Don’t call me a farm wife or I might flog you. It’s certainly not a derogatory term. Or something some aren’t proud of. But if I have to have a title, that’s not it. I’m a Farmer AND a Mom. Can I make up a title? Momer? Farmom? How about boss or owner or CEO?

This blog is dedicated to my Farmom? (Is that word catching on yet? No? Ok, I’ll stop). My parents had a large dairy (large for the time) that they started from scratch. I mean from NOTHING. They began scraping pennies together to buy six milk cows and ended up being one of the most respected, progressive dairies in Indiana.

My mom was technically a city kid. But as the story goes, when she helped my dad pour concrete for their first freestall barn (a barn for milk cows), he knew he couldn’t let her slip away and that he had to marry her. How romantic. There wasn’t a more perfect partnership. Dad had the farm knowledge, mom the business mind. But that wasn’t enough for her. A tomboy, a stubborn heart and an entrepreneur combined to make one of the most brilliant “farm wives” the dairy world had ever seen.

I vaguely remember my dad milking cows. Mom did the milking. I certainly don’t remember my dad working the finances. I don’t remember him castrating, giving shots, or feeding the bottle calves, twice a day. And God love him, but we think he never changed a single diaper, let alone made breakfast, lunch, dinner or got the four of us on a school bus (Hello, Ward Cleaver). My mom did all that and more.

The evening milking started at 8:30pm. My twin sister and I would have one of many sports games that didn’t get the family home until 9pm or later. Mom would make supper (because we were probably too broke to get fast food), do homework, and then go out to milk until 1:00am. And 1:00am wasn’t always her bedtime. Especially if she had to help a cow calve or nurse a calf back to health after her third shift was over. And then get up at 6am to start the first shift all over again of feeding calves, kids, and if she was lucky, herself. Talk about someone who ate a lot of dirt. My mother could be my definition of Eat. The. Dirt.

Yet she was just coined a farm wife. Various salesmen would come to call on our farm. I was a sales rep, I know how it works: you want to talk to the decision maker. You want to talk to the one in the fields all day, so you can sell them your seed corn, or the one in charge of feeding the cows, so you can sell your mineral. If they pulled up and my dad was gone, they would tell my mom they’d come back when he was available. Not once considering her an integral part of the operation. Oh sure, they were cordial and asked about the family. But ask her about the health of the cows, cow comfort needs, yields on the last crop of soybeans or what their rolling herd average was last month? Never.

When the companies really wanted my parents business, they would ask them to go on various paid fun/educational trips across the country. Did my mom ever get that invite? Hardly ever. And if she did, who was going to stay back and milk the cows….oh, and watch those pesky kids?

Don’t get me wrong, my dad was a workhorse. His day started at 4:00am, every day. He didn’t need an alarm clock; his weird, farmer brain just woke him up. But he was in a field, or behind a cows ass (artificially inseminating), or in a tractor most of my life. Mom was the face of the farm.

I have not and will never meet anyone that worked harder than my parents or that had more drive to be the most successful farm on the planet. I am confident in that. But you can also get my stubborn, extremely-proud-of-himself (some might even use the word arrogant, but not this daddy’s girl) daddy to admit that the farm wouldn’t have been successful without my mama.

I do not want to preach or jump the women’s suffrage bandwagon here. Maybe I should though, because we’re accounting for some pretty big numbers. According to the 2012 Agriculture Census, the number of female-led farms has nearly tripled to 280,000 farms since 1982 and a total of one million women work in the agriculture industry, And women now constitute farming’s fastest growing demographic. There was a recent census conducted, I can’t wait to see what these numbers are like now.

As with any historical progression regarding advancements in demographics, we should be proud of those that paved the way before us. I am surely proud of a mother that told many men to go fly a kite (or knowing her, probably a bit more colorful language was used). I am proud of a female farmer that earned and demanded respect. And that taught me not to stand behind anyone. And to both my parents that showed me what hard work is really like. I mean REALLY hard work. Like get a 13-year old up at 4:30am on a Saturday to milk cows- kind of hard work. And what you can accomplish when you work on an awesome team.

What I want is to be seen as a partner. My husband and I are partners. My parents were partners. Of course, I hope all marriages think of themselves as partners. But we are unique, working in a business together. And a farm business, nonetheless, makes for extreme pressures and working conditions that other industries may not face. Neither of us makes decisions without the other ones input. We both succeed or we will both surely fail. Somedays I wear the boss hat, other days he does. Some days he wears the Mom hat (and he certainly looks good in it. Hubba Hubba.) (Calm down ovaries, three kids is enough) and some days I wear the dad hat.

I’m the owner, the CEO, the mom, the dad, and the boss, right along with him. We both Eat.The.Dirt equally. And boy do we eat a lot of dirt.