OFI 1196: Everyday Tasks Can Support A Farm | Re-Cap Episode | Elisabeth Watkins

On tomorrow’s Friday episode I am profiling a woman who supported her families farming lifestyle for 30 years selling Tupperware, driving all over Kansas and Nebraska and working six nights per week. I like my re-cap episodes to flow into my Friday episodes, and I thought this previous interview with Elisabeth Watkins would be perfect. Elisabeth turned something that we all have to do, cooking, into an art form and then into a regular television appearance in Sacramento, California. And, she did this all while she was in the FFA at Central Catholic High School in Modesto, California.

Both of these women took tasks that had to be done everyday in their homes and saw the possibility to take it further. This shows that entrepreneurship does not have to be inventing a new software program. All it takes is a will to make it and a creative outlook.

SHOW NOTES

INTRODUCING ELISABETH WATKINS!

Where can farming take you? A better question is, “is there anywhere that farming cannot take you”? I mean this question very seriously. It is all just a matter of your perspective and outlook. How do you look at what you are doing in agriculture? Does it stop with the sale of your calves or harvest of your crop? Or, is does it go well beyond and into the other aspects of your life. Either answer is fine, but there really is no limit.

Our guest today loves agriculture, loves farming and sees no limits. Elisabeth Watkins, “The Farm Girl Chef” entered a cooking competition at a young age and won it. This really gave her a platform to talk about farming and
agriculture. Now she is being regularly published about her recipes and farm fresh cooking ideas. She also does frequent segments on television in Sacramento, California and has branded herself as “The Farm Girl Chef”. All of this is where she took her love of farming.

SUPERVISED AGRICULTURAL EXPERIENCE: Agricultural Communications

HIGH SCHOOL: Central Catholic High School; Modesto, California

MASCOT: Raiders

FFA ADVISOR: Nicole Morris

CONTACT INFORMATION FOR ELISABETH WATKINS:

Click on the picture below to be taken to the Central Catholic High School Ag. Department’s website:

Elisabeth’s Website: Farmgirlchef.us

Elisabeth’s FFA Advisor’s Email Address: Morris@cchsca.org

Central Catholic High School’s Telephone Number: (209) 524-9611

FFA LINKS:

National FFA Organization

Supervised Agricultural Experiences (SAE’s)

Support FFA

Donate to FFA – One way that FFA students are able to start small businesses is through an FFA grant of $1,000. In 2014, 141 FFA students received these grants. With your donations, more students can get this head start – pay it forward.

REASONS TO DONATE TO FFA:

Only 2% of Americans grow and raise most of the food and livestock consumed by the other 98% as well as the rest of the world. FFA is providing the needed education, training and resources to Americans that will carry that torch forward and insure that America continues to have inexpensive, quality food.
Rural Communities will rely on entrepreneurship in the future for population growth and job creation. The FFA is a major catalyst to that entrepreneurial growth.
Farmers, ranchers and those working in agriculture give the rest of America incredible amounts of freedom because the search for food is as simple as going to the grocery store:

“Because American farmers are able to provide for so many of us, they give more and more of us the freedom to pursue goals and livelihoods beyond growing the food we need to survive.”

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack