SHE’S ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO WE ALL HOPE TO BE”
road a lot of the time. “I think many times we (women) are the people that keep all the balls in the air—we take care of the family, we make sure the bills are paid and we work jobs ourselves,” she says. “There’s something really exciting about taking someone whom no one else would ever know, someone who would never put her hand up and say, ‘Look at all the things I do,’ and showcasing her as a superwoman. It’s one of the absolute best things that I get to do.” Women are crucial to agriculture in this country. In fact, the USDA’s 2017 Census of Agriculture revealed that 36% of U.S. farmers are women, and 56% of farms have at least one female decision-maker. Whether first-generation farmers or those whose family farms have been up and running for centuries, these women have committed themselves to the land they love. Because of Marji and the rest of the dedicated staff at FarmHer,
inspirational stories about these women are easy to find. Take Janna Anderson, a nurse who started farming a plot at a small community garden that eventually expanded to a 57-acre farm and orchard, named Pinnacle Farms, in Arizona. Or meet Teresa Smithmyer, who harvests and smokes sea salt from Bulls Bay and created the first salt company to operate in South Carolina since the Civil War. And then there’s Barbara Mazurek,
a woman who worked into her 80s, single-handedly raising livestock in Utopia, Texas, after her husband passed away in a tragic accident decades earlier. According to Marji, Barb was one of the first FarmHers featured on the television show. “She’s one of those people who we all hope to be: Someone who did good by her community and showed up for her family. Plus, I don’t think she took a lot of crap from anybody. I actually have her picture in my garage and see it every day.” And while many of the women Marji features really do seem to be superheroes, she insists there’s a FarmHer in all of us. “At the heart of who they are, these women are no different than you,” she insists. “They may care about something different from you, but they’re also women just trying to get their kids to soccer practice or figure out their next meal. There’s a piece in each story that connects with all of us.”