'Social support' for women & farm landowners

[Jeff_a_Caldwell]

Just saw some information about a project called Women, Land and Legacy. They strive to provide "social support" for women who own farm ground:

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"Social support is essential to the risk management strategies that women use to understand and validate their experiences, gather information and gain confidence. Our work with women landowners needs to strengthen the connections women have to each other, the land, their families, and the providers of resources that are available to them," says Lois Wright Morton, interim director for the Leopold Center and ISU sociology professor.

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Here's a little more on WLL. Anybody taken part in a group like this? What's your experience? Is something like this helpful, do you think?

[Kay/NC]

The closest I've come to a program like this was an advertisement in the weekly paper from back home in VA.  It arrives bulk mail a week behind, so is ueselss for meeting notices like the one they carried for an Extension program for female landowners.  So, I would have liked to participate, but did not hear of the meeting in time to attend. 

Land stewardship is not easy for anyone coming to that responsibility without an active background on that land, I think.  Relating to the topography and hydrology, the soils and slopes, for example, is enough of a challenge if you've actually worked the fields yourself.  It is much harder if you have an abstract concept of the lay of the land.  I did ntot realize it when I was younger, but I really see it now. 

I was surprised in the article you linked to find out that half of all Iowa farmland is owned by women, and also that this represents only 1500 or so people.  Are there that few people who actually own farmland in the entire state? 

[Kay/NC]

Jeff, I know it isn't exactly what you meant, but this board on this site functions very much in this vein...there is a sisterhood at work here.  We share a lot of farm and family fun and even tragedy, continue the "culture" part of agriculture in our shared recollections, recognizable frustrations, and somedays just by holding onto each other for dear life. 

There is a lot that goes on off of the board, but involving friendships with the people we have met on it.  I do not know if the WLL program formally utilizes the Internet in any way beyond obligatory webpages.  If not, it needs to, starting with SF and you wonderful people who welcome us here.