Some of Iowa's queer farmers are taking a different approach to agriculture
Shae Pesek and Anna Hankins’s farm is off a gravel road in Coggon, north of Cedar Rapids. Pens for chickens, ducks, and turkeys are woven through yard space, in between a farmhouse, buildings, and sheds. After a rainy morning, the chickens are coming out of the greenhouse and starting to sunbathe in the yard.
Pesek’s life now is one she didn’t exactly envision for herself as a kid. Growing up here on her family’s farm, she didn’t know any queer people in agriculture.
"I really didn't feel like that was an option for me," Pesek said. "So, I thought for me, to be out and have a wife and have this out relationship, or like, to even find and date someone, that I needed to move to a city. So that's what I did. I left, and I moved away for eight years."
But agriculture called her back to Iowa from San Diego. A while after returning, she met Anna Hankins, who had moved from the East Coast to work on a farm. Together, they started Over the Moon Farm and Flowers in 2019. It's a direct-to-consumer farm with livestock and flowers.
Pesek said now she and Hankins are the examples, especially for people who can’t or don’t want to leave, that you can live in rural Iowa, farm, and be queer. They’ve done that by making a big effort to be connected in their rural community.
https://www.iowapublicradio.org/agriculture/2022-06-30/some-of-iowas-queer-farmers-are-taking-a-different-approach-to-agriculture
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Iowa was among the first with marriage equality. 