Guess how we are celebrating National Ag Day?

Agriculture is woven deeply in our life and our day to day activities. I work for the Farm Bureau and Jake works in California's walnut industry. We both come from families with deep traditions in agriculture. Probably the most obvious way agriculture is important to us is the three meals a day we eat like all of you.

Today, however for National Agriculture Day, Jake and I are sitting in the final day of a workshop series for Beginning Farmers and Ranchers sponsored by the Glenn County RCD. While Jake and I both work in agriculture, it's our family hope to have our own enterprise someday; "our own piece of dirt," as Jake would say, where our kids will have a chance to run around, learn the values of hard work, and live the lifestyle that Jake and I were afforded as kids.

We are working hard here.

The workshop has been great and has given us a chance to take everything we always talk about doing for our family and putting it down on paper into an actual written Business Plan that we can take to the bank. The class was full of people just like us with the entrepreneurial spirit with the determination and drive to be part of our their farming enterprises.

We graduated!

 I have to say my favorite part of the workshop was the chance to take it with Jake. We are married but we are also a really good business team, with the same goals, of creating a rural lifestyle for our family. Some might ask, "how do you write that into a Business Plan? Good question. You don't. The bank is not going to approve a loan because you want to raise your family on a farm. For us and for many others in farming, you do what you do because its what you love to do and for us a family farm is our goal. At the same time, it has to make sense financially. Anything else is irresponsible. This was an important message we learned from our workshop.

This is our whole class.

So what's next? We hope in the very near future to buy that piece of dirt. Stay tuned, I'm sure I will tell you about it when and if it happens. Depending on the size of the property and what is already there will dictate what we do with it. Ultimately we want to have a walnut orchard; after all this is what Jake knows how to grow. If we do buy a piece of property, it doesn't mean we become instant farmers either. Jake and I will both keep our day jobs to support our farming lifestyle and get our family fed and clothed.

I do want to thank the Glenn County RCD - Claudia Street and Liz Brackmann and of course Rod Carter with Northern California Farm Credit for their guidance and knowledge in helping us put our goals and dreams down on paper in an organized fashion. Now the hard park - putting it all into action but I know we will make it happen!

Now you know what we did today. So how did you celebrate National Agriculture Day? Thanks for reading. ~mrs. c