This is How a Career Woman Quit 9-5 for Farm Life

Alberta farmer Katelyn Duban didn’t know anything about agriculture when she decided to start farming. In fact, she was doing pretty much the opposite, working a nine-to-five job at the University of Lethbridge.

But a lack of knowledge didn’t stop her from leaving her corporate job behind for farm life, even though she admits it was a huge adjustment for her self-proclaimed type-A personality. “I traded my heels in for my boots and quit my full-time job to learn how to be a farmer and what that meant,” she says.

Taking all that she’s learned while spending time outside with her goats on the organic farm she runs with her husband, she’s spent the last couple of years working in the field (literally) while also finding time for her podcast, The Rural Woman Podcast, which showcases the stories of women in agriculture.

We spoke with her about how she became a farmer and transitioned careers, how she maintains a beauty routine while driving a tractor and the realities of being a woman in agriculture. Armed with her business background, words of wisdom for other women in the farming industry and some of the John Frieda Go Blonder products, she’s proving that women’s empowerment in agriculture is very real, even with professional obstacles. As she notes, “the best thing you can do is try.”

From city life to farm life

Though Duban grew up in Lethbridge, Alberta, close to where she is now, she wasn’t raised with a farming lifestyle in mind. “I always say I’m a city girl-turned-farmer,” she explains. ”I actually grew up about 20 minutes from where our farm is now. But I did not grow up in the agriculture industry at all. I would say I had the pretty standard two-parent household, they both had nine-to-five jobs.”

Duban went to college and earned a diploma in office administration business, and then settled into a nine-to-five job, and then fell in love with a farmer. She says, “the rest is kind of history after that.”

Even after meeting her husband, farm life wasn’t immediately part of the plan for Duban. “So we got married over five years ago now, and it was never my intention to leave my job and quit my career to be an active member of the farm. But we were married for about nine months before I traded my heels in for my boots and quit my full-time job to learn how to be a farmer and what that meant.”

Since making that choice, Duban has been working on the farm full-time since 2017, and her career has grown from there. “In 2019, I launched my podcast, The Rural Woman Podcast, because I was looking for a podcast while I was driving the tractor and wanted one that had things to do with agriculture and farming and highlighted women’s stories specifically, and when I couldn’t find one, I decided I’d better make one,” she says.