As the mom of three little girls ages 5 and younger, Melissa Frederick has her hands full as she raises them on the family farm.
Although Frederick grew up on an acreage in west central Iowa, she didn’t have close family members who farmed. But her brothers had a friend named Bill Frederick who lived on a farm in the Bagley, Iowa, area. Her brothers even worked on the Frederick family farm growing up.
“When I was in college, my brother Chris had moved to Florida and was back home, so we went out to dinner and invited a bunch of friends,” Frederick said. “Bill was there and that kicked things off for the two of us.
“I was still in college and we’d been dating two months when my grandma emailed me and said that if we kept dating, I’d end up on a farm and it’d be hard work. I told her, ‘Grandma, I’m not afraid of that.’”
A biology major at the University of Iowa, Frederick accepted her first job working in quality control for Continental Manufacturing Chemist. After two years, she switched to work for a lab at an ethanol plant in Grand Junction. She never envisioned staying at home with her kids.
“Before I had Leah, I filled in for the manager who was on the day shift. After they filled that spot, they put me back on rotating 12-hour shifts,” Frederick said.
“When you’re married to a farmer who works weekends, child care is not an option.”
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She and Bill chatted about their options with the birth of their first child looming and they decided that they could afford for her to stay home. Now, they’re parents to Leah, almost 6, Kate, 3, and Audrey, 10 months. Leah is in kindergarten, but the other girls are still at home full time.
The couple farms with his parents, who gradually turn over more and more tasks every year as they near retirement. The family has a cow-calf operation and grow corn and beans. Melissa focuses on keeping the books for the farm and pitching in wherever needed.
“It’s great farming with them. So as long as they want to stay a part of it, it’s great for us,” she said.
“When harvest time comes around, Bill’s mom doesn’t like to drive the auger cart anymore, so she’ll watch the girls for me and I’ll drive. She’s decided she enjoys being a grandma rather than doing the heavy lifting around the farm, and any time the girls can sneak out of here and go to Grandma’s house a quarter of a mile up the road, they’re thrilled.”
Frederick has been able to put her biology degree to good use. She and Bill own Iowa Cover Crop, a business that sells cover crop seeds from a warehouse in Jefferson, Iowa. She shares bookkeeping duties with the other business partner’s spouse and enjoys quality control duties, an area she has experience in.
“We sell anything but corn and beans for farmers to plant as covers on their fields,” Frederick says. “We do grow some of the oats and wheat ourselves on the farm to supply the business and plant cover crops ourselves. We clean our own seed, and things like quality control from my first job come into play.”
Bill Frederick and his business partner, James Holz, founded Iowa Cover Crop in 2014 and now, ICC has a growing dealer network and offers seed and application services across Iowa and the Midwest.
When looking ahead, all three girls will be in school in five years, freeing up more of Melissa’s time during the day to help her husband around the family farm as they absorb more duties and to continue to grow the cover crop business.
“It’s working well for us now, and if I wanted to, I could be full-time with the cover crop business,” she said.