A few weeks ago, I attended a dinner hosted by a local farm girl group in New Orleans.
A group of girls from the local farm group sat around a table and talked about how they all got their start in farm life.
I was curious about what the group had in common, so I asked the girls what they had been doing since they were little.
“I’ve always been a farmer,” said one of the girls.
“And I love it.”
I was intrigued.
I’d never heard of her before.
She’d recently been on a television show that aired in Louisiana, and the show featured a young girl from a nearby farm.
“It was an honor to be on this show,” the girl said.
She didn’t say where the show was airing.
I asked her if she knew any of the other girls.
She said, “They’re really amazing.”
“I don’t know who they are, but I think they’re the coolest girls around.”
“What are you going to do when you grow up?”
I asked.
“That’s up to you,” the farm girl replied.
“You have a farm, and you’ve got your own family and you’re not gonna have kids.”
“You know what?”
I said.
“No, I don’t.”
“No.”
“Well, you’re gonna have your own life.
But I’m just telling you, you are a farm girl.”
I looked around the table.
Everyone seemed pretty positive.
The girls all seemed very happy and excited.
“Yeah, we’ll be farmers,” one girl said, then added, “I mean, I have a little farm in the backyard, but we’ll get on with it.”
They all seemed pretty happy.
“Well,” the host said, smiling, “what’s the big deal?”
They laughed.
“So, you know what?
We’ll do whatever you want.
And we’ll try and be a good farm girl too.”
“Okay, but you’re never going to get to that.
Because there’s no farm.”
The host said it was time for another round of questions.
“The reason you want to grow up on a farm is because you want it to be safe,” the girls said.
They were all nodding their heads.
“Why?”
I wondered.
“Because you’re going to be around your kids, and they’re going, ‘Oh my God, what’s happening here?’
So you have to be a strong mother and a good mother.
You gotta make sure your kids get their food.
You have to have them help you.”
“So you have your family and a lot of other stuff,” the hosts said.
The girl nodded her head again.
“Oh yeah, right.”
“Yeah.
Yeah.”
“We’re not going to have children.”
“It’s not the right thing for your kids to do,” the actress answered.
“They have to grow.
They have to learn.”
The hosts laughed.
I wondered what they thought the kids were going to grow into.
The farm girl said she’d like to have kids someday.
“If I’m going to see kids grow up, I want to be able to see them grow up with me.”
“Yes,” I said, wondering what kind of questions she would ask.
“But I’m not sure you’re ready to ask.”
“Right,” the audience agreed.
I had no idea if the farm girls were being serious.
I couldn’t tell if the girls were joking.
“Okay,” the show host said.
I went back to the girls and asked them again.
They all nodded.
“Alright, then.
But you gotta keep your family together,” the director of the farm group said.
Then the producer of the show asked the group if they wanted to continue.
“Sure,” the group said, before the producer asked them a series of questions about what they wanted their lives to look like.
“A lot of the time,” the producer said, the girls laughed.
The producer asked the producers about their children, who had grown up on the farm.
One of the producers said, I think we’re gonna do something for our children.
“What would it be?” the producers asked.
The producers were a little perplexed.
They asked, “What do you want?”
“To be a farmer.”
The producer continued, “But you can’t really have kids.
You can’t have kids because they’re too young.”
The producers nodded their heads, but the producers didn’t know what to say.
“How about your daughter?” the producer pressed.
The group nodded.
The next question asked, Would you like to work on a small farm, on a horse farm, or on a ranch?
The director of that farm group, who was sitting next to the producer, looked at her.”
A small one,” the producers replied.
The director of that farm group, who was sitting next to the producer, looked at her.