I have lived my entire life within five miles of the Missouri River. My husband and I have lived twenty-five of our twenty-seven year marriage on a farm that has been consistently owned and operated by his family for five generations. We have two grown sons.
Since the early 1800's my husband's family has been involved in a number of successful farming enterprises, including the growing of grapes and making of wine. During the 1980's and 1990's while we maintained a farrow to finish hog operation of 200 sows, our life was the basis for my autobiography 'Dino, Godzilla and the Pigs, My Life on Our Missouri Hog Farm', published in 1993 by SoHo Press (New York). By the end of the 1990's we no longer raised hogs but continue to annually crop-farm several hundred acres of corn and soybeans. We also raise a substantial amount of hay and maintain pastureland for our herd of Angus bred cattle.
I have had articles published in Housewife Writer's Forum, The Family Digest, The Heartland Writers Journal and poems in Farm and Ranch Living and The Heartland Writers Journal. I am a graduate of the Writer's Institute of America (formerly The Newspaper Institute) Mamaroneck, New York and a member of the Heartland Writers Guild. Since January, 2002 I have been the editor of the HWG monthly newsletter, The Heartland Writers Journal.
During the 1970's and 80's I was employed as a teacher-aid in elementary education in parochial schools. I became a certified catechist through the Arch-Diocese of Jefferson City in 1989 while I continued to teach religion in my parish (1981thru 2004). I coordinated the elementary P.S.R. (Parish School of Religion) classes for nineteen years (1985 thru 2004). During my sons' childhood and teenage years I was also a 4H Project Leader teaching such crafts as 'home environment', 'visual arts', sewing and crochet. During those years I wrote and directed many of the skits the local 4H Club performed at the annual Share-the-Fun-Nite festivities.
While I continue to write articles and poems of special interest, I am also pursuing my lifelong interest in writing fiction. My stories, based in rural mid-western areas, concern the unique but quickly vanishing way of life on the family farm as well as other mysterious intricacies that evolve life from generation to generation.
The term 'mef Originals' gradually evolved while I sewed or made various crafts to give to friends and family as gifts. The crafts and writing go hand in hand as it is a joy to exercise ‘my muse’ while my hands are busy creating some item as a gift for someone else.
