property and began slowly but surely setting up a livestock operation that sells directly to the local farmers market and from the farm store. Tragedy struck the farm in 2007, when the farmhouse burned down, but McCaskill now sees it as part of a larger plan for her family....
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Building the Real Organic Project with Linley Dixon
FarmHouse
This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we’re talking to Linley Dixon, an organic vegetable farmer in southwest Colorado. Dixon co-created the , which is a label farmers can add onto the USDA’s certified organic label. “The Real Organic Project is a very grassroots effort,” Dixon said. “Many farmers felt like the USDA organic seal was no longer reflecting the way that they farmed. It started as sort of a rallying cry to make sure that soil health was still fundamental to what could be certified as organic.” The project focuses on growing crops in healthy soils...
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Experimenting With Whole Milk in Schools With Krista Byler
FarmHouse
This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we’re talking with Krista Byler, the food service director at Union City Area School District in Pennsylvania whose whole milk study caught the attention of the dairy industry. Byler’s district had been offering fat free and 1% milks with student lunches, but thanks to a study conducted by the student council, Byler was aware much of the milk students bought ended up in the trash. On top of that, many students weren’t buying milk at all. “It was kind of a double-edged sword. We had students no longer taking milk and a lot of...
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Digging Into Climate-Smart Dairy With Carolyn Beans
FarmHouse
This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we’re talking to Carolyn Beans, a freelance science reporter with a focus on food and agriculture. Beans is currently an MIT Environmental Solutions Journalism Fellow. Through the fellowship, she is writing a series on climate-smart dairy that is being published in Lancaster Farming. “The fellowship is designed to support journalists who are working on stories that explore environmental solutions specifically for local audiences,” Beans said. The term climate-smart is a bit of a newer buzzword, but Beans said despite the new...
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Empowering Women Through Education With Annie's Project
FarmHouse
This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we’re talking to Doris Mold, co-CEO of , a national nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering women in agriculture. Annie’s Project was founded in 2003 and named after Annette Kohlhagen Fleck, a woman who married into farming in 1947 and went on to take care of the business side of the farm. Annie’s Project honors her legacy by providing women with the knowledge and confidence to manage farms and agribusinesses successfully. The organization offers a mix of workshops, courses and online learning aimed at educating...
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Full Circle Flower Farming With Rebekah Mindel
FarmHouse
This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we’re talking to Rebekah Mindel, a flower farmer and floral designer. Mindel owns Meadow Wilds, a full-circle floral design studio and flower farm in New York’s Hudson Valley. For Mindel, full circle means starting the plants from seed, harvesting and conditioning the flowers and using them in the final designs. “Farming and design for me go hand in hand,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to do one without the other.” Mindel designs floral arrangements for events and wedding using flowers grown on her farm plus purchased...
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What's Up With the Bees? Protecting Pollinators With Susan Jones
FarmHouse
This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we’re talking to Susan Jones, a pollination expert in McCormick, South Carolina. Jones’ passion for bees grew from an unlikely source: a farrier and third-generation beekeeper visiting her family’s farm began nudging her to give beekeeping a try. He eventually gifted Jones her first two colonies. Those first bees didn’t make it through the winter, but that brief window of time was enough to get Jones hooked, especially when she saw the difference having pollinators made on her garden. “My garden went from OK to on steroids...
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Tasting What Was Grown in Farm-Made Hot Sauces With Alyssa Adkins
FarmHouse
This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we’re talking to Alyssa Adkins, a produce farmer in Freeport, Maine. Adkins and her partner Nathan Broaddus own Farthest Field Farm where they grow produce and make their own jarred products. The farm specializes in peppers and hot sauces. “My partner and I decided to start with value-added products,” Adkins said. “There’s so many CSAs to choose from, there’s so many farmers selling vegetables at farmers markets. So it kind of made sense for us.” The farm sells five varieties of hot sauces as well as salsas and other...
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Changing the World for That One Animal With Amy Marciano
FarmHouse
This week on the FarmHouse podcast, we’re talking to Amy Marciano, founder of , a 501(c)(3) non-profit animal rescue in Greentown, Pennsylvania. "I pretty much came out of the womb loving animals. It was just in my DNA," Marciano said. "There's a quote that I pretty much live by, it's basically you can't change the world by rescuing one animal, but for that one animal you change the world." Marciano started her work in Brooklyn, New York, where she founded the Sugar Mutts Dog Rescue in a warehouse. After about a decade in the city, she moved her operation to the Poconos region where she...
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From Dietitian to Farmer With Jennie Schmidt
FarmHouse
This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we’re talking to Jennie Schmidt, a grain and grape farmer on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Prior to farming at Schmidt Farms full time, Schmidt worked as a registered dietitian. “I was able to kind of meld my training,” she said. “I always tell people that farming is the front end of nutrition. They’re the same continuum.” Thanks to her knowledge in both fields, Schmidt was offered speaking engagements, at first with dietitian and nutrition groups. This then led to her speaking nationally at conferences held by groups such...
info_outlineThis week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we’re talking to Florence Becot, a rural sociologist and the lead for Penn State’s Agricultural Safety and Health Program.
Becot and her colleagues Shoshanah Inwood and Hannah Bridge recently published a study in the Journal of Agromedicine that explored common domestic stresses associated with women who live and work on farms.
The study consisted of 68 women across 11 groups discussing the ways they dealt with raising children on the farm.
Most of the participants reported feeling anxiety or stress related to the number of responsibilities they were juggling.
“All of the groups, at one point or another, discussed stress,” said Becot. “They also talked about depression, and mental illnesses, whether or not they had been diagnosed.”
Women in the study discussed feeling anxiety over raising children on the farm. Though many agreed they felt favorably about letting their children grow up on a farm, they acknowledged it comes with a unique set of challenges, especially for mothers who are responsible for performing farm work.
“Raising children on the farm is wonderful. So many moms talked about how much they love having the children around. They wouldn’t do it any other way,” Becot said. “But the reality is, we’ve talked to women farmers who said if I was a nurse at the hospital, I wouldn’t be allowed to bring my kid. Why is there this weird expectation that I should have my kid with me when I’m driving this really heavy piece of machinery?”
Women aren’t just responsible for child care, Becot explained. In addition to farm work and off-farm jobs, they’re often responsible for cooking and household chores, and may also be responsible for caring for an older relative or for various community-related initiatives like church or social groups.
It can easily build into a stressful situation where women feel overburdened.
Researchers have been studying mental health in the farming industry for decades. However, Becot noted that it’s only been within the past three to four years that they’ve started looking into how mental health manifests in women.
“We really never have talked a whole lot about women and how women’s mental health might be different than men. How the stressors might be different,” said Becot.
As more women join the agriculture industry, it’s important to keep studying these differences, along with the unique stressors women on the farm and in rural communities are facing, to provide them with resources for help.
At the end of the day, women should be able to balance their domestic and farm responsibilities in order to succeed in both arenas, Becot said.
“That’s what this work is about. It is about supporting women in agriculture, in their ability to both be a parent and a professional.”