Last year the owner of Asilomar, the CA State Parks department, signed a 20-year contract handing over the running of the property to Aramark, a national corporation with 260,000 employees. This led to some controversy at the recent Hazon sustainable food conference, where certain local, sustainable producers had their products rejected as donations for the conference. The reason? “Food Safety”, according to Aramark.

And now, this “Alcohol Announcement” from the 2010 EcoFarm program guide:

“Dear EcoFarm Friends! We know that celebration is a very important component of the EcoFarm Conference and you are probably noting a reduction of fun activities, especially reagarding the consumption of alcohol. The new Aramark management at Asilomar changed several longstanding policies regarding alcohol in the months leading up to the conference and we did not have time to figure out a new cost and activity structure to accommodate this. Therefore, we needed to cancel several bars and activities. We hope that you will still find plenty of fun – ask EcoFarm staff if you are looking for ideas! Thank you for your patience and understanding!”

I’m not that much of a drinker, and I did still have plenty of fun, but I understand a certain disappointment. Many farmers see this conference as their vacation for the year; its the one time they can kick back with their organic-growing buddies from across the country, talk shop, get inspired, and party. While I had a great time at this year’s conference, I can see how Aramark’s new management style might be just a signal that EcoFarm needs to move into a new phase. And sure enough, EcoFarm’s organizers are openly considering a move.

With 1,300 registered attendees and more who wanted to attend but couldn’t register, the popularity of ecological farming may finally be catching up with the EcoFarm community. The organizers really seem to know what they’re doing, helping us come together “for education, inspiration, and creative solution-building”. There are workshops for everyone; for the farmer, for the gardener, for the activist, for the policy wonk, some practical, some aesthetic, some en Español. Over the three years I’ve gone, I’ve learned what I love most about the conference (besides the conviviality, and the seed swap) is that I really come away inspired to continue working on these issues, with these people.

Particularly, I get inspired by talking to “heroes” of the movement, like Bob Scowcroft or Judith Redmond, who have done so much to advance the cause of just, sustainable food systems, yet remain so humble and approachable. Sure, it instills in me hope to know that progress can and has been made, but it also makes me think about how (personally) I am only at the beginning of my journey as an activist. My goal is not just to create change, it is to create change while having a good time and being good to people, and it’s nice to know that I have role models for that!

As for the conference itself, I’ve learned that I get the most out of the practical workshops, so the ones I attended were:
“High Quality Organic Wheat for the Local Whole-Grain Market”
“Advanced Soil Fertility Topics: The Wise Use of Micronutrients in Organic Farming”
“Farming With a Sharp Pencil!”
“Are Internships Illegal?”
and “Classical Plant Breeding for Improving Vegetable Crops.”

With the exception of the wheat one (where a UC researcher babbled about the chromosome locations of wheat/rye hybrids), I learned a lot. I learned how to be a better farm business planner. I learned that regulations intended to protect workers are ruining the prospects for on-farm internships (which have no doubt played a huge role in the expansion of ecological farming’s success). I learned the importance of proper Boron levels in your soil (and what to do if they’re out of whack). And, in the workshop which could have been titled “Dorkin’ Out on Seed Saving,” I learned how to effectively set the right genome composition of desired traits into a summer squash plant, over years of selection and growing.

The most theoretical session I went to was “Planting the Future: New Leaders in Activism for Food Justice.” This was a plenary, so all minds were on deck to ponder a newly-emphasized aspect of ecological farming: urban food access, and the various forms of environmental racism associated with food. This was a wonderful presentation, full of hope for more collaboration between social justice advocates and the ecological farming community. It made me think, however, about what the next step was. With so much press and emphasis on urban farming and urban food issues, you’d think that once people start growing food in the city, a sustainable food system is inevitable. But clearly this is too simple a read on the problem. I love that people are making efforts towards urban food self-sufficiency, but maybe we should think three steps ahead: we may be growing more of our own food in 20-30 years time, but we likely won’t be able to grow all of it. So I’d like to see a concurrent emphasis, along with urban food production, on connecting urban communities with their rural counterparts. This connection could be rooted in physical trade of food and work, but also serve to foster inter-cultural dialog. Obama may not be able to unite the country, but perhaps sustainable food can?

Honestly, after attending many other food conferences, I have almost nothing bad to say about this one. It was a blast, and I’m grateful to the organizers for sticking with it for 30 years. I encourage anyone who has ever been, or would like to go in the future, to contact EFA with your ideas for a new conference venue, or any other suggestions you can make to help them improve and expand the conference while maintaining its integrity.

Income Based Repayment (IBR) prevents payments on federal student loans from exceeding 15% of a borrower’s disposable income above 150% of the poverty level. This plan also allows for the government to subsidize 3 years of interest payments and to have any remaining debt erased after 25 years. It is the combination of IBR with Public Service Loan forgiveness that might allow more young people to look at farming as a viable career.

For example, under the most common farm financial circumstances (based on USDA statistics):

A farm family of four, with on-farm income of $10,000 and student loans totaling $45,000 at an interest rate of 6.8%:

• under Standard 10-year repayment they would pay $517 a month, totaling $62,143.00

• under IBR they would pay $0 a month, leaving a debt that would accrue interest over 25 years to well over a $100,000.00, greatly impairing their ability to borrow money in the future

• under IBR, with Public Service Loan Forgiveness, they would pay $0 a month, but with the government subsidizing the first 3 years of interest, they would only accrue 7 years of interest before forgiveness – greatly reducing their debt load and allowing for borrowing that could help grow their business or help their own children go to college

Under IBR with Public Service Loan Forgiveness, the same family:

• with an income of $20,000, would pay $0 a month

• with an income of $40000.00, would pay $87 a month, with total repayment equaling $10,400.00

• with an income of $70000.00, would pay $460 a month, with total prepayment equaling $55,200.00

This repayment schedule, Income Based Repayment coupled with Public Service Loan Forgiveness, is the best option for young, beginning, and new entry farmers. We need to reach out to our elected officials and help them recognize how beneficial Student Loan Forgiveness could be to the profession of farming and the future of agriculture.

I recently contacted my elected officials to propose that farming become one of the areas of employment eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. The following are the nuts and bolts of the request but you can find a sample letter that can be tailored to your own personal circumstances here.

If you are in need of assistance with repaying or dispatching your student loan, or simply care about the future of agriculture in this country, please take the time to contact your representatives and let them know that they can help build financial security for a new generation of farmers, and by extension their communities, by adding farming to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness plan.

We need healthcare. Many of us cannot afford it. Farming is physical labor with physical risks and with great demands on performance over time. As a nation served by many workers, some unionized, some wearing uniforms, we recognize the importance of retaining skilled practitioners with benefits. Our firefighters, coast guards and electricians are all provided with benefits, and healthcare. Why not farmers? Our enlisted soldiers and their families are provided with coverage for their service. Why not our farmers?

The reclaiming of our local economy will hopefully, in the next decade, be characterized by greater institutional regionalism. This means schools and hospitals buying food from local farms, this means deep partnerships of commerce within residential districts and within agricultural districts. In order to succeed at this level of engagement, the farmers will negotiate the hurdles of liability, red tape and logistics of rescaling. We’ll be operating forklifts and mid-sized delivery vans; we’ll be scaling up production. We will spend a lot of time resizing, retrofitting and rethinking systems of food production and distribution, in real time, and at real physical risk to ourselves. This is important work. We cannot lose the hardworking members of the team to illness and injury. We cannot lose any fingers or toes. We cannot afford for our farmers to be distracted by financial worry associated with the birth of
a child or the infection of a blister. We need to provide health coverage for farmers, young and old, owners and workers, for the longevity of the sector and of the nation.

Lobbying for these issues is crucial. Are you interested in joining our National Young Farmers Coalition and working with partners to figure out possible solutions to the affordable health care situation? Please join the Greenhorns mailing list so that we can keep you in the loop. And read more about what’s happening on the ground for young farmers in our newsletter, the Greenhorns Circular.

Last week, 200 young farmers gathered at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Tarrytown, NY for a conference with the aim to provide education and support to sprouting farmers. This was the second year of the Young Farmers Conference, filled to capacity and begging the question, will the conference go national next year, or stay local?

The feeling in the air was one of excitement; despite the obstacles, these twenty- and thirty-somethings were eager to better their skills and be a part of the revolution in how we feed ourselves. Workshops included those on composting, poultry processing, creative ideas for accessing land, navigating Farm Bill programs for beginners, soil nutrition, agroforestry and tree crops, farming through the winter, permaculture, bringing meat to market, and more.

As a wannabe farmer-gardener myself, I also learned a lot. Like, for example, that the USDA defines a beginning farmer as someone who has been farming for less than ten years, but who has three years of farm management experience under their belt. Traci Bruckner from the Center for Rural Affairs and Aimee Witteman from the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition walked us through a number of programs that beginners are encouraged to apply for, like the Value-Added Producer Grants and Community Food Project Grants.

In another session, Severine von Tscharner Fleming, the leader of the Greenhorns –  an organization that puts on events and provides tools to young farmers — led a talk on seeds. Tom Stearns from High Mowing Seeds, Pete Johnson from Pete’s Greens, and Ken Greene from the Hudson Valley Seed Library discussed the difficulties around starting a seed-based business: the trial testing, erratic income, the need for marketing. All seemed happy, however, to be a part of the movement to reclaim seeds from agribusiness. (This is the best time of year to help these farmers out by buying seeds early, by the way, as they’ve put up capital to produce their catalog and package the product. Seeds make great holiday gifts!)

Rounding out the first day, Wes Jackson gave a talk to the group, whom he referred to as the “refugia,” saying “we need your help!” He spoke about the work he is doing to perennialize wheat and other grain crops at the Land Institute, and added that “human cleverness should be subordinate to nature’s knowledge.” He also spoke about the visit he made with Wendell Berry and Fred Kirschenmann (who also spoke) to Washington, D.C., saying that Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan still haven’t responded to their calls for a 50-year Farm Bill. (The gist of which can be read in their scary op-ed from the New York Times earlier this year).

In another session I attended, the focus was on the ins and outs of land leasing, and yet another featured two farmers, Benjamin Shute and Hector Tejada, discussing the things they’ve learned as farmers with a few years under their belt. There were many sessions I wish I could have taken part but missed… well, there is always next year.

Kirschenmann, President of the board at Stone Barns, focused his talk at the end of the conference on building a “knowledge-intensive agriculture,” and being hopeful. He gave a few pieces of advice: 1. Challenges are always opportunities. 2. There will be plenty of space in the new system for all young farmers who want to farm, no matter how difficult the obstacles seem now, because resource availability will require it. 3. The economy of community will be important moving forward. He said we must work on reducing transaction costs where ever possible, through the spirit of cooperation. He also suggested a book called the Real Wealth of Nations, by Riane Eisler. 4. Civics matter; demand policy changes. 5. And pay attention to the models emerging. Small systems can be very productive, he said, giving the example of Will Allen’s Growing Power, where 10,000 people are fed from 3 acres. (Kirschenmann was also on the Leonard Lopate show last week with two young farmers. You can listen here.)

Surprisingly, there were farmers from much further out than the northeast; I met a young woman who’d been farming in rural Wisconsin, and there were two people who’d come together from a Michigan agriculture school, among others. (I also noticed the crowd was not very diverse, made up of mostly college-educated and white farmers.) This prompted me to ask Nena Johnson, Public Programs Director at Stone Barns, whether or not there were plans in the works for an outreach strategy, to make the Young Farmers Conference a national event. Instead, she told me, the intention was to create a training program so that similar conferences can be held all across the nation using locally based knowledge. One big success according to Johnson: calling on young farmers to design the programming.

The final session I attended, Building the Young Farmers Movement (pictured above), was led by Shute and Fleming. On a sheet of paper, Fleming wrote out all of the problems facing young farmers as we called them out: infrastructure and community building, land access, getting the training you need, building political will, access to healthcare, sustainable finances, and isolation, to name a few. But quickly the page was turned and begun anew: in a full room in the back of Blue Hill restaurant, young farmers began to hatch a plan for staying connected, and discussed coalition building to push for a sustainable farming agenda.

Step out of the realm of thought, get on your hands and knees and start building. Set poetry in motion. You can start your first draft and I promise the poem will grow increasingly interesting.

My poem is about a tiny farm I’m starting for a couple of farm smitten NYC non-farmers who own a restaurant, cafe and grocery store in Brooklyn, and who want to grow some of their own produce. My goal is to set in motion year-round, efficient, ecologically sound and manageable growing systems to help them reach their goal of farm to table. Oh, and to keep the seedlings alive. Without the challenge of turning a profit this first year, and with support for low-budget experiments, I’ve landed in a great place to learn and grow alongside my adventurous employers.

The following is an email excerpt to some farmers north of here, who are seasoned winter growers and supportive of this project. I wouldn’t blame anyone for skipping over it. Until recently my eyes glazed at the mere mention of greenhouse details and planting specifications, though in theory I was interested. Perhaps because starting ‘my own farm’ was an imaginary leap into a pit of venomous snakes. Despite the terrors inherent in committing to farming, now that I have my own project, I find the details riveting. You might too, if you are on the verge of growing food for people.

…the greenhouse has transformed since I emailed you. A proper swale has finally been dug and I don’t expect more flooding. I put aluminum flashing along the sides to deter voles, mounded earth against it for insulation, and left extra frame plastic hanging over for drainage. I’ve decided we should not invest in a heater, fan or shutters. I’ll do what I can to avoid reliance on unsustainable energy sources and expensive technology. I may look into affordable solar alternatives and grant availability for our minimal energy needs. For heating we have a double layer of greenhouse plastic and double row cover over the beds, which will not be raised. For air ciruclation we have doors and vents so large that opening them is essentially like removing the end walls. Considering our dimensions (26×12x60), later in the spring I think we’ll need more ventilation. I hope we can build at least one 4×4 vent into the ceiling, with an automatic, thermostatically controlled arm. I’ve amended the greenhouse soil with lime, composted horse manure and bloodmeal, although I’m still concerned about low phosphorus. This winter I’ll be growing in four 4′x50′ beds with 2′ pathways (covered with cardboard and straw). It’s hard to believe that just a few weeks ago this patch of earth was complete sod. Equally as hard to believe is that next week thousands of spinach and mizuna seedlings will be getting established here. The greenhouse will double as a nursery, but not until May, since the field won’t be ready for planting until June. I had wanted to plant a cover crop in the greenhouse during the summer, but some farmers do not think this is a good or profitable idea. I haven’t decided how flexible this greenhouse will be in the summer. I don’t want to overextend the soil OR myself…

If a new farmer gets to the point where an apprenticeship is too basic, and wants to take their vocation to the next level without tying the knot, in addition to farm management, I recommend looking into funded pilot projects, and going so far as to advertise for them. Starting a farm for someone can be very rewarding. With an understanding of your basic needs – such as your bottom line needs, what you seek to learn, what you have to offer, needed materials and support, etc., you can draw up a rough employment contract.  When you find what seems like a good match, you’ll be prepared to negotiate an arrangement.

And yes, young, anonymous farmer, when you find yourself standing in the middle of a new field, you will be able to set the farm wheel turning with the same, mighty force that moved the pen of the poet, songwriter or artist who inspires you.

According to the latest 2007 USDA National Agriculture Statistics Service, roughly 4 million family farms have been lost since the 1930’s, though it should be noted that small farms (50 acres in size, or less) have increased about 13% compared to the earlier USDA 2002 census data). As the population of family farmers continues to age, there is also a critical shortage of young farmers to take their place. Michael Paine is a rare breed; he doesn’t come from a farming family, and he’s relatively young. His story is a good example of the unique challenges facing those who wish to take up farming.

Read the rest of this post on Cooking Up a Story

It feels kind of like the elephant in the room. It’s not that we don’t talk or think about it around here — indeed, we do both, rather frequently. But rarely do we discuss it with others. For some reason, it’s not the kind of subject that is discussed all that openly. Instead, it’s alluded to subtly, in a manner that just confuses me at first, until I remember that this is a little unusual.

“You don’t look like a farmer,” people say when I tell them my profession.

“What do you mean?” I reply, never able to let an issue go,

“Oh, I don’t know,” they reply. “You’re just little. You don’t look like you ride a tractor.”

It still takes me a minute to put it together. (Why do you have to be “big” to ride a tractor? Why do you have to ride a tractor all the time to be a farmer? What does it mean to not “look” like someone who does ride a tractor?) Until I realize, oh, they mean because I am a young woman. At this point, I never know quite what to say. “I ride a tractor sometimes,” or, “Yep, well, I am.” The subject changes. But I am constantly reminded that to be a female farmer is something a little out-of-the-ordinary, to work at a farm site staffed almost entirely by women, even more so. So I decided to express my thoughts about some of the intricacies of women in agriculture.

Lately, I hear a lot about female farmers as a “new trend.” According to the 2007 census, one or two out of ten farms is now operated by a woman. However, the “trend” part is hard to track, and seems to me to obscure some history of women who have always been involved in farming. Female farmers have been historically under-reported and under-recognized. The U.S. census records only one operator per farm, the deed holder. As the majority of land is officially owned by men, this renders invisible all female partners who manage farms with their husbands or families. As I learned from this episode of the radio series Making Contact, worldwide, between 65 and 75 percent of all food is grown by women, who own only one percent of the world’s land. Mainly operating as subsistence growers, this food production is often conceptualized as “domestic work,” obscuring recognition of these female farmers worldwide. Still, the visibility of female farmers, at least within the U.S., is growing. For all its limitations, the census has recorded a more than doubling of farms operated by women between 1978 and 2005, from 100,000 to 250,000.

As the country’s farmers age, a new “back to the land” movement, fueled partly by desires to put personal politics into action and an increasing disillusionment with the job market and traditional concept of careerism for young people, is encouraging a new crop of farmers, many of them women. We new farmers often farm under nontraditional arrangements — co-farmers are often platonic managing partners instead of the heterosexual husband-wife team of the past — meaning women are more often recognized as farm owners or principle managers.

Additionally, as farmers age, their land is more often being taken over by wives, daughters, or other female family members. Interestingly, as making a living as a farmer becomes ever more difficult, it becomes women’s work. At a farmer’s market I frequent, one of the farms is a hundred-acre conventional New Jersey farm that sells corn, tomatoes, squash, and tree fruit. The farm is run by two middle-aged sisters who recently took over management of the farm from their 80-year-old father. I was excited to see a farm run by women of a slightly older generation, so I asked them their thoughts. “Most of the time, other farmers treat us okay,” they told me, “although if we do something wrong, it’s, ‘oh those girls.’ We bring along [our brother] to market sometimes; he doesn’t know a thing about farming, but people just want to talk to ‘the man in charge.’” They took over the farm, they told me, because their husbands and brothers had to get “better” jobs that brought in more money. Without the expectation of being primary breadwinners, they were left as the ones who could keep the family farm alive.

In both conversation and personal thought about females and farming, I want to be careful to avoid gender essentialism. I do not want to make generalizations like, “women make good farmers because they like to nurture the earth,” or, “men are better with machines.” Gender expression, I believe, is a complex combination of socialization, culture, and genetics. Not being able to divorce these things from each other, I find it frustrating and counterproductive to base ideas or logic on what men or women are “naturally” like or good at doing.

That said, I acknowledge my shortcomings, like a lack of confidence with machines and power tools. Part of this is completely personal, gender aside; I happen to not be good with power tools, whereas I know many women who are. However, there is a gendered aspect to power-tool-confidence. My sister recently visited me in Philadelphia, and came to work with me on the farm. When I asked her what she wanted to work on, she replied, “anything with power tools,” explaining that she recently volunteered recycling old doors for a green-deconstruction non-profit with a male friend of hers.

When the staff person trained them, he offered a power drill to help, but spoke about it and handed it only to my sister’s male friend. Finally, the friend asked my sister if she, too, would like to use the power drill. My sister did, and had a great time.

My insecurity with machines and tools has several layers. I am not good at them, I suspect, because I was never encouraged to use them, so I never gained comfort or ability through practice. Now, I am afraid to practice because I am not good, and I do not want other people to notice and use their observations of my fumbling to further whatever ingrained ideas they have of women being bad with power tools. It gets rather angsty. I do not want to speak for all female-bodied farmers, but I think many of us feel like we have something to prove. I have to remind myself sometimes that just because I can’t shovel compost as fast or carry a wheelbarrow quite as full of watermelons, doesn’t mean that I am not strong or not a good farmer. We work together. And anyway, we all can handle wheelbarrows that are pretty darn full.

We never intentionally created a female dominated farm here at Henry Got Crops. Most of our applicants for internships and apprentices just happened to be female, and most of those qualified ended up being women. We have three female apprentices, two female interns, and one male intern. (We now have another — a big welcome to Ed, who is newly working with us this fall!) I am glad, though, to be able to offer a positive view of women as strong, hard, workers to the students here at Saul; I want the female students to know that they can be farmers if they want, or anything else they aspire toward. One of our Saul summer interns brought her boyfriend out to work with her one morning. “How did he like it?” I asked her the next day. “I brought him out so he would see how hard I work,” she replied. “He said it was fun, but really hard. He said he couldn’t do this every day.”

I have to admit, I was pretty proud.

Originally published on Beyond Green, h/t to Tom Laskawy

Most college campuses have land to spare — and now as farming has become a focus of interest for students, and willing participants are lining up to volunteer their time planting, weeding and harvesting across the US, there couldn’t be a better time to think about starting a farm on campus. The idea behind the guide was to empower students to harness this momentum, showing step-by-step how to start a campus farm, as well as providing students with resources for seasonal planning, maintaining relationships with buyers, food safety, building community around the garden, and forming composting partnerships so that it continues to thrive.

One of the most successful university farm-to-lunchroom projects is the Yale Sustainable Food Project, which began in 2001 after students began pushing for better food in their lunchrooms. I wrote the director of the project, Melina Shannon-DiPietro, because I wanted to get an idea of what is possible for a student farm, even on a small plot in the northeast, and to ask her how this program has affected the campus community. This is what she had to say:

The farm is one-acre, and the produce grown at the farm is shared with volunteers, sold at farmers market, and tops pizza from our wood-burning hearth oven. In one year, this one acre inspired nearly 30 interns to make 1,500 pizzas in our brick oven, more than 1,300 students to volunteer during afternoon workdays, and more than 300 community members and school children to get their hands dirty. Another 600 students visited the farm for events like a pig roast and a harvest festival. We grow 300 varieties of vegetables, fruit, flowers, and herbs, and we grow in all 4 seasons. One of the most exciting numbers last year is that over 850 students took courses related to food and agriculture. Students are hungry for this work.

The farm is an entry point for students to become involved in other initiatives involving food, agriculture, and the environment. Students talk about how important the Yale Farm is to them as a space to learn with their hands and minds, a place to enjoy long conversations with friends while working, and a place to spend time outdoors and develop a connection to land and food. They also tell us that the Yale Farm is the place where they  first connect the dots and understand that the way we live is a political act, an ethical act, and even, today, part of a movement.

Each of these gardens around the nation can teach students what good food means – what tastes good, what’s good for our health, what’s good for farmers and for the land, and what’s good for our communities.  These gardens can teach our children to be better learners by opening their senses, to be environmental stewards by connecting them to the land, and to be better citizens by connecting them to community.

Sounds terrific, right? So as the school year begins in this period of new thinking on agriculture, here is a tool that students can use. Besides the vital world of books, an opportunity awaits to get dirty and produce food — right outside of your dorm room. It is a chance to build a community on campus around food, while turning the tide on a corporate-dominated food system that is making us sick.

I will not dispute that my own degree provides me with resources, personal connections, and many cherished memories. What surprises me, however, is that some would consider my farming apprenticeships, which I view as an equally valuable and in some ways more practical educational experience, as mild exploitation. The upside of this popular misconception is that my friends often pick up the tab as, after all, I earn $600 a month, April to October. At the risk of losing my free drinks, however, I’d like to set the record straight.

Farming apprenticeships come in all manner of shapes and sizes—I know young farmers earning more than $1000 a month, not including the free room and board, and I know others who bring in $100 a month and share a bunk room in a trailer. What the good apprenticeships share is a sincere commitment on the part of the farmer to train the next generation of sustainable agrarians. These farmers believe in apprenticeships because they are themselves the products of a good one, or because they wish they had had such an experience, rather than the rough road of trial and error.

As an example, Don, the farmer at Caretaker Farm, where I work, apprenticed at Brookfield Farm under Dan Kaplan. Dan, in turn, apprenticed at Caretaker under the former owners, Sam and Elizabeth Smith. As an apprentice here, I am the beneficiary of the wisdom from three generations of excellent farmers.

These farmers are as much teachers as any professor—I receive feedback on my performance, assignments intended to improve my understanding or skills, and a patient ear for all of my questions. Truly, I ask a lot of questions. As the season winds to a close, we are taking time in our workday for weekly workshops on crop planning, cover cropping, CSA business management, and other topics. And all season long I’ve been provided with a home (the most lovely cabin since Thoreau’s Walden), all of my meals (groceries to supplement farm vegetables are provided, and we cook communally), and a setting that takes my breath away.
On top of all of that, I get paid. When I interned for a non-profit, which provided me with no housing, and no more food than free bagels on Fridays, I earned nothing. Farming seemed like quite the step up to me.

Too often, I think, non-farmers (or parents!) hear an apprentice salary and immediately calculate it into an hourly wage. Their conclusion, then, is that the employer farmers is getting one heck of a deal. When you consider, however, the labor invested each year in training an employee who will leave at then end of the season, the commitment to providing meaningful work, and the promise of an environment open to questions, I begin to wonder, “what kind of altruists are these people?”

This week CRAFT (yet another perk of my apprenticeship) visited Brookfield Farm, where manager Dan Kaplan explained his farm’s business plan and budget. Labor costs, his own and the apprentices’, make up a full 60% of his budget. “Apprentices are not cheap,” he noted with a laugh, “not if you treat them well.”

To be sure, exploitative apprenticeships exist. I have a friend who, finally tired of a lazy manager who taught him nothing and paid him little more, packed his car and left his apprenticeship mid-season. He was jaded and bitter and convinced that the idea of apprenticeship was all a sham.

But his experience is not the norm, I believe. Seek out an apprenticeship with the same critical eye with which others go college shopping. You’ll end up with a lot less debt, and with luck, a farm of your own some day.

We asked our contestants to tell us where they farmed and what kept them going. Check out what they had to say below.

Our first winner is Emilie Schuler who farms at Waltham Fields Community Farm in Waltham, MA. Here is what she had to say about why she farms:

I love farming, and especially eating the fruits of my labor. When you know exactly how many toiling hours went into that carrot, you will never have tasted a better carrot: it will taste like the other farmers you laughed and talked with while weeding between those tiny, feathery shoots. It will taste like all that sweet, musty compost we worked into the soil, and the old Korean lady who came over to teach us the “proper” way to grow carrots, like they do in Korea. This is the kind of world I want my children to grow up in: a world in which everything has a story, and we are part of that story.

Our second winner is Stephen Cochenour, who is an intern for Colorado State University’s Specialty Crops Program on their 8 acre, certified organic farm. Here is what he had to say about why he farms:

My interest in farming always goes back to the fact that I love to eat. To me, food is more than something I have to deal with 3 times a day. I used to work as an assistant chef for a few years and loved being in the kitchen, but our clientele was pretty wealthy and I wanted to find a way to help educate people living at a lower income level about real food. Getting into farming has given me the experience to help people see where their food comes from and how it gets to them.

Our third winner is Paula Somoza Manalo, who farms in the Redwood Valley in Northern California with Mendocino Organics, where she and her partner raise sheep, cows, meat chickens, Thanksgiving turkeys, pigs and year-round biodynamic produce. Here is what she had to say about why she farms:

I became a farmer because of health issues and I needed a lifestyle change. I wanted to get closer to Nature and offer something to people that would nourish their bodies and souls. I wanted to pursue a personal relationship with a farmer, and farming with him seemed like the best way to do it… What keeps me going: my partner’s humor and energy, the need in the world around us for better food and stronger community around food, watching the Earth’s topsoil disappear due to poor farming techniques, the fight with Big Ag and Industrial Organic, learning about the land everyday, getting stronger every season, the opportunity to play in the dirt.

Thanks for the inspiration from all our young farmer-readers! Be on the look out for more contests for young farmers in the future, and in the mean time, don’t hesitate to be in touch with your thoughts on what you’d like to read in our young farmer’s series here.