Farm Woman of the Year
Award celebrates, evolves with valley’s rich agricultural legacy
In the Victor Fourth of July parade last summer, Nancy Beard Jardine sat proudly in the Teton County Farm Bureau float, waving and tossing candy to the kids jostling in the crowd. She had earned her spot in the public eye as the 2021
Farm Woman of the Year.
For nearly fifty years, the Teton County Farm Bureau has annually honored the women behind the scenes who help run the cattle, tend to the spuds, drive trucks, raise lambs, and move pipe while also juggling life’s many other roles and responsibilities. By naming a Farm Woman of the Year and giving her a moment in the spotlight, the bureau recognizes the time intensive and rarely glamorous life of operating a farm or ranch while also often serving as a parent and involved community member.
Each county in the state has its own branch of the Idaho Farm Bureau; the Teton County Farm Bureau was established in 1948 and is dedicated to strengthening agriculture and protecting property values for its member families.
An older version of the Idaho Farm Bureau handbook outlines the criteria for the woman of the year award, then called Farm Wife of the Year, among other variations: open to all Farm Bureau member families, the award honors “individuals who attain and personify the highest level of professional excellence,” as well as celebrating “the potential of all women as valuable members and leaders in agriculture and their community.”
The first recorded Farm Wife of Teton County, chosen in 1977, was Margaret Hillman of Driggs, mother of seven children and an active member of the Farm Bureau Women’s Committee.
The Farm Bureau board is charged with selecting the Farm Woman each year. While nominees were solicited in the early days (“Farmers, why don’t you honor your good farm wife by applying for her,” suggests a Farm Bureau announcement published in the Teton Valley News in 1978), nowadays the board has a pretty good grasp of who might be next in line for the award.
DeAnn Waddell, who oversaw the program for many years, maintains the list of possible future candidates. There’s little chance of running out of local awardees anytime soon; the names fill two pages, double spaced.
“There’s a lot,” she says. “We try to rotate from one end of the valley to the other each year. We’re trying to get around to all of them, eventually.”
The Farm Bureau’s first choice doesn’t always accept the recognition. “We always have a couple alternates, just in case,” DeAnn says. “Sometimes our first pick is nervous, she doesn’t want the publicity. Some are grateful and willing, some are hesitant, some are just bashful, I guess.”
In the early 2000s, the name of the award changed from Farm Wife to Farm Woman (although in the newspaper the titles were used interchangeably from 2003 to around 2010). DeAnn says that was done in an effort to be able to include women who don’t have spouses and to recognize that societal changes have taken place.
“Some of their husbands have passed away,” she says. “The times have changed, and we wanted to reflect more of their independence.”
The Farm Woman is usually featured in a newspaper article before her triumphal appearance in the Victor Fourth of July parade. In those articles, awardees routinely express some surprise and bemusement at the title. The women generally share the common threads of large families and deep roots in Teton Valley, with generations of kin in the community through blood and/or marriage. Without fail they muse on the challenges of a life in agriculture.
“It’s a lovely, unpaid job, being a farm wife,” awardee Bobby Douglass told a Valley Citizen reporter in 2011. “There’s always some little task that’s yours for the day or for the hour. You’re like an unpaid hired hand that gets to do everything.” (Although, the article notes, she drew the line at moving irrigation pipe.)
In the past, Farm Women have had the opportunity to participate in the district contest, and winners of that go on to state.
Elva Delaney, a lifelong valley resident who farmed in the Darby area and also worked as a schoolteacher and played the organ for her Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ward, was named the Teton County Farm Wife in 1980. She was recognized thanks to her tireless dedication to the Farm Bureau, her devotion to tractor driving and spud farming, and her many church and community activities, the Teton Valley News reported at the time.
She went on to become the District 2 Farm Wife in June of that year. District 2 encompasses nine counties: Bonneville, Butte, Custer, Clark, Fremont, Jefferson, Lemhi, Madison, and Teton. In Coeur D’Alene that December, Elva was interviewed by a judging board at the state convention, and Teton County had its first (and only) Idaho Farm Bureau Wife of the Year.
The county’s most recent District 2 honoree was JoAnne Kay, named in 2016. In a video documenting the winners, the Farm Bureau interviewed her at her farm at the base of Kay’s Hill, where she said she likes to feed calves and drive tractors. A teacher with a Ph.D., JoAnne met her husband
at Rick’s College (now BYU-Idaho
in Rexburg), where the young couple dreamed of starting a dairy operation.
“There are no shortcuts in life,” she says about farming.
Susan Hill, a nurse at Teton Valley Health, recently took over from DeAnn and now manages the Farm Woman of the Year program. She has seen some changes; for instance, a few years ago, the state bureau stopped sponsoring an Idaho Farm Woman of the Year.
“There is no regional competition anymore, but our Teton County board wants to continue to honor women who are actively engaged and contributing to agriculture,” Susan says.
One benefit of that, DeAnn noted, is that the board can consider non-bureau members as possible awardees.
“We have a lot of names to add to the list, women who are newer to the valley, some who aren’t on big farms,” she says, referring to the many smaller organic and biodynamic farms that have sprouted in recent years.
So keep an eye out, at the 2022 Fourth of July parade and in coming years, for the Farm Woman seated proudly atop an agricultural-themed float.
Teton County Farm Women of the Year
Information gathered by DeAnn Waddell
2021 Nancy Beard Jardine
2020 Amy Bagley
2019 Elaine Johnson
2018 Shana Mickelsen
2017 Dana Hoopes
2016 JoAnne Kay (District)
2015 LaRue Ripplinger
2014 Alene Breckenridge
2013 Bonnie Woolstenhulme
2012 Ranae Kunz
2011 Bobbie Douglass
2010 Pearl Atchley
2009 Pauline Bagley (District)
2008 Laverta Hansen
2007 Marilyn Wright Rackham
2006 Verna Lerwill
2005 Betty Kunz
2004 Marianne Josephson (District)
2003 Janet Penfold (District)
2002 Clair Ann Hill
2001 Marilyn Ricks
2000 LeRae Bagley
