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I’ve talked about some of the activities that Jeremy and I participated in as kids- sports, scouts, etc, but there’s some other activities that also had an impact on who I am today.
Animals
When I was in junior high and high school, my family was involved in 4-H. We started out raising meat rabbits and chickens and gradually added more animals. By the time I graduated high school we’d raised dairy and meat goats, sheep, pigs, chickens, and rabbits.
The pigs, sheep, meat goats, meat rabbits, and meat chickens were only around for 4-5 months a year, before they were sold at the 4-H Auction at the county fair. The rest of the year we still had milking goats, egg-laying chickens, and rabbits to take care of, so we didn’t have any time off from caring for critters.
We learned that caring for animals isn’t easy and takes commitment. It’s hard to go on vacation when you have goats that need to be milked every morning and evening. In fact, we didn’t go on many vacations at all in the years that we had goats. Back then goats weren’t nearly as popular as they are now and it was difficult to find someone willing to take care of them for us.
Working with the animals and helping the vet on her occasional visits to our property helped me decide I wanted to be a pre-vet major in college so I could then go to veterinary school.
Gardens
We always planted big gardens and we got to help weed and take care of the plants. I won’t say we enjoyed it, but we did it. In hindsight, I wish I’d paid more attention, since we’re now starting basically from scratch with our own gardens.
My first job
We were lucky to live just down the road from a u-pick strawberry farm, and from a young age we were able to work there.
It’s very empowering to be working and earning your own money at age 12 and to realize that you’ll get more money if you pick faster, don’t mess around, and don’t eat a lot of strawberries. The farmer was very smart and paid us by the quart, rather than by the hour. The harder you worked, the more you got paid.
As I got older, I was able to help with other tasks around the farm, first picking vegetables, then manning the farm stand/wagon, then helping plant, and so on. It’s a hard life, but I learned so much from the experience.
What was your first job?
