Students walk into their classrooms not knowing the life of their teachers outside of school. While outside lives vary, upper school science teacher Mrs. Tashia Lewis leads quite the interesting one.
Mrs. Lewis has been living and working on farms since she was young. She has learned the intricacies of maintaining the animals and all the things that keep a farm running. In addition to Mrs. Lewis’ love for farm life, her grandfather also worked on a farm for quite some time.
“Well the interesting thing about it is that there are technically two farms—my grandfather’s farm has been there for 50 years, and his career before his farm was a chicken poultryman,” Mrs. Lewis said.
Ms. Lewis’ grandfather’s inspiration and her love of animals gave Mrs. Lewis motivation to start her own farm, where she currently resides.
Taking care of a farm is a lot of work. Mrs. Lewis carefully manages her time teaching and tending to her farm. To get all of the farm work done, Mrs. Lewis and her husband must work together so that she has the time to grade tests and complete other school-related work.
“So my husband does a lot of the morning stuff since I am usually out of the house by six o’clock, and he usually finishes by eight. At night, typically after the kids go to bed, I do alot of farm stuff, and then after that, I finish up the school stuff that I have to do,” Mrs. Lewis said.
Considering the majority of people don’t own a farm, most are unfamiliar with what an average day on the farm is like and all the hard work that goes into tending for the animals and making sure everything is in stable condition.
“The evening trough routine is—once the kids go to bed we have to heat up the cow’s milk for bottles. The cows drink a gallon of milk a day. We heat up the milk and we put them in these huge bottles, then slide them on a wire holder for the cows to drink off of. Then, while I’m doing that, my husband does the rest,” Mrs. Lewis said.
As for the future of the farm, Mrs. Lewis has specific goals in mind.
She said, “I think a lot of it is, sustaining my own lifestyle. Having my own meat and eggs has always been the goal of the farm. What I’d like to do is make some money off the farm to provide for my family.”
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