Illinois Farm Families Blog

Anyway. Wild may be a bit of an overstatement, as we were two moms escaping our farms with Emily's wonderfulperfectwellbehavedangelic 2 ½-month-old baby, Jack, along. Seriously, you've hardly seen such a placid little child. He was a doll.

Anyway, again. The plan was to meet up with two other farm moms, Deb Moore and Donna Jeschke, at a café, along with some 40 Chicago area moms who are either bloggers or who are part of a moms group that expressed interest in knowing more about their food supply. It was, in a word, fascinating.

We surveyed the scene, as women poured into the café. We talked and greeted and learned a bit about each other. Then we four farm women introduced ourselves and told a bit about our families and farm operations. Almost immediately after introductions were over, a lovely young woman named Katherine came over and simply gushed that if she'd been asked to pick out the four farm moms in the group, she never would have picked us. "You're so trendy!" she said. "You're dressed like us. You all are, like, hot farm moms!"

I had (and still have) no idea how to respond to that, as I've never heard those exact words strung together in regard to a group I'm a part of, but it was a fascinating observation. And as I questioned her and a group of other women, I learned that they really and truly expected us to be in jeans and boots and plaid shirts. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) Someone asked Emily if she wore bibs. "Um, no," she said. I admitted I sometimes wear Carhartt bibs to do chores and pull calves in the winter, but that's it. I haven't worn bibs as a fashion statement since the mid-1990s, and I'm not ever sure if I should admit that.

Fashion aside, we then divided into three groups, and the four of us rotated through each group. We took questions like:

• What do you think about documentaries like King Corn?
• What's your day like?
• It seems like from what we hear that Monsanto controls everything and now they're getting into food. How do you feel about them having a monopoly?
• Do you take vacations?

And we fielded comments like:

• It's just unnatural to breed plants in a laboratory and have our food come from there.
• I don't like crossing tomatoes and fish and everything else. We're messing with our food supply too much. I don't even like rice with Vitamin D. It's too much like we can just pop a pill or a grain some day and get all our nutritional needs from that one thing.
• Something like 80% of all corn goes into ethanol.

So our challenge was to first, relate to these women, which wasn't all that difficult. My kids are 8, 6 and 3, and these women all had young children as well. The second challenge was to answer the questions, be honest and do not be defensive. We did correct misinformation where necessary (23% of Illinois corn goes into Illinois ethanol plants…not 80%). But we strove to do so without becoming defensive and without judgment and superiority. No one wants to be made to feel ignorant, and you will not win people over by making them feel that way.

The fact is, these women are much like us, but with less freezer space. They don't have access to local meat or their own sweet corn patch, and they're distrustful. I think, very honestly, I would feel the same way. They don't get the same information we do. They get documentaries about King Corn and Food, Inc., and Farmageddon, and they get Katie Couric insinuating that antibiotics are bad. That would make me question, too.

In all, it was a good night. If the goal was to talk to the food-buying decision-making consumers who have questions and want answers, we succeeded brilliantly. I'd load up and head north again in a heartbeat.

Holly Spangler
Marietta, Illinois

Holly Spangler is farmwife to John, mother to three little farm kids, and farm writer for Prairie Farmer, all from their farmstead in western Illinois. You can follow her blog here.

As an associate editor for Prairie Farmer magazine (which happens to be the oldest farm publication in the country, and at one time had its own building in Chicago), I travel the state looking for stories, and interviewing, photographing and writing about farmers and other assorted experts. I also blog regularly. The blog, as it turns out, is an extension of my monthly column, begun in 2001 and called My Generation. Through both venues, I try to offer up a little bit of life on a young family's farm, and our unique take on the agriculture issues of the day as young farmers. Things like the county fair, harvest, and what we're grateful for.

Our farm is nestled in the hills and hollows of western Illinois, near the Spoon River. Indeed, Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River Anthology was based upon towns just down the road from us. Here on our farm, we raise corn, soybeans, hay and cattle. We grow corn and beans on the better soil, and make use of those erosion-prone hills to grow beef cattle, instead of row crops. It's just one of many conservation practices we employ to make the best use of – and take the best care of – our God-given soils.

We are a family operation, covering about 3,500 acres. We farm with my husband's parents, and live just across the field from them…which is to say, my kids make many trips back and forth to Grandma's in the course of the day. I have come to believe, if there is any blessing at all in production agriculture, it is the ability to bring multiple generations together with a common goal, working together in community.

We have three little farm kids, ages 8, 6 and 3. Each of the older two are raising their own bottle calves. These are calves that wound up without a mother; one was rejected by the mama cow (rare, but it happens sometimes) and the other was a twin whose mama didn't have enough milk for two calves. So each day, the kids give their calves a bottle, both morning and night. They also have fun with them. I'll look out and see them snuggling with them, or putting a halter on them and running around the yard. This is the second year they've had bottle calves. In the fall, we will begin "backgrounding" the calves – feeding them gluten and other ethanol byproducts to prepare them for sale into a feeder market. That sale will take place in January. As much as the kids love their calves, they know well they are food animals. When the calves are sold, we will deduct feed expenses and the kids will add the balance to their savings accounts.

And although I grew up on a farm and know all this to be very familiar and very comfortable, I know that's not the case for everyone. I can well imagine that not knowing how my food was raised would make me uncomfortable. Sort of like having a pediatrician make a decision about my children's health without my knowledge.

So with that in mind, a group of Illinois farmers have started this blog. We hope to share more about life on our farms, and why safe, abundant and healthy food is important to us, too. There will be a variety of us posting on here in the coming weeks. I hope you'll stop back in and get to know us. Ask questions as you think of them. And please don't hesitate to contact me directly. As a farmer and as a farm writer, I'd love to hear from you.

In fact, we'd love to bring you out to our farms. If you think you'd be interested in being part of a select group of "Field Moms", chosen to tour a variety of Illinois farms, please considering applying here. We'd love to open our farms and our homes, and sit around the dinner table and have a real conversation about real food.

In the meantime, let's keep talking.

Holly Spangler
Marietta, Illinois