Like Father, Like Daughter: Passing On The Farm
Kristin Pyle says her dad tells a story about a cross-country drive from Boston to San Francisco “sometime in the 70s,” when he fell in love with Iowa. “He was driving, and all of a sudden everything was green and...
Like Father, Like Daughter: Passing On The Farm
Kristin Pyle says her dad tells a story about a cross-country drive from Boston to San Francisco “sometime in the 70s,” when he fell in love with Iowa. “He was driving, and all of a sudden everything was green and...Kristin Pyle says her dad tells a story about a cross-country drive from Boston to San Francisco “sometime in the 70s,” when he fell in love with Iowa.
“He was driving, and all of a sudden everything was green and pretty, and he just thought it was the prettiest place he’d ever seen. “Most of my life, growing up, we heard ‘We’re going to move to Iowa,’” she says.
Farmers in Iowa know that everything is green because of fruitful black dirt, quite an upgrade (at least for growing corn and beans) from the red clay where Kristin Pyle’s family lived in North Carolina. That’s where Kristin grew up on a family farm with her two sisters, her mom, Nancy, and her Iowa-loving dad, Bill Tucker, who, back then, was also a cardiovascular surgeon.
When Bill retired from medicine, it was Iowa or bust—he and Nancy wanted to be full-time farmers. He now owns 645 acres just a few miles outside Colo, Iowa. He rents another 80 from a neighbor.
After decades of dreaming, it makes sense Bill would be driving a pickup across Iowa acreage today. What takes a little explaining is how Kristin ended up riding here with him, after leaving the farm in North Carolina for college “with no plan to come back to the farm at all … not at all,” she laughs.
A self-described “math and science nerd,” Kristin studied civil engineering, then spent a summer on the new Iowa farm helping oversee construction on her parents’ house. “I met an Ames man,” she says, and moved to the college town—home of Iowa State University—in 2009.
It was fate. Kristin, now 32, is wrapping up her second growing season working with Bill. She and her parents make no big deal at all of her desire to be a female operator in a male-dominated industry, still the case in U.S. farming, where less than 14% of farm operators are women.
“Every engineering company I’ve worked for, at some point I’ve been the only female engineer in the office,” she says. “And, my engineering background gives me a different perspective on how to do things.” The message is clear: Not an issue.
“She knew she was going to have to use her [education],” says Nancy. “It is a tremendous advantage to have that mechanical ability, and she’s got it.” Thanks in part to the family’s AGCO equipment, including a Gleaner S77 combine and AGCO tractors, as well as Sunflower and White Planters tools, Kristen has been able to rise to the physical challenges of the job. “I think the equipment and technology has made it less of a man’s world because it takes some of the physicality out of it,” says Kristin.
