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Dedicated to all of the wives at harvest time.

Shelley E. Huguley, Editor

November 20, 2019

21 Slides

I spent an evening in Kayla Parkey's kitchen as she prepared supper for her husband Ricky and her son Josh and another employee. As she browned sausage and fried potatoes, she talked to me about her life as a farmwife and what taking meals to the field means to her. 

"You see them work so hard all year and then you drive up in the field and there's my husband and my son. And getting to see them pull in what they've worked so hard for and… I just can't explain it. It just brings that God is faithful.

"You want to experience God? Take a meal to the field. Because the sunsets and the quietness and seeing them bringing in what they've worked so hard for, it kind of parallels our lives, the seasons you go through."

She continues, "It's just so special and not everybody gets it. It's not something everybody gets to see, and probably not everybody feels that way. I probably didn't always feel that way. But the older I get, it makes me so incredibly thankful, especially when you've got a husband and son out there, it's very rewarding."

To read more of Kayla Parkey's story, see Bringing in the harvest.

About the Author(s)

Shelley E. Huguley

Editor, Southwest Farm Press

Shelley Huguley has been involved in agriculture for the last 25 years. She began her career in agricultural communications at the Texas Forest Service West Texas Nursery in Lubbock, where she developed and produced the Windbreak Quarterly, a newspaper about windbreak trees and their benefit to wildlife, production agriculture and livestock operations. While with the Forest Service she also served as an information officer and team leader on fires during the 1998 fire season and later produced the Firebrands newsletter that was distributed quarterly throughout Texas to Volunteer Fire Departments. Her most personal involvement in agriculture also came in 1998, when she married the love of her life and cotton farmer Preston Huguley of Olton, Texas. As a farmwife, she knows first-hand the ups and downs of farming, the endless decisions made each season based on “if” it rains, “if” the drought continues, “if” the market holds. She is the bookkeeper for their family farming operation and cherishes moments on the farm such as taking harvest meals to the field or starting a sprinkler in the summer with the whole family lending a hand. Shelley has also freelanced for agricultural companies such as Olton CO-OP Gin, producing the newsletter Cotton Connections while also designing marketing materials to promote the gin. She has published articles in agricultural publications such as Southwest Farm Press while also volunteering her marketing and writing skills to non-profit organizations such as Refuge Services, an equine-assisted therapy group in Lubbock. She and her husband reside in Olton with their three children Breely, Brennon and HalleeKate.

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