Raise a Toast celebrates women in agriculture

About 60 women from around the region attended Farmamerica’s Raise a Toast celebration the evening of Jan. 16. Farmamerica staff members explain the event’s focus is honoring the essential role women play in agriculture.

 

Alongside the evening’s conversation, dinner, and featured speaker were door prizes, gifts, and a three-dimensional photo and video experience that included receiving a personalized photo magnet from Waseca’s Magnetic North, owned by Meghan Larson.

 

The meal, catered by Kendra Hoehn’s Infinity Catering, featured locally sourced foods. A featured “make-your-own-cake” Treat Trolley operated by Amanda Riehm of The Tattooed Baker, offered the chance to choose frosting and toppings for small treats.

 

Speaker for the evening was Becky Harhaj who, with her husband Mike, operates Rebel Rooster Farm near Good Thunder.

 

Becky described a rather sudden move their four-member family made in 2015 to leave the Twin Cities area where they had lived their entire lives and take up residence on a 33-acre farmsite near Good Thunder. At the time, Becky had spent most of two decades in the beauty industry, and had even become an instructor at a beauty college. Mike, she mentioned, is an engineer who continues to operate his business taking advantage of modern electronic information sharing.

 

“We moved in on a Friday,” Becky recalled. “The animals were delivered on Saturday.”  She commented on her own naivete at the time, when she had thought to herself “all they need is food and water.

 

“Somewhere in there I realized I had jumped in with both feet without testing the water first.”

 

The decision to move, she went on to tell, was for the sake of their two sons, both of whom were younger than 10 at the time. “We wanted to give them a quality life. We wanted them to know where their food came from.”

 

Not long after moving to the farm, Becky became pregnant with a daughter who is now 8 years old.

 

Becky said the farm evolved gradually, with various animals having come and gone over time. She mentioned she especially enjoys raising fowl, and so has become familiar with chickens, ducks, quail and guinea hens. The farm keeps beef cattle for personal use and raises both dairy and meat goats.

 

“I wouldn’t trade it for the world,” she stated.

 

Sources of income for the farm, she mentioned, include the sale of frozen chickens, goat milk products including soap, and various other products, commonly at the Mankato area farmers’ market. More information about her farm and its offerings is available online at rebelroosterfarm.com.

 

She said a chief lesson for her has been the importance of “building a strong cohort,” that is, creating a circle of friends who are willing to provide advice, help with projects and tasks, and generally help build a person up.

 

The one thing she misses from her former life, she said lightheartedly, is the ability to have a pizza delivered. “There are some nights,” she stated, “when it would be nice to have a warm meal without having to cook.”