What do you do when you love photography and writing as a child? Back in the day, I spent hours doing each of those and then went to school learning how to do it better and getting more opportunities. One of the most formative, was an internship with some agricultural magazines ended up launching me into a business world I never knew existed. Working at magazines, a PR agency and in-house with small and large companies has given me a chance to see many sides of communications. Adding the personal passion for it has layered on a whole new level of experience with social media.

It has been almost a decade since I really grabbed social media by the horns and started playing with it. Those early days are some of the most formative of the channels we all now hear mentioned on the news each night, but bringing the strategic thinking along with my individuality came natural and I was able to have fun learning before the risks were so overwhelming.

Playing around with various objectives and strategies on my own time led to developing programs with others who wanted to see similar change in the world as well as positions for me careerwise. Definitely made me a bit of a rarity among my peers. This side hustle shows up in a few ways and places.

Choosing the social media brand was something done quickly and yet it has served me well! I created the handle JPlovesCOTTON and it has been in place almost a decade now. It remains the handle used on most social media channels and has recently become a business entity — JPlovesCOTTON LLC — for my websites and other parts of the sidehustle.

Hundred Percent Cotton

Cotton is a favorite fabric whether going to the park with friends or getting a good night’s sleep after a big trip. It’s also a beautiful crop that dots our Southern landscape. Although I’m from a family that is proud to haev called the city home for generations, I’m proud to be among the generation of people seeking connections to agriculture and cotton is where I got my start. All of that and more on HundredPercentCotton.com!

So much has been written over the years asn I am amazed by how the crop grows! Some of those are in the cotton 101 series but you can also learn about when I met my first cotton farmer. Working in cotton became the major thrust of my career & the crop a major passion. Now I am also writing about cotton in our homes (how to navigate buying sheets, tips on doing laundry, etc)

JPlovesLIFE

Travel is probably my first love and I have always enjoyed sitting around with friends and family, hearing about unique experiences and cultures. Over the years as friends married, they began to tell me they live vicariously through me as I continued exploring the world.

I’ve been to a lot of countries overseas that makes people wonder how I picked them…. first time out of the US was to the Soviet Union / Russia, since then I’ve been to Japan, Turkey, Italy, Malaysia, India, China, England, Israel, The Philippines, The Netherlands and Belgium. I’ve also seen all 50 states and done some great roadtrips in the US doing an Oregon-Central California drive and from St. Louis to Montana on another! I post on this to the travel category and have a page for some of my big trips. And I did an A to Z challenge on my current hometown of St. Louis, Missouri.

Alot of my travel — domestic and abroad — I find and sometimes create opportunities to see farms. There are A to Z series on various topics in agriculture and on some of the many farmers I have met. Also, get to know Chris who showed me around my first hog farm, the Wagners who let me work cattle, my brother who runs his organic coop, the almond trees Brent tends, or dairy farmers Dino Giacomazzi, Ray Prock and Annie Link who have shown me their farms.

Interviews & More

I have had a lot of opportunities to do interviews and be featured on other sites. You can see that on my media page.

If you’d like to get in touch, there are lots of ways to do that on the contact page.

(Some sections of this page may also appear on Hundred Percent Cotton and JPlovesLIFE.)