The Beginning...

Hello all and welcome to my spot!  I am going to start with introductions and let you know a little bit of my background.  I was born and raised in a suburb of the great city of Chicago in a town called La Grange Park, Illinois.  It was there that I grew my love for my furry friends and began taking horseback riding lessons when I was 8 years old.  I became instantly attached and started working at the barn caring for the lesson horses as soon as I was old enough.  When it came time for me to graduate high school I was faced with the decision of what agriculture school I was going to attend so that I can study Pre-Veterinary Medicine and pursue my love for animals.  I chose Iowa State University and headed off to begin the most wild ride of my life in the year 2000.
It was there at Iowa State that I (unknowingly at the time) met my husband and fell in love.  Every weekend he would head home from school and drive for 2 hours to help on his family farm.  That was such a foreign concept to me.  Why would anyone want to leave college on the weekends?  Isn't that the time you are supposed to stay and get crazy?  With my peaked curiosity I eventually found a time to head back with him and see what all of this fuss was about.
I was amazed.
How could there have been this whole other world of agriculture and farming that I never knew about in my 23 years of existence?  How could I have eaten food from the grocery store this whole time and never asked the question of where it came from?  Of course we all have that mental image of a farmer that pops in our head anytime someone mentions the name.  Old guy, overalls, piece of straw hangin' out of his mouth, sleepin' on the front porch waitin' for the corn to grow...right?  And in some cases even today, that stands true.  But in other cases it has come light-years from what our mental images portray.  And it is those light-years that has some people feeling frightened and out of the loop about their food and understandably so.
I was so intrigued with the farm that when we got married I vowed to immerse myself knee deep in everything that I could, literally and figuratively.  I needed to catch up on the gap in my life and bring it back home to share with everyone that I could.  There isn't too many people from La Grange

Park, IL that wouldn't be intrigued with listening to a day in the life of a pig farmer.  People needed to know, farmers needed to share, and neither was happening at a very fast rate.
So here I stand, 10 years down the road from that day I said "I do." and nothing excites me more than to share my experiences on the farm through the eyes of a girl with city roots. There is so much that goes on, and so much that is misunderstood or misrepresented when it comes to farming.  I am here to serve as a source to seek out your questions about farming and support to help tell your farming story.
I am a firm believer in freedom of choice, but I cannot stress enough how you need to base your choices off of facts that you know to be true.  There is no better way to find facts about farming than from a farmer himself.
Bear with me as I get my basics down and customize a little bit.  Once I get going I am going to dive in so be ready for an amazing ride!  So hold on and feel free to follow as I dig in and dish out everything I can get my hands on to share with you about farming!