Jennifer Nickel

My name is Jennifer, I was born in 1973. Had great parents who were very wealthy and gave my sisiterand I everything two little girls could ask for. At the early age of 5 I took my first trip to hawaii. I grew up in shafer ca. in the country. My Dad was a farmer. My Mom stayed home with me and my only sister. We all helped my father on the farm. We chopped weeds in the cotton, trompped cotton, pulled cotton trailers into the cotton gin for our father. When I was around the age of 10 I learned how to drive the farm pickup on the dirt roads . That way I could drive truck while my dad and others picked up sprinkler pipe and irrigation pipe. My Mom, sister and I also turned spickets on the pipes that watered the cotton fields. Later I started working in the almond orchards, fixing sprinkler line hoses. I rode up and down the field on my quad and helped my father irrigate his almonds. When we would put a new almond orchard in, all of us would help to plant baby ones. We also had to plant baby almonds when there was a bad wind storm and the big trees would blow over, and had to be replaced with new baby almond trees. Then I learned how to drive tractors. Not all of them, just the little ones. I loved to mow the weeds in our almond orchards. Something else I did in highschool was run the module builder. This was a machine that would press the cotton down and into a hard block, that would be picked up by trucks later on that day. I loved working with my Dad on his farm in Shafter California. Plus it was a good way for me to earn $10 an hour. I loved being outside anyway. And not to forget loved being with my Dad and helping him. He was a very hard worker his whole life until around the age of 50. That's when he finally retired and sold his farm and all of the equiptment. Sold the house we were raised in since I was 2 years old until after I graduated from high school. And moved to the town of bakersfield. I had a wonderful childhood growing up. My parents took me and my sister to Hawaii about 5 times. I also went to Figi, and Australia when I was in eighth grade. Growing up, we went to church and sunday school every week. Not to mention wednesday nights, and sunday nights too. We also had a family cabin in the mountains of Santa Cruz. There we would go for vacation in the summer time for two weeks at a time so we could go to a church conference for 2 weeks. I went to camp there. Now my parents live in salem oregon And my dad has cancer. I miss my family so much.