by : lacylit10 Life Lessons

Just a Beginner.

I don’t know if I heard this from Mel Robbins or Brendan Burchard. Actually, I might have heard it from both of them in their own ways, but essentially they said, “Never feel ashamed of being ‘Just a beginner.’ We all start somewhere.”

As I navigate through this transitional phase and consider what I truly want to do next, I keep coming back to how scary it is to put myself out there. Generally, I know what I need to do, but, in some ways, fear is holding me back from implementation. It’s not the fear of failure. It’s not even the fear of success. It’s a fear of being vulnerable. A fear of being my authentic self in a world that is alarmingly cruel.

But this statement, “Just a beginner” keeps popping back up in my head. I am just. a. beginner.

What I’m realizing, though, is that I also have an underlying fear of not being a beginner. Perhaps, to the point of self-destruction. I do not want to be seen as an expert. In life (and in farming), we have to be adaptable and flexible with all of the unexpected things that get thrown at us. It has to be acceptable to grow and change.

I got to a point in my food safety career, where people considered me an expert. And it kind of terrified me.

Expert is defined as someone having comprehensive and authoritative knowledge in a specific area. By that definition, I was an expert. But I felt like I couldn’t be wrong. I couldn’t change my mind. I put so much pressure on myself to know and be right. Always. I burned myself out and kind of resented that I was supposed to be this end-all-be-all decision-maker.

But the pressure wasn’t entirely just me putting it on myself. There was an expectation that I was supposed to take the fault for a team of people who all contributed to the decisions made. I could be held personally accountable for natural environmental conditions where causes were nearly impossible to identify. This mindset was/is entirely unfair.

And the expectation was industrywide. Since the food safety representative held the certifications that qualified them as the expert decision-maker, they were the responsible party. Seemingly, it didn’t matter that the guy signing my checks could override my recommendation. And really, that’s all it was, because I wasn’t the final decision-maker of the business.

In this regard, food safety burned me. It made me feel like having comprehensive and authoritative knowledge was a bad thing. We live in such a litigious society that people need to hold someone accountable. That most likely person was me. And as things in food safety became increasingly complex and regulated, the more scary it became to be the responsible person. So much so that it drove me to leave the field altogether.

This was my experience with being an expert. I doubt that being an expert in different areas comes with these expectations and responsibilities, but it has made me fearful of gaining too much knowledge that people don’t give me the grace to continue learning and growing and changing. Of course, I know that I cannot control other peoples perceptions and emotions, but when people are so quick to make judgments and assumptions, it’s hard to not feel fearful of being vulnerable, especially without context. And people do not consider context.

For now, I’m just going to replay the “Just a beginner” mantra and remind myself that we all start somewhere. But realistically, I’ve been expressing vulnerability in this blog for years. Apparently, it doesn’t get easier. So I will just continue to feel the fear, and do it anyway.

by : lacylit10 Life Lessons

Branding.

With the rise of social media, personal branding has become a thing. For awhile, I fell into this branding trap. In promoting agriculture, I became “Lacy Litten – Female Farmer.” It was a brand I was happy to have and promote. But I am not a brand, I am a human being who is constantly changing. Maintaining this Female Farmer brand started to become hard. The mold I created for myself began to crack.

But branding is really nothing new. During adolescence, I went through all the phases: country, surfer, punk – you name it. As I look back, I don’t see these phases as “trying them on for size.” I see them as reflections of emotional expression; a girl trying to find her place in the world, being influenced by movies, TV shows, books, friends, trends, environment, society, school, etc. These phases have given me a colorful life, full of perspective.

Branding is what we do; it is how we identify. Woman. Hunter. Homeowner. Mother. Gardener. Leader. Sister. These labels tell people who we are. It is often not intentionally done, but it becomes emphasized and embraced as we fully live these phases of life. As. We. Should.

A lot of life gets lived during each of these branded phases. They are only considered a phase, because a significant period of time can be reduced to a single identifier: college, marriage, career, childhood. None of these phases are defined solely by education, spouse, title, or age. We look at those words and know that knowledge, wisdom, and experience accumulated. Yet, we seem to judge people for making “dramatic” decisions, forgetting that those choices are a result of growth from those phases.

In August 2020, I wrote about undergoing a transformation. In October 2020, I started grad school, which I mastered July 2021. And in June 2021, I wrote about feeling on the precipice of change.

In August 2021, I accepted a new job, and all of the puzzle pieces are starting to come together. It’s been interesting to see and hear people’s reactions to the changes in my life. These changes are a result of years of growth. They are not rash decisions, but slow, meaningful, thoughtful, and instinctual moves forward.

When decisions, such as new careers, get made, there are pieces of us that we must leave behind. That’s the excitement of growth: out with the old and in with the new. Taking the wisdom, knowledge, and experiences gained, and applying them to new opportunities.

I don’t know what this next phase of life fully looks like or what brand will appear on the outside, but I am eager to find out.

by : lacylit10 Farming

Semmelweis.

Have you ever heard of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis? Neither have most people, so I included a link. No need to follow it though, cause I’m going to tell you about him anyway. 😊

Dr. Semmelweis was a doctor in the mid-1800s. The mortality rate in the maternity clinic where he practiced was 1 in 10.  At the time, conventional medicine called for separate treatment of each symptom.  So rather than treating a fever, a headache, and trouble breathing with one method, they would use three separate methods.  But still, nothing seemed to work.  The women who contracted the disease which came to be known as ‘childbed fever’ died within days.

Dr. Semmelweis became obsessed with discovering why the mortality rate in his clinic was so much higher than the other.  The only difference between the two clinics is that Dr. Semmelweis’ was attended by doctors, and the other was attended by midwives. So he standardized everything in the effort to minimize outstanding variables.

After Dr. Semmelweis took a 4-month leave to visit another hospital, upon his return, he discovered the death rate had dropped significantly in his absence.  At the time, Vienna General was a research hospital, so many of the doctors split their time between tending to patients and researching on cadavers.  Dr. Semmelweis himself spent far more time doing research on the cadavers than the other doctors, and he realized this was the only significant difference between himself and the doctors that worked for him in his absence.  From these observations, he developed a theory of childbed fever that became the precursor to germ theory.

Dr. Semmelweis concluded that ‘particles’ from the cadavers and other diseased patients were being transferred to healthy patients on the hands of the physicians.  He immediately instituted a policy of hand washing with a chlorine/lime solution before examining a patient.  The death rate fell to 1 in 100.

Upon his discovery, Dr. Semmelweis told the rest of the medical community about his science. But his hypothesis that cleanliness is what mattered most was considered extreme, and he was ridiculed by the medical community. He was so outraged by the indifference to his discovery that he sent angry letters to prominent European doctors calling them irresponsible murderers.

Here’s the thing though:

The doctors were doing the best of what they knew with the science they had at the time.  They weren’t acting with malicious intent. And Dr. Semmelweis’ science wasn’t proven to the extent that these doctors had been educated and trained.

So, why am I telling you this story?

Because, surprisingly, it has a lot to do with farming leafy greens. 🥬

Leafy greens farmers are highly regulated under both FSMA (the Food Safety Modernization Act) and the CA/AZ LGMAs (Leafy Greens Marketing Agreements). Additionally, most farms are GFSI (Global Food Safety Initiative) certified. All of these regulatory compliance agencies base their standards on the best science available, at this time.

Leafy greens farmers aren’t acting with malicious intent. They are not adulterating your food. Most are just following guidance laid out by science and academic experts. But there are some farmers who go above and beyond the regulation. They take regulation comprised by science and academia and cater it to their specific farms. They are the Dr. Semmelweis’ of farming.

And who is to say who is wrong? Dr. Semmelweis and the doctors of the medical community were all doing what they believed was best based on their education, their beliefs, their experience, and all sorts of other things. Just as farmers today are all doing what they believe is best based on their education, their beliefs, their experience, and all sorts of other things, including the best available science at this time.

Dr. Semmelweis made his discovery in 1847, but it wasn’t until the 1980s when (coincidentally) a string of foodborne outbreaks and healthcare-associated infections led the U.S. CDC to identify handwashing as an important step to stop the spread of infection.  

Leafy greens production in California (especially) is probably the most highly regulated crop in the world. We’ve been actively improving our regulation to make leafy greens safer since 2006. Additionally, the CDC didn’t start using whole genome sequencing for foodborne pathogen detection until 2013. So before you make assumptions that industry is not responding to these outbreaks fast enough, I urge you to consider that it took over 100 years for Dr. Semmelweis’ handwashing theory to make it into mainstream medicine.

Lack of science or insufficient regulation is not an excuse for these outbreaks. I’m just simply trying to point out that scientific discoveries take time and so does improving regulation.

But like Dr. Semmelweis trying to convince the medical community, know that there are many farmers out there doing all that they can to prevent contamination from happening. They are going above and beyond the regulation. They are catering the best available science to their specific farms. And they are trying to get the rest of the industry on board.

by : lacylit10 Farming

Commentary.

It is so painful to read the comments on posts related to these E. coli outbreaks. People are so quick to point the finger, and they are convinced they are right in their assumption. But you can say that about any topic on any platform. 🙄

The main argument I see online is people blaming farm workers for pooping in the fields. You guys. 🤦🏻‍♀️ If a farm worker has E. coli, he is not going to be pooping in the field. He is going to be in the hospital with all the other victims.

E. coli O157:H7 is a very virulent pathogen. We all know that bacteria are very, very, very, very small microorganisms, right? It can take less than 10 single cells of this bacteria to make someone sick. And if you don’t understand how small of an amount that is, we have over 100 trillion cells of 1,200 varied bacteria living in our gut alone. (Check out The Good Gut book ➡️ for more info about that!)

The argument online then continues with, “They do poop in fields! I’ve seen it! I know!”

Okay, Susan. 😒 Slow down the blame train.

Any law-abiding grower/harvester is going to have plenty of portable toilets available for employees to use. If the employee chooses not to use the provided bathroom, that is on the employee. Any respectable supervisor will terminate the employee immediately upon discovering he or she has not used the provided facility.

Agriculture is like any other business. We can train and supervise, but we can only influence the choices our employees make so much. It is ultimately up to the person to make a deliberate good or bad decision. This happens every minute, of every day, in every aspect of our lives. We cannot hover over people all day long. At some point, we have to trust our children or employees to make good decisions. And just like parents, we cannot discipline poor behavior if we’re not aware it’s occurring.

I don’t mind having a little friendly debate with people, but it’s all about respecting perspectives, knowledge, and experience. Unfortunately, in the online platform, it seems like all respect goes out the window. We’re conversing with people that we really don’t know, which makes it easier to judge and criticize. We have no personal relationship with the person on the other side of the screen, but that doesn’t give us the right to completely disregard that person as a real human, with real feelings. And I think it’s important to remember that even if you’re not participating in the debate and just reading comments.

Sometimes the best thing we can do is ignore the commentary, because some arguments you’re just never going to win. (Or you dedicate an entire blog post to picking apart the behavior and rebutting the argument. Your choice. Make a good one! 🤪)

1 Comment
by : lacylit10 Life Lessons

Leap.

When I first applied for the United Fresh Produce Industry Leadership Class 24, we were asked why we wanted to be part of the program. I essentially said that farmers have a story that needs to be told, and if no one else is going to stand up for what we do, then I want to be the one to do it.

It’s kind of funny, because almost everything I’ve worked for personally and professionally has set me up to be that person. And for as much as I want to be the one out there shouting from the rooftops about how important it is to preserve our farming heritage, it terrifies me to be the one in the spotlight.

Over the past few years, it seems that I had been so focused on doing what felt right in my career and developing my leadership skills that I had slowly broken into that storyteller role and didn’t even realize it. And for as much as I’ve unknowingly embraced it, I’ve consciously been fighting it.

I’m not sure who first said that if your dreams don’t scare you, then they’re not big enough. Well, I have dreams, and they freak me the F out.

I know what I need to do to achieve those dreams, but it’s that first step that has been the hardest. And this is that step. It’s exposing my insecurities in order to face my fears and no longer hiding the things that bring me joy.

So, here’s to taking the leap of faith. Please be kind, my armor is down.