PEORIA MAGAZINE December 2022

Farmer Anya Irons plants a variety of flowers at Ioerger Farms in Minonk

Kira Santiago of Kira’s Flowers in East Peoria

into schools to give city kids a hands on experience with a live farm animal. Ali Gibbs, 30, was one of those kids. She grew up in Bloomington with no farm experience. Now she confidently runs a combine at the Gibbs family farm in Benson. “The only thing I knewhow to dowhen it came to farming was how to hold up a sign at the grain elevator. But every year I’ve pushed myself to learn more about the agriculture industry,” she said. Marrying into a farm family when she said “I do” to Nathan Gibbs has provided her a whole new outlook, she said. “It’s like (farming) was in my blood.” Ali’s farmexperience extends beyond raising corn and soybeans, the Gibbs family staple. There are chickens, horses and sheep to tend, even a couple of alpaca who protect the sheep from coyotes, she said. Women also are involved in farm related businesses. Two McLean County women started Farm toWick, a do-it-yourself, custom candle business using soy wax that sprung out of the pandemic in 2020. “People were isolated for a year. We knew they needed an activity,” said one of them, Alice Long of Stanford, a 59-year-old grandmother who partnered with Amy Manahan, 47, a resident of Shirley who works for the Growmark seeddivision inBloomington. Long jokes that her partner “burns the candle at both ends” by taking on themobile candle operation along with

Today, Kira’s Flowers operates a successful f lower CSA, supplying weddings and doing business at the Riverfront Farmer’s Market in Downtown Peoria. “The community has really responded,” said Santiago, 32. Women have always been a vital cog in the nation’s agricultural machine, though traditionally playing second fiddle to a spouse or other family mem bers, noted Christine Belless, program coordinator with the University of Illinois Extension for Fulton, Mason, Peoria and Tazewell counties. “But I believe today we hear and see more women in the ag industry making big financial decisions,” she said. “Women have generally thought of their role as secondary but that is not the case,” added Ellen Dearden of Morton, an agricultural analyst since 1980. “More and more ladies are the primary farmers in the operation.” Cheryl Walsh, who operates a large sow farm in Bradford, is an example of a woman who has taken on a leadership role in the agricultural community. A former vice president of the Peoria County Farm Bureau, Walsh will serve as president of the Illinois Pork Producers in 2024. “I do seemore women getting involved in the agriculture industry,” she said. Walsh also is a big believer in helping educate children about where their food originates. As part of the Illinois Farm Bureau’s “Ag in the Classroom” program, she likes to bring a baby pig

a full-time job. Manahan says she has no regrets. “It’s a blessing to reach different people at candle events,” she said. Alongwith serving as a boardmember on the Peoria County Farm Bureau, Kiersten Sheets is involvedwith another kind of farming: solar. An employee of Trajectory Energy Partners, Sheets said the federal funding recently put in place to stimulate solar andwind projects will only increase opportunities for land owning farm families. As chairperson of the Farm Bureau’s local affairs committee, Sheets said events are planned year-round to ed ucate area farmers on everything from beekeeping to woodland management. Dana Vollmer, development director for the Land Connection, a Champaign based organization that seeks to save farmland and train new farmers, said women are also involved in agriculture in other ways, such as running community gardens. “A lot of these women don’t think of themselves as farmers because they don’t have the big fancy tractors and hundreds of acres,” she said. “Instead, they’ll refer to themselves as gardeners even though they are performing the important job of feeding people.”

Steve Tarter is a Peoria Magazine contributor who was born in England, raised in Boston, moved to Peoria to attend Bradley University and decided to stay. He has spent a career in journalism and public relations

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