When I was 17 almost 18 I headed off for college at the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture with the dream of not spending more than one year at this small college so close to home and transferring in to Lincoln at the University of Nebraska to study agronomy. Now this was a pretty far fetched dream considering I was totally allergic to just about every field crop grown and could never even think about going to the fields after pollination or during harvest without a trip or two to the hospital. But still I wanted to end up the leader in a Seed Corn sales company so I could attend meetings world wide and promote their brand of seed while of course earning my once a year cruise with colleagues so I could see the world. Little did I know that what my real dream for a career would become and that if a guidance counselor would have listened to my reasons for wanting to be in my chosen career that they might have suggested I go into a career as an Ag advocate ambassador doing public speaking around the world about the benefits of agriculture.
Then while still in my first year on college I met and got engaged to the love of my life. And as anyone in love knows your heart wants what your heart wants. He is a wonderful loving man and we will celebrate our 23rd wedding anniversary this year. Yes he grew up with an agricultural background but wanted nothing more than to be and auto technician. Which I am proud to say he is a great one and that we are in the process of purchasing the small shop he has worked at for the past 10 years. However, during our years together at one point he tried to step into the role of the farmers son-in-law and work on the family farm. That lasted all of a year. Just was not a good fit for any of us. This took place while I was busy working at a local coop as the bookkeeper because I just didn't know if there really was a place for me on the family farm.
However when our oldest son was 18 months old and started refusing to come home with me from the farm at night we as a family knew things had to change. Grandma and Grandpa were his whole world and so was that farm. So I quit the coop and went to work with my parents on the family farm so I could raise my kids in the great lifestyle I had been raised in. And this had been a great fit for over 18 years. But along the way I have faced so many challenges its amazing I'm still on the farm or even sane and yes I know the sane part can be debated by many.
You see I went on to have a second son and a daughter. But along came tragedy in my life by the stack. Shortly after my youngest son was born my younger sister (Amanda the middle daughter) was killed in an unexplained to this day single vehicle accident. This hit our family way below the belt like it does to all families with a tragic death and we were reeling to the bottom. But before we could hit bottom my oldest son (Tyson) was diagnosed with acute lymphatic leukemia. And I had just found out I was pregnant with our daughter at the time. So I spent years running him to and from treatment while my parents and husband raised both of my other children (Dillon and Amelia). Fact of the matter I walked out the door 6 days after Amelia was born to return to Omaha with Tyson for treatment and never came home to stay til after she was 18 months old. Oh we visited back to the farm as much as his treatments would allow but for all real purposes we were a separated family due to cancer. Amelia would end up donating her bone marrow to Tyson to save his life and it worked. We came home and worked at becoming a family under one roof again. This was with a lot of struggle and prayer that we made it work. Dillon had abandonment issues having been 18 months old when I left and Amelia had attachment issues to only Grandma and her Daddy. But this trying period was not in vain. It made us grow and become a close knit family. My children still find refuge in the farm.
But as fate would have it tragedy would strike again a short 9 years later when Tyson was killed in a freak ATV accident on the farm while spraying musk thistle. The accident he had would probably have left a healthy person with just bruises and story to tell. For him however it broke his spleen and liver causing him to die. Now my world hit rock bottom. For months I didn't know if I was coming or going and I definitely like all people in this situation had no idea how to handle my grief or how to be a good parent while dealing with my grief. There is a period of about 4 years that I just functioned but not in a good way.
Its during this period that I decided if Dillon or Amelia wanted to try it they could. After all the fear that they might die too was and still is in the back of my mind and I wanted them to have everything life could possibly offer them. So we ended up with boar meat goats, Nubian dairy goats, and hogs on our family farm. These were what they wanted to do in 4-H. Now remember I rode a horse and that was my entertainment as a child and my 4-H project. Well it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that a horse is very different from a goat or a hog. But I gave it my all and learned all I could along side my kids, husband, and parents about their projects. And along the way we developed our own small niche in the family farm. We call our project become business DJ's Creek Farm. And we are located on my family farm Bob Farr's farm and ranch. My parents have encouraged us and our business choice every step along the way. Even going so far as to buy Amelia a Jersey dairy calf to add to the chaos. But in doing this we are teaching our children the love of agriculture and farm life along with the fact that hard work is part of life. We are also ingraining them with the same motto I grew up with that the family that works together.....plays together.
And I'm sure by now you are wondering why did she title this blog "The Soap maker". Well that is because during all this transformation I sometimes didn't quite know where I was headed personally or what path God had in store for me next. Yes I was busy being a farmers daughter, an auto technician's wife, and a good farm mother to my children but nothing I was doing was anything that brought out my personality or creative abilities that were bottled inside. Remember before when I said if only a counselor would have listened to my dreams they would have realized I could have made a great job as an advocate for agriculture. Well while upstarting DJ's Creek Farm it became increasingly obvious that we had more goat milk than we knew what to do with and we were not big enough to become a licensed dairy. So I spent about a year just feeding the hogs what we couldn't use as a family. However, this didn't help the dairy goats pay their way very well. And I started brainstorming how I could make that division of our small business turn a profit. We couldn't justify becoming a licensed dairy due to cost and size, but in my research I found out that goat milk soap was an art that was becoming very popular. So I taught myself to make soap over the Internet. With the help of many great u-tube videos and some wonderful facebook chat pages I learned to create beautiful soap and products that are healthy for your skin and that my customers love. It also gave me that outlet to be an advocate for agriculture. See we now have a subdivision of DJ's Creek Farm that we call Sayer Soapworks and thru Sayer Soapworks I attend craft shows all over a tri-state area of Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado. It is at these craft show that I'm able to tell my families story in agriculture and share that as a 5th generation family farmer I milk the goats to bring you the soap. My customers love that I have such a rich heritage behind the love for creating beautiful handmade soaps just like our generations before us did for survival. Back then our ancestors made soap out of necessity now I create art out of soap and sell it for your benefit to your health and skin. I have finally found one of my many hats on the family farm and I am proud to say that I'm an American Farmer who happens to make you goat milk soap.
Til we meet again my God bless you and your family.
Sincerely yours,
Andrea Sayer
"The Farmers Daughter on Deer Creek"
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