Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Meet the BlogHer14 Farm Team

Remember the anticipation of going to summer camp? Who will I share a cabin with? Will they be nice to me? I may be 40 years old and I was not going to summer camp but preparing to attend the BlogHer 10th Anniversary Conference in San Jose last week gave me butterflies like those I remember before attending 4-H Camp so many years ago.

So what is BlogHer? You can see for yourself here but BlogHer is an online community dedicated to sharing the passionate, informative, thought provoking, controversial (at times) and educational blog posts of women from all over the web. Each year the writers behind the words gather for three days of inspiration, technology updates, motivation and lots of networking.

It is no secret that food, farming and agriculture are important to me and my family so when my North Dakota social media sister Katie Pinke called and said we needed to be at BlogHer14 to try and bring a greater understanding of food and farming to our blogging counterparts, I said sign me up! As a women who has worked in agriculture professionally since graduating from college, I realized upon registering for this particular conference that this would be my first main stream conference experience. Every other conference I have attended (and there have been lots of them) have revolved around agriculture and my job. Now this is not a bad thing but what I did learn after three days at BlogHer is I have been missing out!

Now that you have an idea of what BlogHer14 is, lets get back to the title of the post, the Farm Team. I was not the only farm girl who was encouraged to register for this conference. There were eight of us in total. If you ask the BlogHer14 organizers about the "Farm Team," they will probably have no idea what you are talking about. You see, by way of social media, a Facebook page was created for us farm women to begin our conversation and get to know each other before we arrived in San Jose. It was with this page we dubbed ourselves the BlogHer14 Farm Team. Some of us had met, some had not but we all had something in common. So without further adieu, allow me to introduce to the rest of the BlogHer14 Farm Team.

I mentioned her above but Katie from North Dakota blogs over at the Pinke Post about her fabulous life growing up and living on the prairie, raising three great kids and running the family business with her husband. Katie is also an agricultural speaker.

PinkePost.com

Sara blogs over at Sara's House HD. Sara and her husband live in Iowa where they are raising two adorable boys on a farm that grows corn, soybeans, hay and a cow/calf operation.

www,sarashousehd.com

Kristen is from Ohio and she blogs at Local Farm Mom. Kristen and her husband are also raising two adorable kids on their farm where the raise Dorset sheep and Christmas trees amongst a few other things. Kristen is also a talented chef and enjoys preparing meals using locally sourced ingredients and then shares the story of the food with the guests who are eating it.

www.localfarmmom.com

Debbie is a wife, mom and rancher in Kansas and she blogs over at Kids, Cows and Grass. Debbie and her husband have five kids and run a cow/calf operation on the Flint Hills of Kansas. 

www.kidscowsandgrass.com

Leah is from Indiana and blogs over at Beyer Beware. Leah keeps a very extensive collection of everyday, easy and practical recipes on her blog and adds to it regularly. Leah and her husband previously owned a dairy but the struggling economy forced them to sell and now they raise corn and soybeans along with a couple of fabulous kids and pets too. 

www.beyerbeware.com

Janice is a self proclaimed lover of all things cotton. In reality though she really is a lover of all things agriculture and she blogs about her travels and adventures over at Janice Person - A Colorful Adventure. When she is not exposing everyone she knows to agricultural adventures she is the Social Media Director for Monsanto. 
janiceperson.com


Bren blogs over at BGgarden.com and while she admittedly will tell you she is not a farmer she is a lover of the land, grows a beautiful garden and is proud of a John Deere green riding lawn mower. It's my opinion but its only matter of time before she adds farmer to her resume. 

www.bggarden.com

If you add me to the list, that makes eight pretty fabulous women dedicated to food, farming and our families. We divided and conquered BlogHer14 making many new connections and putting a face on the American farmer to those we met. We learned a lot about ourselves but we also learned that the Farm Team needs to be bigger next year and have a larger voice. The conversation of food impacts us all at least three times a day yet many know little to nothing about where their food comes from or who is growing it. 


It really was a delightful long weekend getting to know the dynamic women above but it was also a tremendous experience for myself personally to attend BlogHer and meet women bloggers just like me and learn about their passions and perspectives. 

I encourage you to take a few minutes and visit the sites of my Farm Team friends above. And stay tuned. There is so much more about BlogHer14 I still have not shared and will do so in future posts. In the meantime the Farm Team is already plotting our path to get back to BlogHer in 2015 with a larger presence and bigger Farm Team. 

Are you interested in being part of the Farm Team? Thanks for reading. ~mrs. c











LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...