Telling Women's Lives

Reader’s Response/Farmer Jane/Helen

I was highly impressed by the work of Emily Oakley. She made it her mission to bring healthy eating and sustainable living for the town of Tulsa, Oklahoma. She became well practiced in healthy eating habits and farming through education at the University of California Davis along with her learned experiences in Providence, Nebraska. She and her husband continually experimented with fruits and vegetables seeing which would grow in their soil along with observing growing methods. While maintaining these research methods, they built their own business model. Through marketing of word-of-mouth they inspired their town about the importance of healthy eating. Their mission became others’. It reminds that one person can make such a huge impact in a community! She truly is a woman of constancy. Not only did they pursue their own benefits in this field, but also they pursued other benefits for their community. They decided to only hire laborers if they could afford to pay them a living wage and she purchased and accepted food stamps for low-income folks to use so they can afford her produce. These two entrepreneurs are smart, caring, and invested in their work. She even admits to the gender issue in her community as she had to take on the seemingly obvious role women play in a business; she provided the jovial saleswomen at the market to increase profit whereas her husband had a straight forward approach to marketing. I didn’t like her explanation of men being better mechanics—I don’t fully agree with that. Nonetheless, her story is truly compelling. She reminds me how entrepreneurs must whole-heartedly expose themselves in order to achieve maximum success.