To Stay or To Go?

Mea Lewis: A Farmer's Foundation

When six-year-old Mea Lewis moved onto a cattle farm in Kentucky with her mother and little sister, she had no idea that she had also become a part of a generations-old community that reached far beyond those 300 acres.

Fascinated by the vast expanse of land and various animals, Mea began helping out around the farm, at first for fun but eventually out of necessity.

She quickly became invested not only in the land and the animals, but in the people as well. "Farming is not just a business," Mea explains. "It's a lifestyle, a livelihood, and a community. Everything is connected and everyone is responsible for one another."

As her responsibilities grew, working the farm became a part of life. It was what she did every morning before school and evening after track practice. While Mea's friends were walking their dogs before school, she was herding, feeding, and inspecting cattle that would one day feed families across the nation.

At an age when most children are still entirely dependent on their parents, Mea learned what it was like for others to depend on her. She was constantly proving herself, not because she was the only woman working the farm, but because she was responsible for something that was so much bigger than herself. "On the farm, you're held accountable for everything. You have to be. When I did something wrong, I got chewed out just like anybody else. Gender and age aren't what's important, it's that you don't make that mistake again."

In an agricultural community, the connectivity of the people to the work and each other is what keeps everything going. "When a farm needed help, people helped." If one of the neighboring farms had a bad crop or didn't have enough hay, workers from other farms would step in, as would friends and family members.

Although the work was more physically and mentally demanding than other high school jobs, Mea says the invaluable experiences she gained from working on the farm more than made up for the hardships. Mea never got paid for any of the work she did, but what she took away from the experience was invaluable.

At 25, Mea is a graduate of Wellesley College. She has lived in France, Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C., and she is currently pursuing a law degree. She loves living and working in cities, but says the lessons still most relevant to her life today are ones she learned from living in an agricultural community.

Mea can walk into a grocery store and understand where the produce, meat, and dairy products come from and how they got there, which helps her to make healthy food choices. "How can you expect people to make good choices about food when to them it's all the same? Too many people have become detached from the agricultural process. Which is strange, considering that everyone used to grow their own food."

As much as Mea loved working on the farm, making it a career was never an option, she says. The instability of markets and weather, mixed with low returns and astronomical start-up costs, were too much to overcome.

Now, as Mea prepares to take the LSATs and works toward her future as a lawyer, she keeps her past in mind: "Of course there were days when I didn't think I could bale hay or cut thistle at 5 a.m. But I had no choice, and I always finished the job. The more I pushed myself, the more I realized what I was capable of."