San Diego | From Heels to Boots

I don’t think I could’ve asked for a better weekend, than the weekend I just had. I’m tired as heck from it, but it was well worth it. Friday started out with a drive to Riverside, CA. I visited my brother, Austin at Cal Baptist University (CBU). I love him SO much. He got to show me around his campus (I’d never seen it before!) and I got to meet a few of his friends (Thank you to the sweetest girls ever for letting me crash y’alls apartment!). We also attended the Championship Game of Intramural Football at CBU. It was a pretty legit event complete with an In-N-Out truck and a post-game firework show.

On Saturday morning, I drove further south to Carlsbad, CA. For any non-Californians, Carlsbad is in the San Diego-ish area. There was a California Women for Ag (CWA) statewide meeting happening there. I had connected with the president of CWA, Celeste Settrini, just a week ago on Facebook. We’d never even heard of one another until last week! Celeste told me about CWA and told me that their guest speaker was going to be Amanda Radke, Editor of Beef Magazine and also the author of a wonderful children’s book, Levi’s Lost Calf. Celeste encouraged me to attend so that I could check out CWA. I was pumped to have a chance to connect with more ag women and even more pumped to get to meet Amanda.

You see, the story of how my weekend came to be is the result of social media at its finest. Last week, not only had I met Celeste through Facebook, but I had also connected with Amanda through Facebook via a Rockin’ Rural Women group chat. So I was SO stoked to get to meet two of my social media, agvocate girls in one weekend!

All day Saturday, the CWA ladies toured a few farms in San Diego. We got to check out an avocado farm, a nut farm & a poinsettia farm. My favorite was the poinsettia farm. It was just GORGEOUS. In the Central Valley, we farm a lot of commodities such as corn & cotton…and then there are a lot of dairy farms, but as far as I know, there are no flower farms. *Correct me if I’m wrong, please! So this poinsettia farm was so cool to see because I’ve never seen anything like it before!

The lovely Mellano Farms - poinsettias are on the bottom left

Once the tour was finished, we returned to the hotel to clean up and eat dinner before a special reception where Amanda told us about her book, Levi’s Lost Calf, and did a book signing. Amanda and I got to have dinner together on a pretty sweet patio with an even sweeter table, complete with its own fire in the middle of it! I had such a fun time getting to chat with Amanda. It was great to get to connect with a fellow female agvocate who is my age. We talked about everything from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association conference to clothes to how important beef is in a person’s diet.

After dinner all of the CWA ladies got to socialize even more at the dessert reception. The California Women For Ag are so passionate for agriculture – so getting to connect with people like Celeste (who wears the most wonderful clothes, by the way) & Amanda and all of the CWA members really encouraged me. It reminded me how important the cause for our food is. This past weekend gave me a lot of laughs, but it also inspired me to really embrace how agriculture fits into my life story and to share it. Even though I haven’t grown up on a farm or a ranch like some of these women have, I’ve needed food to eat since I was a day old. We’re all connected to agriculture in one way or another, whether directly or indirectly.

Moral of the story: this weekend was wonderful. I love my Austin. I encourage you to check out Levi’s Lost Calf by Amanda Radke as well as the California Women for Agriculture Facebook page. I’m extremely thankful for all of the new friends that I made and am excited for more CWA events. I also want to challenge you to think about how the story of agriculture fits in to your life. Just think about it. 😉