At the Farm Gate

43 stories

Ag for Every Classroom — Free resources use agriculture to teach core subjects

June 13, 2024

by Joanie Stiers Last summer, a Chicago teacher told me how excited she was to soil her undies for her…

May 2, 2024

by Joanie Stiers The agriculture industry employs more citizens than any other industry in the United States at 22 million…

April 4, 2024

By Joanie Stiers From the cooking oil in the cupboard and the feed in the hen house to the soles…

March 7, 2024

By Joanie Stiers I work every day with the people who raised me. Four desks in the farm office provide…

February 1, 2024

By Joanie Stiers CDL? 10-4. That three-letter acronym for Commercial Driver’s License also stands for one of my biggest life…

January 4, 2024

By Joanie Stiers We hadn’t started changing oil in the tractors, backhoe nor skid steer yet, and our 15-year-old expressed…

December 7, 2023

“I’m sorry; I’m a little Christmas obsessed,” I texted our farm’s scale operator. My attempts to stream holiday tunes through…

November 2, 2023

For years, I triggered curious looks from fellow restaurant patrons while holding my commercial-sized pizza delivery bag. Nowadays, I get…

October 5, 2023

Sometime around age 40, my guilty pleasure food changed to pulled pork nachos: tortilla chips softened with melted nacho cheese,…

September 7, 2023

By Joanie Stiers The gal in the neighboring dorm room rented a U-Haul to transport her belongings to college. Other…

August 3, 2023

Having braved a gravel road, a long driveway and an unleashed outdoor dog, a college intern approached our front steps…

July 6, 2023

My husband fished at the farm. Our son and his friends played paintball-style games in the farm woods. I smoked…