Women in Ag: Anne Miller

This weekend, a dear friend down the road several miles called me with an SOS. Every nook and crannie of her kitchen was STILL filled with tomatoes, apples, peppers, onions and plums, all despite her best efforts to can, juice, bake and freeze the bountiful harvest into submission. Having my own nightmares about spare apples from time to time, I loaded the kids into the car and headed to help.

When I married a County Extension Agent, I knew life would be different. People that like us try not to emphasize the "different" part too much. Doesn't everyone collect dead bugs for their husband's office? For the record, the same is true for men with Extension Agent wives as well. It's kind of a cool club......

The heat of summer, with its slowly slanting light and harvest smells, transports me to my most meaningful (and craziest) set of summer jobs in college. The one that mid-way through, I was sure I was going to die of either caffiene overdose or falling out of a cherry tree. Or maybe, just maybe, both at the same time.

In times of War and Peace, a farmer should be allowed a little Pride and Prejudice in rewriting the Classics.

As you may have noticed, my writing took a bit of hiatus for chunks of February and March. And you, dear reader, might have thought," Well, perhaps her husband read her Valentine's Day post and took her to the islands." Or maybe you thought the pile of seed catalogs tipped over and I required extensive extraction. I only wish. There is a four letter word to describe my life in the last 1.5 months...P-E-D-V.

This week, I decided to help the arrival of Spring by driving to my favorite flower section at Albertsons. Since buying the entire department might leave a lot of explaining with the husband, I settled on several market bunches. It was so tempting to go down to Aisle 10, buy a lawn chair and offer to just sit in Floral armed with a hose to help them water and sample chocolates for the customers. 

 It is Valentine’s Day and nothing says I love you like a new pair of hiking boots. I’m not even joking.

This week at our state pork industry’s annual meeting, I watched something awesome happen.  It happened so quietly….so carefully…that it could have been easily missed. But it wasn’t. By anyone.

I don't know about the rest of you, but this week here in Montana has meant -40F windchills and long underwear of the not-so-sexy variety. However, the spring seed catalogs have begun to arrive and life is almost tolerable. Minus the extreme efforts in keeping my coffee hot on the way to the grocery store. Here are ten great things about seed catalog season...

A lot of people would rather have a root canal than work on estate planning. And, really, who wants a root canal over a holiday? As someone that has eaten a lot of Christmas candy (and had a lot of root canals), I’m here to argue that crafting the recipe for the family farm doesn’t have to be a tooth-pulling venture.