When Geri met Toby

FOF Toby is a dynamo. She talks fast, thinks fast and moves fast, from the moment she wakes around 5 am to tend to the turkeys and chickens on her farm until she crawls under the covers at 10:30 p.m.

Toby lives with her husband on a six-acre farm in upstate New York, works full-time in an executive position for a utility company, bakes scrumptious chocolate zucchini bread, sews her own clothes, blogs, and is about to spend half a week–every week– caring for her first grandchild.

Toby has religiously commented on my blog for months. I always enjoy her insightful observations and even her opposing viewpoints, so I was excited to meet her when she came to Manhattan for the day yesterday. No surprise, she’s a pragmatic and edgy gal. When I asked what her younger daughter does for a living, she answered, “She’s the best-educated hairdresser in a world.” A college graduate, her daughter studied at Aveda’s beauty school before she married and moved to London, so she could get a job there. She loves her work, Toby told me.

One of the first women to be admitted to Colgate University in the seventies, Toby earned a masters in journalism from the prestigious Newhouse School of Journalism at Syracuse University and a masters in business from Binghamton University. Although she always dreamed of living and working in NY after school, she stayed upstate when she met and married. “It was a great place to raise a family,” Tony explains. But I could tell she was thrilled to be in Manhattan, even for just a day.

Meet Toby on her blog, Kitchen Counter Economics, where she shows us how to cook a perfect barbecued brisket, ruminates about sewing proper-sized waistbands and keeps us up to date on her garlic plants, turkeys and tomatoes.

She’s another outstanding reason why FOF is the greatest generation of women on the planet.