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anthroknitgal
Farmgirl at Heart
1 Posts
Heather
Medford
OR
1 Posts |
 Posted - Jan 16 2005 : 1:41:02 PM
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Hello everyone! I am an anthropology student at Southern Oregon University. This year I am conducting my senior project and my focus is women in agriculture. At SOU a senior project consists of a paper, and presentation to your graduating class in your major, and some form of final product that gives back to the community that you are working with. I am looking for women who were raised on or are currently involved in family farms to talk to about their lives in relation to those farms. Although I am interested in what you grow, and how and where you grow it, your participation is not limited by whether or not you are engaged in a specific type of agriculture.
Before I give you the details of the project, let me tell you a little about myself and how I came to be interested in this subject.
I am a 25yr old college student. I will be graduating after this summer 2005 term with a B.A. in Anthropology. I was born here in Southern Oregon but lived in Portland from the age of 4 until coming here to go to school two years ago. Aside from school my other passions are knitting (now more of an obsession), books, animals of almost every kind, my family, and my dream of having my own small organic farm, home schooling our children (none yet), and the wood fire brick bread oven I fantasize about. I have always been fascinated by farming but my interest did not really begin to solidify until going back to school and then when I met my fiancé a year and a half ago. He was raised in a farming family and has been able to provide me with an invaluable perspective. It is our hope that someday we will ourselves have a small farm. As informative as he has been, my main interest has always been the role of women within family farms, both historically and currently, and that is really something that only women themselves can fully offer a perspective on. My senior project is a way for me to explore this interest more fully while honing my anthropological research skills. It is also my hope that through this project I will be able to give the women involved in agriculture more of a voice within the academic world as is it really only recently that it has been fully acknowledged what a complex and important role women have played in their families' farms both in the past and today.
As for the project: it will last 6-9 months with the most time-sensitive portion of it being from now until the end of March. I would like to just generally converse with people, conduct interviews, perhaps have a questionnaire for people to fill out, as well as any other ways of coming together to discuss this topic that we can come up with. I am well aware of how busy farm life can be and please be assured that I will respect your other time commitments. I need to quickly address one of the main legal concerns of this research; which is that EVERYONE who participates will have their confidentiality assured. All people and place names will be changed as well as any other details that you as the contact wish to be kept confidential. All interview transcripts will be provided to contacts to edit as desired prior to submitting them for the project. Interviews can be conducted face to face (if feasible), over the phone (I will take responsibility for long-distance), and if necessary, through e-mail and letters. Although I do of course have many questions in mind, my main interest is in what you as a women in agriculture experience and so, even if it is not an already established part of my research parameters, I am interested in anything that you want to tell me about your lives. I do not as of yet know what I would like the final product to be. Because much of the information I hope to gain is not already present in academic research (particularly for the Pacific Northwest), I am unsure as to what would be the most appropriate form of giving back to such a broad community of women in farming families. Some ideas have been, doing presentations of my research to community groups (FFA chapters, granges, etc) or starting a web forum that addresses some specific aspect or concern of women in agricultural families. I would very much like your input on the areas that you specifically as women in agriculture see as needing to be addressed and how that might best be done within this project.
If you are interested in participating please e-mail me. I can address any additional questions or concerns you may have as well as more fully describing the project. I would like to thank all of you for allowing me to post such a long message and even if you do not want to be a participant, to ask questions if you are interested in what I am trying to do. I thank you all very much for your time.
Heather in Oregon
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christine
Farmgirl at Heart
1 Posts
christine
QUILCENE
WA
1 Posts |
Posted - Jan 18 2005 : 12:08:54 PM
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Hello Heather,
We would be glad to participate in your project. My 23 year old daughter and I run a 46 acre organic farm, boarding stable sustainable living workshops etc. You can view our farm at serendipityfarm.org. email address is serendipityfarm@bigplanet.com.
serendipity farm |
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Future Farmer in Oregon w/ Research Interest
