Annie's Project: Sara's Story
Sara Shepherd is taking over her family's farm. Annie's Project helped her ask the right questions as she and her father made the transition.
Sara Shepherd is taking over her family's farm. Annie's Project helped her ask the right questions as she and her father made the transition.
Mother and daughter Rexanne Struve and Brandi Wiig are beginning to look at transitioning the farm from one generation to the next with help from Annie's Project, an educational program for farm women.
Susan Jutz is an agriculturalist from Solon, Iowa. She grows vegetables and has a handful of production animals. She tells us of her passion towards her 80 acre farm and her plans for the future.
Julie Van Waardhuizen is fully engaged in farming with her husband. What she's learned from Annie's Project has helped her become a better farm business partner.
Listen to Patty and Kris discuss their experience with Annie's Project. They came to Ames and learned about retirement, communication, and better business management.
Linda Guy manages the business operations for her family’s farm management company. Linda had a prior career, then moved to her family operation. She took Annie’s Project so she could learn about the business aspect of the family farm operation.
Jenny Hemingway, a farmer from Iowa city discusses her experiences taking Annie's Project and how important it is for women in agriculture to feel supported and empowered!
Sara Shepherd has come a long way since taking her first Annie's Project class in the winter of 2013 and then helping us share her story with the summer of 2013 video. She's taken several Iowa State University Extension and Outreach farm management courses and even become a member of the Adair County Extension Council. As a beginning farmer, Sara has made several key decisions and charted a course for a successful future.
When the creamery that buys the milk from the Moellers dairy farm began requiring farmers to have Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), Gayleen Moellers already had them in place. “I even had them posted on the wall in English and Spanish,” she recalls, “That was fun to say I already have this!” She adapted them from the example SOPs provided by a speaker in the Heartbeat of the Farm: Human Resource Management class she participated in. The class was Gayleen’s third farm management course for women as she previously participated in the Annie’s Project and Women Marketing Grain courses offered by Extension.