Stay Informed

The Whitley County Farm Bureau board had been talking about recruiting members and how important it is to remember to ask people to join Farm Bureau.

“We’d been discussing how to sign up people,” said board member Colleen Johnson.

Taking that simple step is how Johnson signed up Debra Gebert of Columbia City, making her the 200^th new member signed up by a volunteer during 2019.

Johnson is a massage therapist, and it was during an appointment that she found out that Gebert was not a member.

“I knew she’d grown up on a farm,” she added. “We had been discussing Farm Bureau, what it can do for you, that it can provide a voice.”

Gebert, who works as the cleaning coordinator for a large church in her area, owns a farm that she rents out. But she had never been a Farm Bureau member until Johnson signed her up.

She joined partly because inheriting a farm has encouraged her to become more knowledgeable about agriculture.

“I’m trying to educate myself more on my farm,” she said.

An additional attraction is that “I buy Ford trucks,” she said. “It looks like there are a lot of neat benefits for members,” she added.