Jessie is Second Harvest’s Farm to Households Coordinator and is sharing at the moment on ladies in agricultural management. On this position, she manages all of Second Harvest’s relationships with native Farmers who present meals to assist us combat starvation. Jessie is a Tennessee native, and holds a level in Agribusiness from MTSU. In 2018, she was named CTE Trainer of the 12 months for Metro Nashville Public Faculties
At present, Jessie shares how her journey in agriculture shapes the best way she defines management, legacy, and repair.
I’ve a vivid reminiscence of sitting in my freshman Agriscience class at Gallatin Excessive Faculty within the fall of 2001, studying concerning the “firsts” within the legacy of the Nationwide FFA (Future Farmers of America) group. A slide appeared exhibiting a girl with fabulous 80s hair smiling again at me as my instructor stated, “That is Pam Farmer, the primary feminine State FFA President in Tennessee.” Pam was an essential girl in agriculture management.
By the point I took that check every week later, I had determined: I need to train agriculture and be an FFA advisor. One essential step in that journey can be working for State FFA Workplace, identical to Pam.
Solely eight college students are chosen every year to function State Officers, touring the state as representatives of agricultural schooling and FFA. After years of preparation and a weekend of interviews and testing, 30 of us stood behind the Gatlinburg Conference Heart ready for our names to be known as. When the envelope for State Vice President was opened, my identify was inside. I ran to the stage, taking all of it in as the remainder of the staff was introduced. As the ultimate identify was known as, a buzz unfold via the room. We regarded down the road and realized… the staff was all ladies. On that day in 2005, we grew to become a “first” – Tennessee FFA’s first all-female State Officer staff.
At first, it felt like a badge of honor. In all places we went, folks congratulated us. Ultimately the greetings included jokes to our advisors: “I wager y’all have your arms full with eight women!” I started to surprise if we’d be remembered for something besides being feminine. Then, throughout a gathering with Tennessee Commissioner of Training Lana Seviers (solely the second girl to carry that place), she advised us one thing I’ve by no means forgotten: “I congratulate you on this accomplishment women. However you’ll know ladies have actually made it when nobody mentions the truth that you’re all feminine.”
That modified every part for me. I ended serious about how we’d be remembered and began specializing in what we would go away behind. Our staff went on to create PLOW (Passing Literacy OnWard), an initiative that’s nonetheless utilized in agriculture lecture rooms at the moment to advertise studying and comprehension via agricultural schooling.
I nonetheless wrestle with balancing the importance of being a “first” with the substance of the work we did. I’m proud to be a type of eight ladies, however 20 years later throughout Ladies’s Historical past Month and Agriculture Month, I hope we’re remembered extra for our influence on college students and the FFA mission than for one thing immutable like our gender. And but, I can’t ignore what got here after. Years later, one in all my college students, Gina (Locke) Stewart, was elected to Tennessee’s second all-female staff in 2011. She too grew to become an agriculture instructor, and one in all her college students, Ella Hasty, was elected to the third all-female staff in 2023: three generations linked by one second.
Time has reshaped how I outline legacy. I simply need to know I stewarded my position properly, whether or not then as State Vice President, throughout my ten years as an agriculture instructor, or now as Farm to Households Coordinator right here at Second Harvest Meals Financial institution of Center Tennessee.
The neighbors we serve will doubtless by no means meet me or the farmers I work with. However they may obtain contemporary, nutritious, regionally grown meals – vegetables and fruit, beef, pork, dairy, eggs, and honey – that fills tables and fuels wholesome households.
That’s the legacy I consider in now: not recognition, however influence. Not being remembered, however exhibiting up each day, in methods massive and small, to like our neighbors properly.
