I’m a Field Mom!

(First off, let’s start off with addressing the elephant in the post – that’s a horrible cell phone picture – but I didn’t have my real camera with me!  And I’m not pregnant, despite the bump.  Three years after I had my last child I can still blame that on pregnancy, right??) 

Anyway!  I’m so, so excited to finally be able to share this news – I got picked to be a Field Mom!  You can find out more info here; this is a program from the Illinois Farm Families.  As a Field Mom I’ll get to tour Illinois farms and see firsthand the processes food goes through before it comes to our stores and our dinner tables.

I can’t wait to start this journey with the other Field Moms.  Our first tour is coming up soon (next weekend!), and I’m a weird combination of crazy excited and super nervous.  Crazy excited because seriously – this is probably a once in a lifetime experience for me to get to be a part of something like this.  How many people actually apply to be part of a program and get PICKED?  (Okay, okay, apparently a lot – there are 10 Field Moms, and my best friend was picked to be in the Daily Herald’s Fittest Loser contest this past year – I wonder if she and I are statistical anomalies or what?)  Anyway, I’m rambling.  That’s the excited part coming out!

Nervous though, for a few reasons.  One, this is a rather large group of women spending hours and hours together, presumably in the middle of nowhere (I can say that since I’ve LIVED in the middle of nowhere, right?), in an environment that is probably going to be pretty foreign to most.  And I don’t know any of them personally (although I do read some of their blogs).  I’m also a shy person by nature.  Yeah…this will be FUN, right??  Right!  :o)  (Seriously though, I met them all last night and everyone seems awesome – phew!)

Other reasons I’m nervous include:  the possibility of seeing things I’d rather not see and having to turn vegetarian, getting into a car accident when I’m hours away from a major hospital, and getting to our first tour only to be told that there was some kind of massive mistake and I wasn’t actually picked to be a Field Mom.  Can you tell I overthink things? 

Anyway, I’m really looking forward to this journey, and to documenting my experiences and sharing them with you all, both on the watchusgrow.org site and here.  I will have a dedicated Twitter account set up to tweet about the program, and I’ll let you guys know that name as soon as I know it myself!  In the meantime if you have any questions or concerns about food or farming that you’d like addressed, let me know and I’ll try to get answers for you on our tours!  Thanks for sharing this with me!