And on This Farm She Found a Future

The farmer had a tanned face, weathered from working in the hot sun and dry air. He took in my clean appearance and small, unmuscular body. "So," he said, "you like to get dirty?"

It was 1998. After working as a cashier for three summers at a local farm during high school, I was moving from behind the register to the seat of a tractor, which I would be maneuvering through the farm's 100-acre vegetable fields. I would be working long hours in the heat of New Jersey's humid summers. I knew I would get dirty—and I couldn't wait.

I wasn't disappointed. When the ground was dry, the field dust caked my skin with a brown film, streaked by the sweat that trickled down my neck. The stickiest job on the farm was grading tomatoes, but I couldn't care less if juice from rotten tomatoes was running down my legs and into my shoes as long as I was in the shade of the barn. During my lunch breaks I lined up at the local deli, where crews of workers seemed to gather like fruit flies on Jersey tomatoes, wearing my baseball hat and clothes so filthy I looked like Pigpen from "Peanuts." The work was tiring, but not exhausting, and I ended each day eager to do it all over again for 10 hours a day, six days a week.

The challenges of farming were not just physical. As a fieldworker on a farm, I was a minority: a woman in a man's profession. Less than 1 percent of Americans claim farming as an occupation, and of those farmers, only 27 percent are women. Although I always felt more comfortable fitting in as "one of the guys" growing up (I traded in my Barbie dolls for a fishing rod a long time ago), I still received comments at work such as "I've never seen a woman work so hard before," and "Women don't sweat. They glow." (If so, I must be a 1,000-watt light bulb.)

When I drove the tractor for agritourism events such as pumpkin-picking hayrides, middle-aged men would take one look at me and question my driving skills. I'd politely smile and say that I'd try not to dump them into the lake on the way to the pumpkin patch.

My family was skeptical about my career path as well. Despite my attraction to farming, my dad often reminded me to choose a job where I would work with my head and not with my hands. He had witnessed his father struggle to support his family as a welder, and wanted an easier life for me. But as much as I respected my dad's words of wisdom, I could not give up my passion for farming and enjoying the fruits of my labor.