Virginia woman is finalist for Farm Mom of the Year

Dee Dee Clements Darden of Isle of Wight County is the Southeast Region winner in the annual America’s Farmers Farm Mom of the Year program (Photo courtesy of America's Farmers).

Voting continues through May 12 for Monsanto’s America’s Farmers 2012 Farm Mom of the Year recognition, and there’s a Virginia farm mom among the finalists!

Nominations from farm families all over the United States were submitted earlier this spring, and Delores “Dee Dee” Clements Darden recently was named Southeast Region winner.

Darden and her husband, Tommy, raise peanuts, cotton, corn, wheat, soybeans, pumpkins and beef cattle on 600 acres near Smithfield. They also run Darden’s Country Store, a family-run business since 1952, where they cure and sell 1,000 hams a year.

In addition to her farm and store duties, she organizes educational events each fall for more than 1,500 local schoolchildren and their parents at her family’s farm.

Darden chairs the Virginia Small Grains Checkoff Board and serves on her county board of supervisors. She is a past president of the Virginia Grains Producers and a past chairman of the National Peanut Board.

America’s Farmers has a system in place to keep you from voting more than once, but don’t miss your opportunity to get that one vote in before May 12. The national winner will be announced “on or about” Mother’s Day, May 13.