Farming is not usually thought of as a field in which women are particularly prevalent. Although recent trends show more and more women taking part, I don’t necessarily think they were ever absent…perhaps under represented and, at times, ignored, but never missing in action.
The site I’m going to introduce you to today was started by a college classmate of mine. I first met Angeline LeLeux at Millikin University’s School of Music where we spent the better parts of our early mornings in music theory classes and our afternoons knee deep in humanities and other classes designed to enlighten our thinking. Angeline was studying piano and violin performance and I was a music business major dabbling in piano and studying percussion. And if I may borrow a line from The Verve Pipe… “we were merely freshmen”.
We lost track after graduation, but reconnected through the online marvel known as Facebook. One fine day, Angeline mentioned on her Facebook wall that she had started a new blog about women in farming and sustainable living. It intrigued me on two levels. First because it was a site about women in farming and second because with my recent food intolerance diagnosis, food – healthy non-processed food – is incredibly important to me.
Angeline discusses a variety of topics such as:
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As you can see by the headlines, the subject matter varies but is always worth the read. Here is an excerpt from one of the first posts that got my attention:
When I decided to start this project at the end of October 2010, I did what any aspiring researcher in the Internet age would do and typed “women farmers” into the Google search box. One of the first sites on the page of results was this one:womenfarmers.com. I expected a networking site, or some sort of cozy blog community, but it’s actually something very different.
This is the online information center for a lawsuit which was initially filed in 2000. RoseMary Love and nine other women are accusing the USDA of discrimination against women farmers, stating that their loan applications were denied by local USDA agents. Their stories can be read here (from 2003), but here are some examples:
- Rosemary Love and her husband saw other farmers granted loans while their paperwork went through four revisions.(They filed in Fall 1981, 19 years before the lawsuit began).
- Lind Bara-Weaver was called “cutie” and “honey”, and told that women can’t run farms.
- Mary Brown was told that she “did not qualify” for a loan, despite her 15 years of farming experience.
- Edith Scruggs and Maryland Wynne were, literally, laughed at when they attempted to turn in their loan applications.
As I looked around further, I found a few mentions of the lawsuit on various news sites: Huffington Post, North America Inter Press Service, and AgWeek, for example…
Read the rest of this article at Love vs. Vilsack
The bullet points did me in. I immediately signed up for her rss feed and I’ve been hooked ever since. Angeline is smart, knows her subject matter and is not afraid to dive into the research necessary to create solid writing. I encourage you to drop by In Her Field and see what she has to say about women in today’s agricultural world.
And not to be understated or ignored, Angeline is also a very talented musician. Classically trained, she can do amazing things with a violin. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a video or two of her performances popping up on her site someday. *hint hint*
