November 14, 2024 - Written By Kristen A. Schmitt
#WomenInAg: Mary Pat Sass, social media influencer and family farmer
Five years ago, Mary Pat Sass decided to take a detour. While she was working in her dream field – agronomy – in what she called her “dream job,” weekly travel and other aspects didn’t mesh with her home life, especially once she and her husband, Josh, a 5th-generation row crop farmer, decided to have kids.
“The first harvest I was at home with my son on maternity leave,” said Sass, who grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin and was encouraged by her parents to pursue an off-farm career. “My eyes opened to how much support I could give my husband on the farm, how useful I was around the home, and I realized how being on the road made everything difficult.”
Despite her company creating a new position for her so she could work from home, Sass opted to take a different path, quitting her corporate job so she could farm full-time as a member of the Sass Family Farm in Woodstock, Illinois. While they had to initially make a hard income adjustment without her corporate salary, Sass soon found another avenue to make a living while also allowing for creativity, wisdom and grace.
Now, an agriculture social media influencer with a growing following, Sass took time to talk with Land Values about the spark that made her start influencing, building her brand and why it’s important to document farm life one day at a time from the female perspective.
Land Values (LV): What was one of the biggest challenges that you faced after you left corporate life to farm full time?
Mary Pat Sass (MPS): I would say the hardest thing was stepping away from my corporate income. My husband and I had to have some conversations about our goals and put some house projects on the backburner. We knew we could support ourselves from the farm income if we adjusted our lifestyle. I guess the biggest realization I had after I left corporate is that there’s more than one way to bring in an income, and it doesn’t have to be a biweekly paycheck from a company. I had more time because I was home with my son and I just started experimenting with different things that I could do, little things to bring in money and all of that. Trying new things without having a completely solid plan has kind of gotten me to where I am today.
LV: Did you have second thoughts?
MPS: I had no second thoughts. I’m 100% certain that I wasn’t supposed to be in that role working off the farm.
LV: As you experimented with figuring out ways that you could make an income, did you plan on becoming an ag influencer? Was that your goal or was that something that happened naturally?
MPS: It did happen naturally. It began in the spring after I left my job. I’d started a couple of other things before that didn’t really take off…I look back and I kind of giggle at myself, because I know some people have actually made real careers of it, but I started by slinging shampoo, which didn’t end up being my thing, but I really liked the products and I thought, hey, if I can talk to people about what it’s done for my hair postpartum maybe I can help some other people and I can make a little bit of money. Or at least get my shampoo for free.
That spring, we were out planting and I’d been making my husband’s lunches every day. Getting up with him was the one guaranteed time we had together before he left for the day. And he called me one morning and was acting super weird like something was wrong. And I was nervous that something bad happened. Then he told me he ran over his lunchbox with the tractor and he asked me if I could bring him some more lunch. Otherwise, it was going to be a long wait until supper. So, I brought him another lunch and he snapped a picture without me even asking of me and my son as we walked up to the tractor with his lunch. And that was the spark. I thought that being a farm wife – every day is different. There are a lot of challenges. There are a lot of really beautiful things. I’d like to start getting more into connecting myself back to agriculture after leaving my corporate job. One way to do that was to start blogging and sharing online.
LV: When did you realize that you could rely on social media as a way to make a living? How long were you doing it before you felt like you were sustaining?
MPS: It took a couple of years, for sure, but I didn’t have any clear direction or goals until I took some courses on having a social media presence and how to build my own brand. And I did that about six months after I started, and that really sparked my goals – once I could hone in on who I was speaking to and the message I was trying to get across. And I did start to get some partnerships within about a year, but it was in no way sustaining our family. It was more like just trying to get my foot in the door, learning how to create content for brands. And this is my fifth year, but I think by year three, I was making enough money where my husband was like, oh, this is real. I was able to replace my corporate income and help support my family.
LV: How many brands or partnerships do you have at the moment?
MPS: Oh, I should know that off the top of my head…I have a lot less than last year. I’ve been trying to hone in on building my own business and having fewer brands. I think I’ve got four at the moment and a couple that I’m working through details with.
LV: How do you decide what to share? Both sponsored content as well as everyday?
MPS: First, whenever I choose to partner with someone, it has to fit my brand – and be something that I can easily I talk about. Like we’re doing a fungicide trial this year. We have issues with tar spot. It really fit into our operation and fit into the side of me that likes to talk about agronomy and educate people on why farmers spray fungicides in the first place. As far as everyday content, I really try to think about who I’m speaking to. If you’re focusing on one person and what you might share with them, it makes the content creation easier. For me, I think about speaking to the fellow farm wife, a mom in the trenches, raising her kids, trying to support her husband. About the different seasons she’s going through and share from that perspective – like I’m talking to a friend.
LV: Are there any topics or parts of farm life that are off limits for you?
MPS: Because we farm with my husband’s two brothers and his dad, so four separate families, I do have some pretty clear boundaries on who I show on my channel and who I don’t. I don’t share some of the kids on the farm because they don’t want their kids involved. But farming wise, I don’t really think there’s a lot off limits. We do try to protect acreage numbers and information that’s sensitive to landlords because we do farm a lot of rented ground, but that’s really it.
LV: As an influencer and a mom and a wife, why is it important for women to see themselves doing other things on the farm beyond packing the lunches or supporting the kids?
MPS: I think that there’s value in every single role. So, any time I’m sharing what I’m doing, like packing the lunches and taking care of the kids, that’s still my most important job. Sometimes that’s the only capacity that a woman has. And that’s okay. And she needs to know that. As far as the other stuff goes, it really depends person to person. If that woman has a passion for it, then she should feel every ounce of encouragement to go out and do it. I think that some women are held back by their own fears, their own influences in their own lives – if they can even breach that part of agriculture, the equipment side. It took me several years to get involved in that way on our family farm, just coming in as the daughter-in-law and not really knowing exactly where I would fit in. But I had a real desire to be operational on the farm. I think it’s important to show them that it’s possible and to share the example of the people on our farm who’ve helped support me like my husband, my father-in-law and my brother-in-law who have been so open to teaching me all the things. You can’t do it alone. You need this army of people who are willing to support you, but you absolutely can do it.
LV: Have you had to deal with negative side effects from being an ag influencer?
MPS: I thought that, in the beginning, responding kind of snarky sometimes made me feel a little better, but now, I just lean in a lot on my relationship with God and how he would want me to respond. And a lot of the times when I think about that or I read through Proverbs to get some wisdo, because that really does give a lot of wisdom, a whole lot of it is let it be, do not engage. So really trying to not engage at all with that kind of stuff, but it’s really hard sometimes, especially when they attack you personally.
LV: Where does Grounded Journals fit into your brand?
MPS: Grounded Journals came about because I saw a need in our industry for a way for families to be able to keep their memories. It’s really hard to write about how your year went farming, but if you have prompts that ask you questions that guide your writing about the year, it can be a lot more doable. The whole reason the business even started was because of sharing on social media and wanting to be able to keep our memories on the farm, and I thought it would be helpful if other people could do so, too.
LV: And you also co-host a podcast, Beyond the Crops, with Jena Ochsner. Why did you decide to start podcasting?
MPS: It’s a way for me to collaborate with another farm wife, creating content and getting information out to our combined audiences in a different medium. I consider what I do for Beyond the Crops and what I do on social media the same thing as far as talking to that fellow farm wife. It’s a way to get a lot deeper into topics that you just can’t really get that deep into on social media.
LV: As someone who decided to take a nontraditional path, do you have any advice for someone who may want to do something similar, whether it’s a different path in life or simply following their passions?
MPS: I guess it depends on where you’re at in life because I was able to lean on my husband providing for me to step away from a career. And if you’re single or if you can’t do that, that’s a different situation. A lot of the people who I’ve met through social media and who’ve made a career of it had to do it while they were still working their regular jobs. So, I think if I were to give one piece of advice, it would be to be consistent in whatever it is that you’re doing. If you’re trying to build an online platform, you have to be consistent and be sharing regularly. You can’t do it once and be upset because it didn’t work out and come back a month later and try again and then be upset because it didn’t work out again. You have to grind. It’s not a slow burn. It’s just taking it one little consistent step at a time.