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My wife @RanaeDietzel grew up on a small farm near Radcliffe, IA (20 miles from here). Her parents have 2 1100-head hog finishing barns, 20 acres of pasture, and about 8 acres of hay.
Ranae did almost every activity possible in school: volleyball, basketball, track, softball, wrestling, 4H, student government, band. She was even the homecoming queen! Of course at home she had to help on the farm: pressure washing, moving hogs, cleaning up feed spills.
When she went to college, she was similarly productive. She was a collegiate wrestler (when they cut the wrestling team, she ran track), in student government, always took the maximum amount of credits possible. She majored in biology and minored in political science.
Her first summer in college she worked at ISU on the Bear Creek Riparian Buffer Restoration Project. Another summer she went to Ukraine and worked on a large farm that had dairy, swine, and ostriches.
Her 3rd summer she worked for the USDA ARS unit in Morris, MN doing greenhouse gas sampling in cropping system research plots.
After graduation, she married me, then went to Cornell University for her MS in soil science, where she did a project on nitrous oxide emissions in different cropping systems. She worked 80-100 hrs/wk during this period, sometimes sleeping in the office.
For her PhD, Ranae went to @isuagronomy and did research on roots and soil carbon in prairie and corn/soybean systems. Somehow she also had 2 babies, helped fix up and sell a house, & moved to a farm during her PhD work as well.
After grad school, Ranae worked in the @ArchontoulisLab as a postdoctoral research associate doing research & computer modeling of cropping systems. In 2019 she started a position as Agronomy Data Scientist at Syngenta, as part of a team doing research trials around the Midwest.
In our cheese business, Ranae does most of the sales, marketing, and packaging. She is always ready to jump in herding cows, castrating pigs, or taking photos. She holds our family together, keeps me sane, and never stops working.
