How on earth did I ever end up HERE?

No, I'm not lost...in fact, I am 100% sure I am right where God intends for me to be. My super-duper bloggy buddy Heather from over at 3 Kids and Lots of Pigs hosts this great Farmer Friday feature each week. This week she's upping the ante and adding a monthly "Real Farmwives of America" feature..and she asked me to join in! How cool is that?

Each month, we farmwives will share with you some of our farm experiences, then you can hop around and learn more about each of our farmwives and life on their farm. And let me tell you, these are some amazing ladies! For our first post, we're each sharing our own answer to the question, "How did I get here?"

So here's our story:

In the summer of 1980 I had just finished kindergarten when my parents decided to move our family to Ohio from our home in Baker County, Florida—just north of Jacksonville—where both of my parents taught vocational agriculture (now agricultural education) and participated in rodeos. They had met in college on their collegiate rodeo team and decided it was time to move back to my mom's family's farm, where my Grandma Wolgamott lived.

The Wolgamotts were among eight families to move to Holmes County, Ohio, in the first year it was open for settlement. So although they did not settle on this particular farm, we're definitely not strangers to the area. My grandparents bought this farm as a second farm for their dairy operation when my mom was in early elementary school and moved here. They eventually sold their other farm but continued to milk cows on this farm until my mom went to college and the cows were sold.

It was at Tennesse Technological University, where both my parents majored in animal husbandry and my mom was the first female at the school to major in agriculture, that my parents met and fell in love while on their collegiate rodeo team. My mom earned multiple collegiate all-around cowgirl titles and my dad was the collegiate bareback bronc riding champion. They also were on the livestock judging team together. Well, actually my mom won the national dairy judging her freshman year, making her ineligible to compete again. Her sophomore year she won the national livestock judging competition, making her ineligible to compete in that again. So by her junior year, she was coaching the teams at Tennessee Tech and my dad was on the team. Here they are with some other members of their team at Tennessee Tech. My dad's the one propped up against the car on the left with his feet crossed and my mom is the cute girl in the cowboy hat.

So anyway, after college they got married and lived in Tennessee for a while before moving to Florida. Then, as I said, they moved back to my mom's family farm in Ohio in 1980. Not long after they got married, my grandfather passed away, and when we moved back to Ohio, my grandma was raising crossbred sheep.

My parents had been very involved with the Florida High School Rodeo Association, and after moving to Ohio became some of the founding members of the Ohio High School Rodeo Association. In fact, they built a rodeo arena on the family farm and hosted the association's finals at our farm until the mid-to-late 1980s. At this point, we just hosted the rodeos: we hired a rodeo stock contractor to furnish the rodeo livestock and the livestock on our farm included Grandma's flock of sheep and our family's riding horses.

I joined 4-H in 1982, taking sewing and cooking projects along with horses and market lambs. The next year I took breeding sheep as well; my parents' rationale was that perhaps bringing home some of the sheep would make me less hysterical about selling one.

Then around 1988, my parents decided to start their own rodeo stock contracting company: Buckeye Rodeo Company. The first year was spent in partnership with another family, but they soon decided to go their separate ways and Buckeye Rodeo Company became a Taft family business. That was also about the time my dad had one of the most memorable conversations in my life with me and we talked about what my future would hold as I entered high school. I've already blogged about that, so you can read that story here if you want. I participated in high school rodeo and qualified for the National High School Rodeo Finals all four years, two of which I was our state's queen. I'll have to dig you out some photos of that sometime when you need a real treat. And I was an active member of our FFA chapter, earning both state and American FFA degrees and serving at Ohio FFA State President. My FFA project that earned me those degrees was a flock of crossbred sheep, which started with my first breeding ewe project in 4-H and grew into around 60 sheep of my own and caring for my grandmother's flock of around 100 or so ewes.

Then it was off to Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana—'cause I just had to be different that all of my fellow FFA and state officer friends and pass on attending Ohio State. I majored in agricultural communications (partly because I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut) and minored in having a really good time. No matter what Gal in the Middle or the Bathtub Mama may tell you, don't believe any stories about toga parties or dishwashers. I think their memories are befuddled.

I continued to barrel race when home in the summers, and our family's rodeo stock contracting company continued to thrive, winning numerous awards for rodeo of the year, stock contractor of the year, bucking bull of the year, bucking bull of the finals, saddle bronc horse of the year and bareback horse of the year just to name a few.

It was at Purdue that I met and fell in love with the Old Man. He was from a small family farm in northern Indiana where they also raised sheep. The difference between his sheep and my sheep was that my sheep were for raising and selling at market...and showing at the county fair...and there were more of them. His flock was much smaller, but he was more into showing sheep. Which may not seem like a big difference, but it is. The summer after we graduated, we got married in my little country church.

We lived in Lafayette, Indiana for two years before moving "home" in 1999 to Holmes County, Ohio. We rented a farmhouse on the east end of the county and added Sissy to our little family before that farmhouse was struck my lightning and burned down in February 2003—when Sissy was just one month old. Then we built a house on 10 acres on our family farm. Before long, we added Bubby, then some sheep, and then our Baby Boy.

My kids have learned to ride horses here and have started to rodeo. We're just a stone's throw from my parents' house, though we can't see it because of the hills and the trees. My kids have learned to ride horses in the same arena I grew up riding in, and they have had the opportunity to see their grandparents almost every day of their lives.

Until last January 4, when our lives were forever changed when my Daddy was killed in an accident. Not to be overly dramatic, but 2010 has been the worst year of my life. Because not only was I a genuine Daddy's girl, but after being cancer free for 5 years (1st diagnosed 17 years ago) my mom's cancer was back with a vengance this spring. She had surgery and is now in the midst of chemo. So that all means my brother, who also lives on the family farm, and I have had to step up our role in the family business: putting on rodeos. We raise and care for the bucking bulls and horses on our farm and take care of everything related to rodeo production. And the Old Man is hoping to build his flock of sheep from the small flock we have now to a little larger flock capable of producing animals the kids can show when they are old enough to join 4-H.

Now lots of my fellow farmwives in this series live on farms where farming is their sole income. That's not us. I work in public relations for Ohio State University's Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center. And the Old Man divides his time between doing consulting work for local farmers and farm businesses on GPS farm technology and working with dairy herds as a nutrition consultant. So even though we don't farm "full-time," we earn our livings from agriculture. It's not always easy, but most things worth doing seldom are.

So that's my story. Be sure to check out the rest of the Real Farmwives of America, too! And thanks, Heather, for letting me join in!

Other Real Farmwives of America: 

o   Heather at 3 Kids and Lots of Pigs

o   Amy & Liz at 2 Maids A Milking

o   Amy at A Latte with Ott, A.

o   Marybeth at Alarm Clock Wars

o   Leah at Beyer Beware

o   Jennifer at Farmgirl Follies

o   Jeanette at Fence Row to Fence Row

o   Lauren at Four Ransoms and a Farm

o   Cris at GOODEness Gracious

o   Meggie at Hoosier Farm Babe

o   Jent at My Front Porch

o   Katie at On the Banks of Squaw Creek

o   Whitney at Life is a Highway and Mine’s Surrounded By Corn

o   Lana at Walking the Off-Beaten Path

o   Denise at Who is the Grown Up?

 

Linking to: Blog Hop Friday