Ep 41: Why Working Moms Feel More Overwhelmed Today (And What Farming Moms Can Teach Us About It)

What if the reason motherhood feels so hard today… is because the blueprint we were raised on no longer works?

In this episode of Who Let Me Do This, I’m joined by Emily McNiff—working mom of two and a leader in the agriculture space—who works directly with women farmers across the country.

And this conversation completely changed how I think about work, motherhood, and the mental load.

Because while many of us are navigating careers, childcare, and the invisible labor at home… farming moms are doing all of that while running a family business where the stakes are their livelihood—and the farm doesn’t wait.

We talk about:

•  Why modern motherhood feels harder than it did for our parents 
• The GIANT gap in agriculture that is insurance in the second most dangerous career
•  The mental load of working moms (and how it shows up differently in rural vs. urban life) 
•  What “work-life balance” looks like when your job, home, and family business are all the same 
•  The reality of being a woman in agriculture and breaking outdated gender roles 
•  The childcare gap in rural communities and what “the village” really looks like today 
•  Common misconceptions about farming and the hidden pressures behind feeding the country 

Whether you’re in corporate, running your own business, or just trying to keep up with everyday life as a mom—this episode will make you feel seen, while also giving you a whole new perspective.

Because no matter where we live… we’re all carrying more than we were meant to.

 If you vibed with this episode, here’s how you can keep the chaos going: 

• Hit Follow so new episodes show up without you having to remember (because who has the brain space?)
• Share it with your favorite boss bestie so they know they’re not alone 🍷
• Leave a rating & review — it’s basically the podcast version of a compliment, and you know I live for those 💕
• Pop by instagram @saideegrimley or tiktok @wholetmedothispod and tell me what no ones saying out loud as a high achieving working mom

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We don't know how our parents did it, but you literally couldn't take that blueprint and do it today, and it would not work. Like a farm, it's not your nine to five. In agriculture, animals, weather, seasons, they don't adjust for school schedules, sick days, maternity leave. It demands presence all the time. At the same time, motherhood is demanding that presence.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Hey Fraud Squad, welcome to Who Let Me Do This? I'm your host, Sadie, and this is the podcast for anyone who's ever looked around and thought, wait, who trusted me with this job, with these kids and with this life? Here's the deal. I'm not here to hand you the perfect five-step plan to get your life together. I'm here to share the chaos, the fails, the small wins, and the oh my god, same moments of trying to be a working mom, a decent human, and occasionally a functioning adult. And because we are all out here winging it together, I'll also bring in actual experts to drop some wisdom and share tips that might make our lives easier. Just a little. So if you're listening, congrats. You're officially a part of the fraud squad. That's our little community of imposters, hot messes, and overachievers who are all just faking it together. So grab your coffee, grab your wine, or let's be real, grab the leftover food from dinner that your kid didn't eat and let's dive in. Oh, and if you like what you hear, hit subscribe so you never miss an episode and share it with a friend who could, I don't know, use a laugh. Or maybe just a little solidarity. The more of us in the fraud squad, the better. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Who Let Me Do This podcast. I'm your host, Sadie, and I am so excited today to welcome Emily McNif. She is a mom of two young girls. She's a working mom in agriculture. And while she is not a farmer, she works closely with women farmers on market development, education, consumer outreach, and policy. Emily, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Welcome. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk about it. Yes. Okay. So Emily, like, first of all, tell us a little bit about yourself and what do you at like, what does your role actually do? And how did you get into this?

SPEAKER_00 2:04

So I grew up on a hobby farm in Michigan. It wasn't a money-making farm. It was more spend money farm because we had horses and we had, you know, barn cats and rabbits. And so I grew up in a farming community. I like to say there's more cows than people where I grew up. And I just felt this devotion to always support rural communities and farmers because they're so important to our economy and to what we eat and all these things. So I always wanted to be in agriculture. When I left college, I worked in corporate America for about 10 years for a large agricultural company and was mostly in the operations, environment, health, and safety field. So I wasn't as closely tied to the agriculture and farmer piece. As things happen in this day and age, I the company went through some restructuring and I was laid off. I always try to be really honest about that because that is something many, many, many people deal with. And I found this role with Indiana Soybean and Corn, where I get to work directly with Indiana farmers. I work for them. Like they fund us through through Checkoff. And then for the policy side, it's membership and sponsorship that funds it because Checkoff cannot pay for policy and advocacy. So they are our board. We work for them. And we what we try to do is support initiatives that help them on their farm through conservation, sustainability practices, fund research projects, but also fund market development opportunities so that they can sell their commodities and seeds. And then also work on educating the consumers too to see the value in farmers and what they bring to the economy and to our world.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Oh my gosh. Okay, this is so interesting. I have some follow-up questions. The first is you grew up in a small town in Michigan. You're you just mentioned you live in Indianapolis. Did you move for this job or were you in Indianapolis already and found this job?

SPEAKER_00 4:08

I was already in Indianapolis. I moved here right after college, married a Hoosier guy. So I'm here forever. But uh that's that's how I ended up here was for for my first job and then found this role.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Yeah, okay. And then when you say you grew up in a hobby farm and you got things ready for the fair, so I'm from Minnesota, and everyone in Minnesota knows that the Minnesota State Fair is the best fair in the world, and we have a huge agriculture component to the Minnesota State Fair. And I grew I'm I grew up in South Minneapolis. Like I did not grow up on a farm, but there are so many of the kids that come from the rural areas with their different animals. So were you like a 4-H kid? 4-H kid and then FFA kid. Okay, so what's the difference?

SPEAKER_00 4:51

That's that's just the club you're part of. And I'm probably explaining it wrong because I feel like all my formative years was an FFA. Okay. And then when you reach a certain age, if your school has an FFA program, um, I got involved with that, which is a lot of leadership training. And then there's various sustainability and agriculture programs that you grow in and get awards in and you know, scholarships and all the good stuff.

unknown 5:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Okay, what's FFA stand for?

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Technically, future farmers of America. And I think they still go by that. When I was in school, it was ingrained in me that it's students studying agri science, because it's not just people who are going to be farmers, it is also those wanting to go into agriculture business or um just want to support agriculture or study the science that affects farmers. So it's a wide range than just those who want to own a farm someday.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

Yeah. Okay. And then you also mentioned that you grew up on a hobby farm in Michigan. What did your parents do for the full-time job?

SPEAKER_00 5:58

My dad, um, for the majority of my life was in agriculture sales. So he used to work in animal health. And then a a couple years after I started working um in an agriculture business, he uh switched over to seeds. So um he was always involved in agriculture sales. And then my mom works for MSU Extension and still does to this day, um, and uh has done a wide array of education and community practices and different things like that.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Okay, so they were truly into the farming industry just for love of farming and like the hobby side of it.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Say my I mean, I I guess I should ask them what kept them there.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

My dad sounds like a lot of work for something that, like you said, like is it making money? Like if we're gonna get into the nitty-gritty of how much work it is to run a farm.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Yeah, well, we don't run a farm. I mean, we run a hobby farm, does not make money. We strictly spend money. Um it is not cheap.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Um you have to love it then, right? Like if you're spending money to do something that also has physical labor involved. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Yeah, I think it's also there is a little bit of teaching my sister and I, you know, how to have responsibilities and something to do over the summer and during breaks and how to care for animals. Um, you know, I to right now I have two dogs and two cats, which I was just talking to my mom yesterday about going on here and talking about my experience on a hobby farm and supporting farmers. And she's like, Are you gonna say you don't know how your mom did it? And I'm like, Yeah, I am. Literally, yeah. My dad traveled for work. I mean, I feel like I'm gonna go crazy with just our two dogs and two cats and two kids. Yep, yep. I can't imagine coming home and having to muck stalls and feed sheep and art like we raise our own sheep, we bred them, and it's lambing season. Better make sure dad's not traveling during lambing season because they like to be born on the coldest nights of the year, and the mom might not accept the baby. And do we need to call the egg teacher to come and help? And yeah, I don't know how she did it. I have so much more respect for my mom as an adult with children and knowing all the things she had to do um to keep keep our lives running. How do you like have you had that conversation with her of like mom, did you ever sleep? I know it was stressful, and I I recognized the stress as a kid, but I didn't understand why. I was like, oh, dad does a ton when he's home. He makes dinner, he does laundry because he works from home. But the I I just didn't understand it as much until you're in it. So, like even to to this day, I mean, my husband and I both equally like help get the girls ready in the morning. And he's responsible for daycare drop-off. I do daycare pickup, I get home. I might be able to cuddle the baby for like two minutes and then it's getting dinner going, and then it's bedtime and feeding the animals, and don't get to relax until 8 39 p.m. If the five-year-old is good about going to bed. Now throw in evening chores and checking, you know.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

What do you think? And what do you think is the difference? Because one of the things we talk a lot about on this podcast is how millennials, when we were raised in the 90s, our parents were doing their best. They were creating a blueprint for us that no longer exists. Yeah. So whether you had a stay-at-home mom or like you lived on a hobby farm, but your parents both worked full-time. And it's so interesting. Can you pinpoint or even think of how could they possibly have maintained that level of responsibility and that lifestyle while raising two girls versus the way that we live as millennials today? You're in a similar situation. You have two kids, and you guys both work full-time, and you're sitting here saying, like, I don't know how we could come home and feed the goats or breed the sheep or whatever. Yeah. Can you pinpoint like what is different about how you were raised in the 90s versus today and why that feels less attainable?

SPEAKER_00 10:09

I think there's lots of variables. I think there's some things that we are blessed with now that our parents weren't, which is occasionally, maybe if you're lucky, the ability to work from home. So I work from home a couple days a week on a good week. And so I might throw something in the crock pot during lunch, you know, and so dinner's ready by the time I get the girls and everything. I might be able to have laundry running in the background. If, again, if I'm lucky and it's not a full day of meetings. But I think there's a couple other things, you know, a lot of people, I feel like our parents, and I'm just generalizing, and I know that this is not everybody, but you know, my parents moved back to where my dad grew up. Both my grandparents were retired by the time my sister and I were born. There is also great aunts that one was a widow, one never married, that also helped take care of us. You know, there was a sense of community. And I'm very fortunate. My in-laws live nearby, but my mother-in-law still works part-time and um is 20 minutes away, not 10 minutes away. And so it's just totally, I think, I think just the dynamics are different, pros and cons to both sides. My sister also brought to my attention, she's like, Well, M, we were lash key kids. I'm like, no, we weren't. We would get off the bus and be home alone. Like as soon as I hit 12, you know, maybe younger. Actually, I might have been younger, might have been like 10, 11. My sister was five years younger than me. We'd get off the bus, have a list of chores, not crazy chores that were unexpected, but we'd be alone for an hour or two before my mom would get home. And that continued through high school. We'd have a list of things to get done. And I think that really helped once we reached an age where we could help. But what about the first 10 to 12 years where like it's not safe for kids to get off the bus by themselves and to go lead horses by themselves or, you know, be responsible for is this animal sick? I don't know because I'm 10.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, that's a really good point. What the village looked like in the 90s just looked so different than it does today for so many reasons. Felt more of a responsibility of extended family to just be a part of the village. And you bring up a really good point that when we were growing up, all of our grandparents were retired. We weren't retired at 55 or 59. And and they're the retirement dream was to be with your family, kind of, you know, and maybe go to a warm state, like go to Florida for the winters or and so forth. But it really wasn't the same as like my parents are in their 60s and my dad's still working. But there's this newfound, like, 60 is truly the new 40. Like my parents are fully still living their lives. They're traveling, they're going to restaurants, they're going out with friends, and I want them to do all of those things, but that does take away from that village that they maybe had when they were raising kids. And the other thing we talk a lot about on this on the podcast is societal norms have changed so much since the 90s. And things that were, I'll say, appropriate in the 90s are no longer deemed appropriate. And I'm not here to tell you that, tell someone that what should and should not be appropriate, but same as you, I had a stay-at-home mom, but I had many, many friends that would go home after school at two o'clock and their parents would get home at five or six. And same thing. They had a list of chores, they had a key to get in, and they just kind of stayed out of trouble or as much, you know, they got into very little trouble. And I think about that now because you would never, in today's day and age, you would never send home. Like I remember walking home with my third grade friends, and they would just go to an empty house and turn on the TV and have a bowl of cereal and, you know, whatever it might be. But I I I might be wrong, but I feel like we could get arrested for that these days, right? Like having a child, there's all these laws about like how old a kid has to be. What and again, I'm not saying that's wrong. I definitely agree that like my eight-year-old, my almost eight-year-old, I'm not ready for her to be home alone. And there's just so much less that we have control over in today's day and age, although there's so much more we have control over in some ways. Yeah. But I agree, like it's just so interesting because society, I don't know in the episode, or I had a recent guest on the podcast, and what she said was the society we grew up in no longer exists. And I was like, wow, that's like so mind-blowing to me to think about, but you're completely right. Like the world in which we all millennials grew up, nothing about that world exists anymore. Like the cost of things, the support of things, the expectation of things, the laws of things. So it's a super interesting point. Um, and like so crazy to think about because yeah, like we don't know how our parents did it, but you literally couldn't take that blueprint and do it today, and it would not work, you know? Yep. It'd be totally different. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so let's keep talking about like your role supporting agriculture. Knowing that you live in like the greater Indianapolis area and making a big assumption here that most farms are in more rural communities. Do you have to travel a lot for work? Like when you are not working from home, are you actually going out to farms or talk me through that a little bit?

SPEAKER_00 15:18

It I mean, it varies on the season. But I do, I would say I travel like have overnights between five or six times a year, give or take one or two more times. So uh August, I spend a lot of time going to farms because we host Ruder Shop Talks where we invite legislators, three peers, partners, and farmers to come and talk about what issues are impacting them on the farms. In Indiana, you know, Indianapolis is very um centrally located, but I think I was back to work for three weeks after having my baby last year, and I had to go spend an overnight in the southernmost part of Indiana where you can see Kentucky from the where I was staying overnight. So, I mean, that's just that's just part of the job because we were hosting a shop talk down there. I want to make sure I wasn't waking up at 3 a.m. to get there, especially being a fresh mom, nursing, and all that good stuff. So it meant having to go there the night before. Um, and the more northern tip of Indiana is like probably two and a half hours from here. So again, sometimes I go up the night before if I have an 8 a.m. meeting on the farm in a large event. In July, I go to DC for about a week where we take the farmers and we um take them to each of our congressional and senate offices if we can, so they can actually meet with our legislators making policy decisions that impact them directly and the trade and market access. And then um there's also various staff meetings because we work really closely with the other states. We roll up to these national organizations that support U.S. farmers as a whole, um, either on the corn or the soybean side. So I go and I collaborate with other staff at these meetings and learn what they're doing that are help that's helpful to the farmers that they serve and anything we can adopt in Indiana, which I love about the nonprofit world, is we all want to help each other because we're helping the same people.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Yeah. Okay, that's super interesting. So let's talk a little bit about like the actual women farmers that you are working with. What is can you can you share a little bit about like what life looks like for them? We briefly touched on like what life for your mom as a hobby farmer looked like, which is, you know, probably small beans compared to what someone who's on a farming business, right? Like an operating a big farm looks like. Talk to me a little bit about like what have you learned about what that life can look like for a farming mom.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Yeah, a farming mom. It's really a mix. It kind of depends what generation you're in. Where are you in your motherhood or your career journey? I mean, which a lot of us, no matter what business you're in, are dealing with. And I said before this podcast, I feel like this is such a pertinent topic because the UN declared 2026 the International Year of the Woman Farmer. So I'm really glad to be like talking, not on behalf of them, but for them. So um, yeah, it's it's a mix. You know, some of them work directly on the farm. That is their job is to be on the farm, whether it's in operational decisions or it's bookkeeping, like being in the tractor or in the combine, depending on the season involved in decisions with their livestock or the seeds or just whatever they're dealing with. Um, and then there's some who do work full-time jobs. Um, this is for a number of reasons. The market for agriculture is always changing. Um, you know, especially this past year with different tariffs going into effect, losing some relationships globally, or at least relationships globally being deeply impacted, it's volatile. You don't know, are you gonna be able to sell your products or all of your commodity? Where is it gonna go? Having kind of that full-time, we know that this income is coming in no matter what plays a part, but also the health insurance. Um, for those, I mean, this is anybody who's a business owner, yeah, you are in charge of your own health insurance. So having someone in the family working a full-time job where there are insurance benefits, that is something the entire family benefits from. Um, I my root one of my roommates when I was early on living here in Indy, she came from Colorado. And um, I remember shit saying, like, my family never had insurance because it was they they had a farm and it wasn't was too expensive to have insurance. Like we never had health insurance. This is wild to me. Like we went to the doctor for the silliest of things, I felt like as a kid, because we always had health insurance. So that's not the case that I've heard of recently or or with the women farmers that I work with, but that definitely plays a role in whether someone in the family has an outside job. Okay, that is so interesting.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

I also never thought about this is very eye-opening, even living in the Midwest and surrounded by farms if I drive 35 minutes from where I live in the city. But it's so eye-opening to think about. One, that sometimes it doesn't financially make sense for both people to be working at the farm for a multitude of reasons and like the ups and downs. I know there's a lot in the news when all of the tariff stuff was happening around the impact to agriculture and farmers, at least in Minnesota. We heard a lot about that, but the volatility of that job, which is so crazy knowing that it literally is what's feeding the entire world and country, that it could be, you think about like recession-proof jobs, right? I've always been in corporate America and graduated high school in 2012, and you know, the job market's been up and down. And I remember my dad saying, Sadie, try and find a recession-proof job, which we have all learned there is no such thing. But you would think that farming would be something that would be more recession-proof, because like we cannot function as a society without food. So that is actually wild. I also didn't even think about the fact that I just, again, I'm probably being very small-minded, but in my head, I'm thinking about like, even if you have an industrial farm, even if you have a big farm, that your role as the parents is to be out there in the combine or in the barns. And while that might be true, to think about the fact that also someone might be doing the bookkeeping almost full time, someone might be doing operations almost full time because it is a full business. And then literally, my mind is blown about this insurance thing because I have plenty of friends who own businesses, and that is a big conversation they have. And I have friends who have literally like their family has a very successful business, but one of the parents, the dad or the mom, will go and get even a job working. I think it's like 26 hours per week or 30 hours per week, because that's when you qualify for health insurance, because it literally is cheaper for them to have someone making, let's say, 30K and get health insurance at a lower stress job than trying to pay for private health insurance. And it blows my mind as a society. Obviously, we know society is not keeping up with life, but we know that all as dual income families with children and childcare costs and the cost of life. But it blows my mind in a world like agriculture, which I'd be curious if you know this percentage, but like what percentage of the country, let's say, is in agriculture that we haven't created a healthcare system for them. That is actually wild to me.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

Yeah. I mean, gosh, I I don't have that data of like what percentage of the country work in agriculture. I mean, um, I will say, you know, you brought up like industrial farms. That's actually not, I mean, it is a real thing, but 95 to 98% of farms are family owned. Like it's actually family-owned. It's not this large corporation that owns this farm. Now, like a large corporation might pay or work with a family to grow their specific um crop. Like there's a lot of families in India that's that grow red gold tomatoes. So if you've seen red gold tomatoes on cans or ketchup or other things, um, that's something. But 95 to 98% of the farms in the US are family owned.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

And then in that case, do not have, they have to go through private insurance, which is wild.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Yeah. Depending, I mean, again, I don't have the specific stats, but depending on what their situation is, is you know, again, it just depends is there's someone in the family that's working outside the farm and getting that health insurance. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

My gosh. Okay, talk about adding to the mental load. Uh Brian just said, like, do we need health insurance? How good of health insurance do we need we need? Also, we're in an environment. Well, you're in an environment where injuries can happen. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

If you're on a family farm, like that is so wild. I I worked in environment health and safety for most of my career still. Like that was the nine of my first 10 years out of college. And um agriculture, and again, I I have not looked up the news stats because I've stepped away from the safety side, but at one point, agriculture was like the number two most dangerous business you can be in because of all the factors. Like you're working with large machinery, you're working with animals. You know, you can't control animals 100%. Um, there's just so many other safety hazards. We call them like life critical injury things. I'm probably getting way too much into the weeds there, but that's things where you are at risk of losing a limb or life. Totally.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

That has you hear about those stories, right? Of someone, especially kids that live on these family farms, because they are sometimes they are operating the big machinery because that is the lifestyle. Uh, and they're near the big machinery, they have access to the animals, all of these things that feel very normal. But yeah, no, that is actually just like absolutely, completely blowing my mind. I want to shift gears slightly and talk about how if you think about a family farm, I had this realization as I was prepping for this episode, family farms were probably one of the first examples of a work-from-home mom. Yeah. And what I mean by that is before the COVID era, before people were doing this hybrid work or remote work, as you mentioned, there are so many roles to play on a family farm. Yeah. And if you have one of these family farms, you are contributing to the family, but there is still a household to run. Yeah. And I would love to talk about like how do women in agriculture deal with this? Like, how do they balance having the full-time job of a family farm, the full-time job of a household to run? And what are your thoughts on gender roles when it comes to something like farmers? Because I think we still, to this day, when we draw a picture of a farmer for our kids or we read a book about farming, 99% of the time it's a man. Yeah. In the farmer overalls, going to the the barn, you don't often see women farmers represented, but it sounds like they have a pretty heavy presence in this world.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

Yeah. That's a I mean, I think that's kind of a consumer judgment of farms that it is men, but like 58% of US farms, at least one woman is involved in the decision making. But um, I think the stat that I saw was it's like less than 10% or around 9%, where it's fully female operated. So again, that disparity. But again, it's very much a family business. So kind of like how is that course correspond? At least over over 50% a woman is involved in decision making. But what does the public see as them in leadership roles? But I love that for the boards that I serve, I serve three boards. Um, two of them, the president or the chair, is a woman. So I love that. I love it. I love it too. We have really awesome women leaders on our boards. And and also really like again, not to give credit to to the men too. Um, I know of at least one or two of the men on our boards where they married into their wife's family business. It was not they married into so I love that little fact, not to not to like divert to the patriarchy, but but I love that. But um you mentioned kind of that work from home. I think we those of us in this generation who did the whole COVID and kids at home, I was my daughter, my oldest was born during COVID. So totally different experience with the birth of my first child versus the birth of my second, where I was came back to the office right away. I wasn't at home for another year. It's, you know, we see that it's not maybe some feasible for some, but like working from home, it's not easy or I think even recommended to do with kids home 100% of the time. Because your attention is just so diverted. Now, think of it in these like large family operations, like a farm, it's not your nine to five. Like, oh, I open my computer at nine, I plug, plug, plug away, and then it's 5 p.m. I check out, and it's time to like shift to the family home. Like a lot of these operations, the women and the men, but like the women live, work, childcare, all that in the same general area, depending on how close to the family operation that they live. And it in agriculture, animals, weather, seasons, they don't adjust for school schedules, sick days, maternity leave. It demands presence all the time. At the same time, motherhood is demanding that presence, right? You can't, like during planting or harvest season, sometimes you're working within a very small window of time based on the weather, what the soil looks like. Is it the right time to get seed in the ground if there's a like if there's a cold spell that's gonna come through or if it's gonna rain too much? Like you have to get out there and get things in the field. Doesn't matter how early in the day it is or how late in the evening it is. Um goes for harvest, you know, you need the you need your crop to be at a certain moisture level, you know, to be harvesting and is it ready? And then we don't want to wait too long either. So there's just this, there's so many, so much decision making involved in having a family farm. And it's not nine to five. I get to unplug and just enjoy time with my family because it like the farm doesn't wait, right?

SPEAKER_01 29:44

Like it just, it's like it's it's it's as needed, whatever comes up, and you probably have to pivot in a way that we don't. I mean, we all pivot, right, in our different jobs because a project ends or something different happens or someone leaves the company, and we all have to pivot at home because we wake up with a sick kid in the night, and then we have to figure out the next day. I think we can all empathize with the pivoting. I think the difference is for so many of us that work a traditional corporate job is when my kid is homesick, is it inconvenient that I can't log on or I'm half present or picking and choosing what I'm doing that day because I'm sitting with a kid in the bathroom or I'm laying on a couch with a kid. But we don't think of the one-for-one of if I don't get out today and harvest something or plant something, that's a direct impact to my family's bottom line. Yeah. It's like it's like owning a business on steroids, right? Because I think, especially in urban areas, a lot of people have a side hustle or they run some type of business and there's that mindset of if I don't work, I don't make money. That is very true. But you can pre-plan to like get ahead and catch up. If there are those things, like you want to take a vacation or someone gets sick or injured or whatever that might be. I think farming is so unique in the sense of if something unexpected comes up and it takes you out of work for a week, that depending on the week that you get taken out of work, could be wildly detrimental to that year for you, or your bottom line, or your crop that year. So I think just the pressure of that is on an insane scale that we don't even recognize, especially because farming has been around literally forever.

SPEAKER_02 31:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

Right? Like it's just this assumption. Like we know that seeds go on the ground, food comes up, it gets picked, it gets put in a truck, and I'm oversimplifying, it ends up at the grocery store, we go into an Aldi, we go into a Target, and we go and get our groceries and we make ourselves food, whether we're organic or non-organic. And I think we know in the basic most basic of terms, like how that all happens, but when we sit here and I am guilty of this complaining about the stress and anxiety of trying to have a full-time job where I'm working 40 or 50 hours a week and taking care of my three kids and trying to be a good wife and sister and daughter, I recognize as we're talking the privilege I have, and it's decision in some ways, but but the privilege I have that like I can take a day off work, I can plan a vacation and put an out of office on, and the company I work for is not gonna fold, you know, and like my paycheck is gonna be the same because I have this PTO and like that is so different in agriculture. It's just it's actually just so interesting to me.

SPEAKER_00 32:26

Yeah. I mean, there's definitely certain seasons, depending on what kind of agriculture business you own, um, where you can take time off and everything. Yeah. But, you know, weather dependent, if you have livestock, you know, how many, how many of your sows or or your cattle are due to birth. Like if you have dairy cattle, there's certain times a day you gotta milk them. I mean, if you press fed, you you understand the timing.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

Yes, yes, it brings me back. It brings me back. And like you'll know, right? Like they're like those cows are gonna let you know when they're ready. I mean, obviously, that they're ready to get milk because they're uncomfortable. We all know what it feels like when you're like trying to drop a feed and you're like, Oh my Hannah, I have got to do something about this. I'm so uncomfortable right now. So okay, so this is so interesting. Let's talk a little bit about in rural communities, what does the village look like? Well, actually, let me back up. When I talk about a village, I always talk about the village that you're born into, which is your family, right? Your aunts and uncles, your parents, your grandparents, your cousins, et cetera. Then the village you pay for. When we think about services, whether it's daycare or whether it's a cleaning service or grocery delivery, and then the village that you create, which is the village, your friends, it's your community, it's your the other parents at school. And when you think about that framework of a village in a rural community, can you talk a little bit about what that village actually looks like in a rural community and where might parts of that village be harder to come by?

SPEAKER_00 33:52

Yeah. So, I mean, as I said, between 95 and 98% of farms are family owned. And a lot of that you'll see multi-generational. So you might have support within your own family network depending on what that family operation looks like. And I'm not going to speak like specifically on behalf of anybody about that. But there is a childcare gap between the rural areas and the urban areas. And it's less about affordability. I think those of us in urban areas, it's a lot about affordability. Also, you know, availability too. I mean, you see that as well. But on some areas like formal childcare, very minimal formal childcare exists. A about it was like it's like less than 30% of families can find childcare within five miles in rural communities. Many must drive 10 plus miles. Now, to put that in a like context, where I grew up, middle of nowhere, we didn't have a neighbor, like two miles both ways on our road. So it takes 10 minutes to get somewhere that's 10 miles away. Like I always went by, oh, it's 10 miles away, it'll take me 10, maybe 15 minutes to get there. Um, in in an urban area, I think that's more like a half hour to get to some place like that's 10 plus miles away. But still, I mean, you're having to plan your day around pickup and drop off as a parent. Um, and how far do you got to go? Is it is it reliable child care? Is it valuable child care? Those are things that that you have to take into account. And I know that there are a number of like associations, like development associated rural development associations, even like some government officials always are kind of like looking at how can we support the rural communities, especially when it comes to childcare. But that is a gap that you see between urban and rural areas.

SPEAKER_01 35:45

And so it's more about what I'm hearing you say, is it's it's less about like in in urban areas, right? You're like, oh my gosh, more than half of my paycheck is going to pay for child care, and they can just charge us whatever they want. The gap there, and I could be on the soapbox all day, is that our child care providers don't make that much money, but yet I'm spending thousands of dollars on childcare, and it's so frustrating. It just is also frustrating. But what I'm hearing you say, it's it's maybe less about the cost, but more about the availability. And we definitely deal with availability issues in the urban areas. There's more people, right? And it depends on the state that you're in as well. But you're saying that while me, I might have 15 different child care centers within 10 miles of my house or 15 miles of my house. And I really do get to choose as far as the programming that's available, the convenience to drive there, the hours they have, the price, the ability to get all of my kids in or not. You're saying truly, you might be looking at a 20-mile radius and there might be one childcare, true childcare center, or a couple in-homes in a child care center, but it's just like the actual number of spots to go to are just less because it's not a booming industry for childcare out in the rural communities.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

Even back in my hometown, I I can name one childcare center that I can think of. That both my sister and I went to, and I think it's still there, but now it's part of the school system. Um and then the rest are in-home or babysitters or grandparents. But we already discussed that's that's changing too. Um parent availability.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

What are you what are your thoughts on like the second village I mentioned for the rural community of like the village you pay for? So obviously daycare fits into that. But one thing I talk a lot about is when you're an ambitious, unapologetic working mom, sometimes you have to give up some of these idealistic responsibilities or like the mental load, which might be laundry. Like my family utilizes a laundry service. We utilize uh a house cleaner, we have grocery delivery. And my assumption is like some of that doesn't even exist in some of these rural communities. I even know I have friends who live right outside the city, and I wouldn't even argue, I wouldn't even say it's a rural community. And it took years for a target delivery to be available to them, right? So, like, yeah, what about things like that? Can you talk to me a little bit about when you when you think about things that you can outsource to relieve the household responsibilities? What what kind of access do our do our farmers in rural communities have?

SPEAKER_00 38:17

So, I mean, that's a good question. I can speak from personal experience. Like my folks, they for as long as I can remember, they always had someone to help with like help with cleaning the house once a week, which I understand reflecting now with like how I use my budget, is um I like price and all that look totally different. So I think I think you can still find those things, tree delivery thing. I think that's fairly new. I think now you're seeing a little bit more of that. Um, but it really depends on where you are. Um there's there's some farms that are within, you know, a certain amount of mileage to to some um to like larger stores. But like again, I'll just speak from personal experience. It took 25 minutes to get to Walmart where I lived, you know. Yeah, yeah. Over an hour to get to a mall. Like now, you know, I hate to say it, I Amazon Prime so many things and order in so many things, but it was like a whole day event for my family to go and buy clothes for the school year. Like we would leave early, have lunch at the mall, and buy clothes, and then go out to eat for dinner and then arrive home when it's dark out.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

So yeah, okay. So I guess I didn't think about that. And that's just a good point is you know, Amazon Prime has probably changed a lot of access to things, which I hate to say it, but like, I mean, it's convenient living in the urban areas. I can't imagine being like, oh my God, I don't want to drive 25 minutes for vitamins, but I'm out of vitamins and being able to Amazon Prime that to my home. Yeah. So, okay, that's really interesting. Let's talk about the mental load. What when we think about the mental load in the urban areas, we talk a lot about running the household. We talk a lot about getting kids signed up for camp. We talk a lot about finances, activities. What might look different about the mental load for women in agriculture?

SPEAKER_00 40:16

I think, I think something that we have not touched on yet, we we talked about the volatility of the market and like are my products, are my commodities, are my livestock, are they gonna be sold? Is our farm gonna be profitable? The other big thing that is talked about a lot at the conferences I attend and internally with various families is succession planning. So, you know, if if you think about kind of a normal family when you're when you're talking about wills and trusts and things like that and how things are passed down, it's you know, you're dealing with a lot or you're dealing with a little. Like we're talking about entire businesses and operations that go down family to family to family, multiple generations. And that is something that you know, women farmers and their families have to consider. So the average age of US farmers are is 58 years old. So that means in the next 10 to 20 years, most farms are gonna be changing hands. And there's all these things you have to figure out when it's a family farm. Is do any of the children want to continue the farm? What if more than one wants to continue the farm? How do you split things? Do you split things equally? Do you how are we going to preserve the farm as a viable family business if there are multiple owners or multiple families part of it? How will it be split? How do we handle if anyone ever wants to sell their portion? Um there's different financial strains and burdens. Like successors often have to buy into the operation, take on the debt, or they wait for the inheritance. And you're talking about being like maybe land rich. We know how expensive land is. Anybody who's had to buy a home in the last 10 years understands how much it costs to just own land. And the successors have to buy into that somehow. But where do you get the funding or the resources? Um, I was at a conference and I'll like shout out because this is actually a social media account, someone who's an influencer in the agriculture committee, farm with Zoe. This woman, she I think is around 30, but she took over her family farm in the last like four or five years. And all that went into it as far as loans and in what increments, and then she's got siblings who don't want to be part of the farm, but like you still have to understand assets, how you divide assets and all that. And she did a such a good job explaining it, and that's something that like even as a non-farming family, it's so hard to talk about is like what happens next, who gets what. And and parents, I think our parents are changing a little bit, but when I even think about um my grandparents and how they handled how things happen when when they die, or the family inherits things, um, it's it's an uncomfortable topic, but these are family operations, and 2,000 acres a day are lost to non-agricultural uses. And you think about we still have to feed the population, we still have to have this farming and agriculture economy to feed the world, and we're losing agricultural land to non-agricultural uses. We have to think about the succession planning and talking about it. So I think that's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 43:33

Emily, I want to I want to clarify something. When you say we're losing land to non-agricultural uses, can you give me an example of that?

SPEAKER_00 43:39

Do you mean like housing developments? It's housing developments, it's data centers. That's a huge thing right now. I'm seeing that in the news a lot, and I'm also seeing like various legislation get passed or considered at the state level when talking about that. And there's a couple other controversial topics on how land can be used that was. Wants agricultural land. So with that rate, and I saw this on there's an organization called the American Farmland Trust that is committed to like saving and protecting farmland. We're at risk of losing 18 million acres by 2040. And that's roughly the size of North Carolina. So but it's, you know, how do how do these family farms continue when they need to buy into it somehow? Like the successors have to buy into it. Yeah. So I mean, that's just a huge thing. Can can they afford to do it? Can they afford to keep it on, especially in a volatile market? And that's why with what we do, we're always trying to find ways to open markets for the farmers and for their commodities. So they always are able to sell. We are looking at new uses, we're looking at research and different ways that like corn and soybeans and and for other ones that it indirectly works with are able to sell their commodities and their products.

SPEAKER_01 45:02

So interesting. Can we also talk about a little bit around what are some common misconceptions about farms? And what are I think what do people assume? Like we talked about some of my assumptions about farms, right? You get up, you milk your cow, you kind of walk around, jump in your combine. Like I know it's a lot of work, but the assumption of how it's like coming to my table. Can we talk a little bit about some some common misconceptions or assumptions people make about the agriculture business or how families run their agriculture business?

SPEAKER_00 45:34

You know, I think just to highlight a few things and bring it full circle on misconceptions, um, we already talked about how close to 100% of farms are family-owned. It's not these big industries. I think also when there's some misconceptions and quite off, quite honestly, kind of a negative connotation sometimes around farming and how it affects the land and pesticide use and animal welfare and all that. And there's always going to be bad guys in every industry. But the majority, the majority of these farmers, they care about their land. They want it to last generation after generation. They're committed to trying new conservation and sustainability efforts to protect that land for their children and grandchildren. They also care deeply about their animals and making sure that they're healthy and well taken care of. And then I think for general consumer knowledge, you know, science is needed to continue to grow the right amount of crops for our growing population with less and less land. So we need to welcome science that helps us do that. And I came from a corporate world where it is, you know, it takes 10 years for certain science to go to market to make sure that it's safe for everybody. So those are just kind of some general misconceptions, I think, where there's that gap between consumers and producers. Yeah. That is really important to like talk about. I'm seeing less and less of a divide in gender roles, to be completely honest, which is awesome to see. I mean, yeah, again, there is a large portion of our board that are men, but we have very active women members and women leaders who are so engaged and so taking on leadership and coming to these events and coming to these conferences and going out and talking to communities and legislators about what is important to them and their operations. I think what you can kind of see when we talk about like what you can kind of see is the timing of women taking over in the farm. Um, when we talk about like the average age is 58. All right. If we think about our own parents, so my parents are 63, turning 63, I'm 35, like where they are hitting that retirement age is the same age where like it's colliding with motherhood, like pregnancy, raising young children, peak caregiving years. So it's how much of a leadership role can you take on when your worlds are colliding with um with motherhood. But I think it's so important for women to continue to have a voice in agriculture and to represent it. And we are seeing more and more take over the family farm. Again, I mentioned that farm with Zoe, but her husband has no involvement in the farm. She took it over. And I think that's just awesome. And I like seeing that. But again, it's having good partners no matter what that looks like.

SPEAKER_01 48:37

How can the rest of the community, right? So many of my listeners, so many of my listeners are in urban settings. How can moms, in particular in urban settings or families in urban settings, best support farmers? That is such a good question.

SPEAKER_00 48:52

I think the biggest thing is just educating yourself, going directly to the sources. Look at org websites or.gov websites to really get pertinent and real information. You know, I talked about how I support Indiana corn and soybean farmers. In most states, there are these associations run by farmers. When you and I were just chatting leading up to this, I looked it up what's in Minnesota. And there is a Minnesota Corn Board, a Minnesota Soybean board, and a Minnesota, I think it was like vegetable growers, vegetable and fruit growers board. So I like looking up opportunities maybe to interact with them when they are at um community engagement. We we go to museums around here, we go to events and have booths. One of my co-workers was just at a hockey game with a booth about Indusoevian farmers. I know it's extra work. We all have so much extra things, but um, if you're ever at a place where there is a real farmer there, I think talking directly to them and then also looking at those.org or dot gov websites to get information is really important. Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 50:02

Okay, well, this has been so informative. This has been so interesting. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I will make sure I tag you in all of our socials so everyone can check you out, Emily, and make sure that they're continuing to support local farmers and just recognizing that although the day-to-day life of a rural family or a rural mom, especially living and working on their family farm, is going to look different. There's so much crossover in the way we balance and we juggle the mental load, the responsibility, the succession and success of our family. And so just remembering that we are all in this together. But Emily, I can't thank you enough. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. Thank you for having me. This was a lot of fun. Awesome. Thank you. Okay, that's it. Thanks for joining this episode of Who Let Me Do This. Go drink some water, set a boundary, and don't forget, you're doing amazing, sweetie, even if you're spiraling. And hey, if this episode made you laugh or feel seen, send it to a friend, hit follow, or leave a review. You know, do all the things. See you next time.