Kayla Brashears is an undergraduate student in the Environmental Engineering program at ASU. She participated in the Spring 2020 course as an honor’s student and chose to create a video to inspire other students to consider agriculture as a career option. Her thoughts and inspiration about the video, as well as the video itself are below!
Kayla Brashears: “My inspiration in creating this video was to show what ag [agriculture] is to me, and how I have been involved my entire life. I come from a long long line of ranchers and farmers; my great great grandmother Hazel May Butler (Brown) was the first documented woman farmer in AZ back in the 1800’s. My grandmother was the ASU rodeo queen in the 1960’s. My grandfather, who is shown in the video, rode bareback horses for a living when they met, and still owned a ranch in Eastern Arizona until December 2019. My mom was naturally immersed in ag her entire life. She participated in 4H and FFA and farmed for a living when I was younger. Now, she has a backyard straw bale garden and is considering bringing her flower farm out of retirement. My dad is a cowboy/cattle rancher in Northern Arizona and has shown me and taught me everything I know in that branch of ag. This video shows my perspective of agriculture solely based on the lifestyle of a kid raised on a ranch and farm, attending farmers markets, being involved in 4H and FFA and just simply being an ag kid.
Creating this project took me back to almost an entirely different life. I feel so lucky to come from a family and place where I was able to use such personal memories and pictures to share with so many people. All the pictures I used were either of myself from about four years old until college, very close friends of mine and even their kids growing up as an ag kid now as well. Plus of course my family and others who are considered family. All the locations and farms and ranches/cattle are all from places that I have been involved in or a part of in Arizona. I also wanted to incorporate not only the farming and ranching side that I know so well, but to also show how important ag is and how many opportunities there are that aren’t as “recognized” when speaking about agriculture.”
Video: