By ANN HINCH
Assistant Editor

NEW CASTLE, Ind. — A traditional employee driving any county road across Indiana might spot a farmer in a tractor and think, “That’s the life; no boss, no airless cubicle, flexible hours, peace and quiet up high in an air-conditioned cab.”

Which is accurate enough – until one looks back to see a tree branch lodged in a plow shovel behind the tractor, or the two-year-old who was peacefully playing in the back of the cab decides the outside world would be more exciting and wants to make a break for it, or …

Well, every job has challenges, including being a farm wife. Teri Martin, 50, knows just about all of them after nearly 28 years of marriage to a native New Castle farmer. It’s a life choice that must have amused her father.

“I didn’t really like living on a farm,” she said of her childhood in nearby Knightstown. “Growing up, my dad had four girls, and he said I was the least likely to end up on a farm.

“And, I’m the only one who did.”

She and her husband, Jake, plant 1,500 acres of corn, soybeans and wheat. In addition, they feed about 1,000 head of cattle annually, year-round, on two lots, then sell to meat packers. About the only other livestock they’ve had were ewes for 11 years, which they sold once their children outgrew 4-H.

“I think my husband misses it more than I do,” Martin said of raising sheep.

She credits a great deal of what she’s learned to her mother-in-law, Dorothy Martin, “the original farm woman,” and her late father-in-law, Bob. At 79, she describes Dorothy as “a remarkable woman” dedicated and patient with everyone in her family. It’s not common praise from a daughter-in-law.

But then, perhaps the wife of Martin’s son, J.R., would say the same; at least Martin is complimentary to Shelia, whom she said is also eagerly learning the family business.

J.R. is the fourth generation to farm this land, and Martin is actively recruiting the fifth – his two-year-old daughter, Faith. (J.R.’s sister, Michele, works for Campus Crusade for Christ in Ohio.) Like her father before her, Faith likes to ride the tractor with Martin, playing or just napping while Grandma tills or hauls grain or bales straw.

“One of her first words was ‘tractor,’” Martin noted proudly.

Their cousins, who were friends, introduced Jake and Teri, who was working in an Indianapolis warehouse at the time. They married and moved into the house his grandfather built west of New Castle – close, oddly, to the house where her own father was born.
“Early on, I was a go-fer,” she said of her role on the farm. “As (my in-laws) slowed back, I got to do more.”

She added that Bob never seemed to think being female should limit what she could do on the farm. Neither has she encountered that attitude with Bane Equipment in Rushville, Ind., where her family purchases Case IH equipment.

Perhaps the highest compliment a farmer can give their equipment dealer is hers: “We’ve done business with them as long as they’ve been there.”

When she’s not feeding cattle, bookkeeping or trying to dislodge rocks from the rolling basket with a crowbar between tilling rows, she shares Jake’s hobby of motorcycles.

After years of no vacations, they bought a Harley and, recently, Jake finished building his own chopper.

They spend their free time traveling, both Indiana day trips and longer sojourns – so far, they’ve been north to South Dakota, south to at least Tennessee … and often, just around home.

“Sometimes of an evening, when the weather’s nice, we’ll take it around the block,” she said, grinning. “Sometimes, that ‘block’s’ 30 miles long.”

Despite her childhood aversion to it, farming seems ideal for someone who admits she hates housework and would rather spend her vacations outdoors on the back of a motorcycle than cooped up in a hotel room.

“I would recommend this life to anyone who could put up with the work,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to be doing anything other than
farming; I really like it.”