Back to the Farm Full Time!

My time as a federal employee for the FSA office has come to a close. I will once again be working for the farm. I’m so excited to be returning to the farm and to work with Matt full time helping him do what we both love. While I’m not naïve enough to think there won’t be times that I will dislike him and his father, I’m grateful I’ll be working outside and in production agriculture with my Forever.

What have I learned about my time working for the government? I’ve learned while I love working with my co-workers, I intensely dislike sitting in an office all day. I enjoy working with most of the producers, but dislike being set in a schedule of having to be at work for a set period of hours. I enjoy having a reason to be inside out of the cold in the winter, but honestly miss working with Matt. I’m looking forward to having just one job rather than evenings/weekends on the farm and the rest of the time at the “town job”. It’s frustrating not knowing what’s going on, on the farm, but being expected to know where everything is and what’s going on.

While I’m infinitely grateful to have had this job opportunity, I’m very excited to be returning to the farm. I took this job with the knowledge that it was temporary. Whether that be a bad thing if I really liked it, but couldn’t stay on permanently or whether that be a good thing if I didn’t decided it was for me, we knew that it was temporary going in. My official end date was originally March 21^st so I made it almost a month longer on the extension. This job gave us the chance to see if Matt and Henry wanted to work with me like they had been for approximately a year since Matt and I got married, or maybe if it was best if I wasn’t there all the time. It gave me the chance to take a step back to see if I really wanted to work with them as well. And we figured it out. They have more than plenty of work to keep us all busy on the farm and I will be able to spend my time outside and be much more active than I have been while sitting in a desk chair for nine hours a day. Again, it has been an incredible experience. I appreciate the new friendships I have made, the experience of being a government worker and being able to test out the “town job”.

What I won’t miss about the job-having to get ready every day and doing it on a schedule so I get to work on time, packing and unpacking lunches, paperwork, filing, sitting in a chair 9 hours a day and not having the spontaneity to take care of errands/clean our house on rainy days like I can on the farm.

What I will miss about my job-the producers and my co-workers. I have been so blessed with amazing co-workers. I’m thankful to call them all friends now.

David, my boss, the Master Chef. He has a recipe for everything and I mean everything! I don’t think he’s ever had the same meal twice. If he cooks something twice, he tweaks the recipe and comes up with something completely different tasting. He likes to think he’s been a positive influence on my cooking skills and that I will now be a better/more frequent cook. While I’ve cooked more while I’ve been here, I don’t see it lasting much longer.

Kathy, the excellent cook and crafty one. No matter what the occasion, Kathy has the perfect craft project you can do or a recipe to make the gathering just a little more special. She has the longest duration in the office, so I admit I was a little nervous to ask what I felt was stupid questions. Kathy never made me feel bad about asking questions. She encouraged questions first rather than having to correct my errors. Another mom and grandma, she’s great about giving advice when solicited. A true blessing and joy to work with and know.

Dara, the closest to my age and mother of three children under the age of 5. She and Jamie are fantastic for making sure I don’t get baby fever. They are full of children horror stories, but are always great about ending said horror stories with “…but kids are so great and you love them so much, these little things don’t matter.” Ummm…I think I’ll stick with nieces and nephews for now, but thanks! Dara is a great influence in my life and I appreciate her love. She is always willing to give a kind word and build you up. Not afraid to share about her relationship with God and invite people to church, she’s an amazing role model that has been placed in my life. I’m blessed and honored to call her a friend.

Linda, the calm, cool and collected one. She’s a mom through and through. She’s always thinking about other people and how she can help them. She can “talk you off the cliff” like Dara says. Linda is wonderful at making things that seem like they can’t ever be fixed, fixable. She will listen to all your stories and problems. She has answered thousands of questions that I’ve had since starting the job. Rather than being mean and telling me to figure it out on my own, she has answered the same question thousands of times. Linda is a joy and blessing in my life and I will be forever grateful for getting the chance to get to know her better, but don’t appreciate her dyslexia rubbing off on me!

For those that have been in the office know that we share space with NRCS. I worked for that side in the mornings of my senior year and a couple summers part-time. So I knew most of them, but had the chance to really interact with them more.

Roberta, of course, is organized to a T. She keeps her board happy and always stays super busy planning events and being involved in a lot of statewide activities.

I worked briefly with Janice, but got to know her much better. You can always count on Janice, not only to have delicious food on food days, but have the fancy presentation and dishes to go with it. She has amazing smelling meals every day for lunch and does it all without an oven!

Cecelia, I don’t remember working with. An amazing asset to the office and to her co-workers. Very thorough in her work and a saint, like Linda. When dealing with disgruntled producers, how they can say what needs said, but in such a way that calms the producers down is beyond me. You can always count on Cecelia to have a listening ear available and a word of advice when wanted. She also makes such beautifully shaped bread, I feel guilty for consuming it at food days.

Brad is who I spent a large majority of my time with in the field when I worked here before. It’s been nice working in the same office again. I gained a bunch of weight from the doughnuts he would bring on occasional Fridays though!

Jamie was the wild card. She started working here after I had left for college. Jamie has been awesome getting to know. Also a mom of three young children, she has more energy and passion for her job than I could muster with everything her kids are in. Jamie is an asset to the county. She’s always trying to learn new things. If she doesn’t know the answer, she isn’t going to make one up. She will search until she finds the right answer.

I’m sure you don’t really care about all the people, but it’s important to me for them to know how blessed and lucky I feel to have had such amazing co-workers at my town job, but also to know that I can count all of them as friends and positive role models for me. I know I can turn to any/all of them any time in the future and they’ll not only be there for me, but treat me like the most important person in the world. I’m not the greatest at telling people how much they mean to me, but I’ve been told I’m a pretty good writer so that’s the avenue I usually choose. So thank you all for the amazing experience. Should you ever move to having outdoor office space and not having to sit in an office all day or deal with paperwork, let me know! Thank you all so much!

I’m excited to be returning to the farm. With such beautiful weather farmers are itching to get to the field to start planting as soon as the rain stops and the fields dry up a little. My next blog will be about planting and how it’s a lot more than dropping a seed in the ground.

Until next time, be careful and have a great time!