When Jesse Kuhn started Marin Roots Farm at age 28, he already had dirt under his fingernails. He’d studied ag in college, managed a student farm, and worked as a landscaper. But when it came to succeeding financially in the farming business, he had a long way to go. “I was charging up my credit cards like crazy and bouncing balances back and forth,” he says. “I almost had to declare bankruptcy during the first year.”

Almost 10 years and many lessons later, Marin Roots is a well-established organic specialty produce business. “It’s a lot of people’s dream to live off the land, but the reality of it is, you have to have a plan for how you’re going to pay the bills,” says Kuhn.

His journey is not unlike that of many beginners who are eager to try their hand at farming but don’t yet have all the necessary skills and resources. In a recent report titled Building a Future with Farmers, the National Young Farmers’ Coalition (NYFC) surveyed 1,000 young and beginning farmers across the US and found that access to land, capital, health care, credit, and business training posed huge challenges.

“What’s different for young and first-career farmers is that they don’t have a lot of equity,” says Severine von Tscharner Fleming, a young farmer in New York’s Hudson Valley who is also co-chair of NYFC and director of The Greenhorns, a film and nonprofit organization that advocates for young farmers. “You see a lot of student debt. Farming is a high-capital industry—an industry that really needs us, but we’re walking in without any cash.” 

Green Thumbs To Greenhorn

Kuhn’s path to farming started as a child in San Geronimo, where he had little exposure to agriculture but picked up a passion for gardening from his grandmother. “She had two green thumbs for sure, and I learned from that,” says Kuhn. When he went to Humboldt State, he joined their new agriculture program and studied permaculture on the side. He also took time off from school to work at an organic soil company and contemplate career paths.

After college he started farming a small one-acre plot, using the model he’d learned on the student farm, but realized the operation was more like a hobby farm than a viable business. So he worked as a landscaper while farming small plots in friends’ backyards, which eventually helped him build the courage to take the leap into full-time farming.

He took out a “land wanted” ad in the Press Democrat and, after receiving a number of responses, settled on a 15-acre agricultural plot on a goat dairy ranch near Petaluma. But there were setbacks infrastructure-wise, such as having to install a new irrigation system, and Kuhn began charging up his credit cards. Right when he was about to declare bankruptcy, a low-interest beginning farmer loan through the USDA Farm Service Agency came through. He was able to buy a tractor, a delivery truck, and seeds.

Through much experimentation, Kuhn found his niche growing organic specialty crops such as baby greens, roots, beans, and summer squash for farmers markets and grocery stores, restaurants, and wholesalers. “A lot of the products I was selling weren’t standardized because I was doing open-pollinated varieties, but there was certainly a market for that,” he says. He now employs a handful of full-time market and field staff.

Kuhn has had to learn much through trial by fire, particularly the organizational side of growing a successful business. He’s found support in his family (his mother helps with accounting, and his father is on call as farm mechanic), as well as in other Marin farmers and the Bay Area farmers market community. “It’s definitely tough farming,” he says. “The farmers market has been a great support network for me, meeting up with the other farmers every week, bouncing ideas off each other, seeing what they’re bringing to market, and getting their advice.”

Growing Roots

Kuhn is still a young farmer by national standards, which place the average farmer at 57. The USDA estimates that 500,000 US farmers (about one-quarter) will retire by 2030, leaving a large gap for the next generation to fill. “We have ever older farmers and ever fewer people who are growing our food,” says Fleming. “I think young farmers are especially well poised to address food security and the re-regionalization of our food system.”

As a result of the Building a Future with Farmers study, the NYFC has proposed a policy agenda including recommendations such as improving credit and savings opportunities, addressing land access and affordability issues, legalizing farm apprenticeships, and expanding training programs. (For more about legal issues related to apprenticeships, see The Farm Intern Conundrum.)

The NYFC study underscores the viability of direct marketing as a start-up strategy for new farmers, with 61 percent of their respondents selling at farmers markets and 49 percent through CSAs. “Helping young farmers means reorienting our food systems so that we’re not just supporting producers who are growing commodity crops and abandoning the small- and medium-scale producers who are more than likely selling directly to the marketplace,” says Fleming.

For aspiring greenhorns, Kuhn recommends getting a job or volunteering on a farm in order to get to know the business. When taking the plunge into starting your own farm, he emphasizes finding the right piece of land, with infrastructure already in place, and developing a niche.

But despite the challenges he’s encountered along the way, Kuhn loves what he does. “Being able to wake up on the farm is incredible,” he says. “And it’s rewarding to go to the farmers market and meet the people who are going to be eating my food.”

Photo: Gary Yost. Chart by the National Young Farmers Coalition.

Originally published on CUESA

“You’re farming in Alaska?! What can you possibly grow there?” This was a common response when I told people I was moving to Alaska to be an AmeriCorps VISTA at Calypso Farm and Ecology Center in Ester, Alaska. To be honest, I myself wasn’t quite sure what to expect. When I arrived in April, the ground was still covered in ice, the fields covered in snow. Three months later, I’ve discovered the shocking truth. In Alaska, a food revolution is brewing, and it’s led by 12 year olds.

Calypso Farm and Ecology Center (Calypso), founded in 2000, is a successful educational, working farm located near Fairbanks, Alaska. Calypso’s mission is to promote local agriculture and environmental awareness through hands-on education in natural and farming ecosystems. They provide educational programs for children and adults, reaching thousands of individuals annually. Programs include: farm field trips, farm and garden workshops, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), farm apprenticeships and an extensive school garden network–the Schoolyard Garden Initiative (SGI). Through all of its programming, Calypso works to provide food and education access for low-income members of the community.

The SGI is an innovative community food program which creates organic school gardens that function as youth-operated food gardens during the summer months and experiential learning environments during the school year. This program responds to the need for locally grown food for the community, a gardening, nutrition and employment connection for youth and hands-on educational opportunities in the schools.

Fairbanks, Alaska is a community driven by the seasons. There can be snow on the ground from September through April. This climate makes food accessibility paramount. If you drive past the grocery store on a wintery evening it isn’t uncommon to see several taxis lined up in front, taking people without cars to get their groceries. If it seems difficult to get food within the state, it is even more difficult to get food to the state. Food often travels thousands of miles from the lower 48 to make it into the grocery aisles. It is said that if Alaska were to be cut off from the lower 48, Alaska’s supermarket food supply would be gone in three days.

The students in the SGI program have taken matters into their own hands. There are currently six schools in the program. These Student Gardeners (aged 12-18) plant, maintain, harvest and sell vegetables throughout the summer. They will also assist in teaching home gardening workshops to aspiring gardeners in the community and garden lessons to younger children in the fall. In exchange for their work, each Student Gardener takes home a weekly supply of vegetable and receives a monetary stipend at the end of the season. For most, this is their first job experience.

School Garden produce is available to the public through CSA’s and at weekly Farm Stands. Each garden offers a small number of CSA shares and operated a weekly Farm Stand on site. All produce is available for purchase with Food Stamps, WIC and Senior Coupons. Five of the six schools are within walking distance of low-income housing and two of the schools are federally recognized as Title I Schools (serving low-income students).

The Student Gardeners aren’t just farmers in training. They are agents of positive change, cultivating a new food culture. With pitchforks in hand, they shout “I love kohlrabi!” from the rooftops. They prefer vermiculture to video games. They don’t just finish their vegetables, they grow them. This is farming in Alaska.

In this era when consumers want to know how many “food miles” their carrots traveled and restaurant menus list the distance from farm to fork, restaurant owners are increasingly putting in their own farms on rooftops, abandoned lots and nearby agricultural plots.

The trend has caught on with high-end, Michelin-starred restaurants in California such as The French Laundry in Napa and Manresa in Los Gatos as well as more casual places, such as Pauline’s Pizzeria in San Francisco and the Fremont Diner in Sonoma.

The growing number of restaurant farms is welcome news to new farmers like Rose Robertson, 28, who, like many new farmers, is trained but without a plot of land to call her own. After interning for a year at a farm in Santa Barbara, Robertson knew she wanted to farm but also knew she did not want to be a cog in a large-scale farming operation. She worried that at a big farm, workers like her would end up, “spending your whole day picking beans,” she said.

She found a job managing the one and a half-acre garden at Ubuntu, a high-end vegetarian restaurant in Napa. The owners and staff of Ubuntu describe the garden as the heart of the restaurant, not just a side project. In the summer months up to 90 percent of the produce served comes from its garden.

“The chef says he’s not the chef,” said Robertson. “That the gardeners are growing the food that dictates the menu.”

Ubuntu’s owner, Sandy Lawrence, set out to create that dynamic, and says the importance of hyper-fresh produce is heightened because the restaurant is vegetarian. With the increasing number of young people flocking to agricultural training programs and farming internships, Lawrence never worried about finding eager farmers to employ.

“The reason we’ve been so confident is we’ve always had loads of young people who want to work,” she said. In addition to Robertson, another full time gardener and two part time workers, the garden has an internship program that attracts a constant stream of willing volunteers.

The trend represents a different kind of job opportunity for young people trying to break into agriculture in regions like the Bay Area, where land prices are prohibitively high. The average plot of cropland in California sold for about $9,000 an acre in 2010, according to USDA data, compared to about $4,000 an acre in Iowa, or $800 an acre in Montana, the cheapest state. Prices can go much higher in the Bay Area, though–a plot currently for sale in Sebastopol, Sonoma County is priced at about $21,000 per acre.

American farmers are getting old–in 2007, the average age of a farmer was 58, compared to 39 in 1945. Between 2002 and 2007, the number of farmers under 45 decreased by 21 percent. Still, in recent years, more young people have shown interest in farming and policy makers are working to recruit and incentivize new farmers. The latest version of the Farm Bill allocated $18 million for training new farmers.

Several Bay Area farms offer apprenticeships and internships for new farmers, mostly based around organic or biodynamic methods. But it is still difficult for many of the young people who complete the programs to get a paid job farming when they finish, which makes restaurant farms an appealing option to some.

Misja Nuyttens, 30, was an intern at Green String Farm in Petaluma and recently took a job starting a farm for the restaurant Central Market, also in Petaluma.

She says the experience of starting a farm from scratch has been invaluable. It’s not uncommon for beginning farmers such as Nuyttens to hold multiple jobs or look for non-traditional ways to use their farming skills. Samantha Langevin runs the internship program at Hidden Villa farm and education center in the Los Altos hills. She says she encourages interns to think about taking a diversified approach to their careers.

“The trend we’re seeing is young farmers, in addition to farmers markets, they might be selling to restaurants, they might be offering a CSA program, they might be working with a local school, whether that’s elementary to university, to offer programming on-site, they might be working with other community organizations that are looking to purchase food,” says Langevin.

Managing a restaurant garden lets farmers try out running a farm without having to take on debt or over-commit. And for restaurants, being ultra-local and having control over access to produce gives the chef flexibility. Robertson, the manager of Ubuntu’s garden, says the chef likes being able to harvest vegetables at any stage of growth. He also sometimes uses parts of the plant which are edible but often aren’t traditionally sold, such as carrot tops and beet stems. And he has Robertson grow plants that are difficult or impossible to find in the marketplace, including an edible ice plant with a lemony taste called ficoide glaciale.

Misja Nuyttens says part of the motivation for the chef and owner at Central Market restaurant to start his own garden was to be able to serve produce at its absolute freshest. Even when he purchased from farms only a few miles away, the produce would often go through a distributer that trucked items all over the Bay Area before getting to his kitchen.

Starting a dedicated garden might not always be profitable for restaurants. Lawrence says Ubuntu’s garden is sustaining itself by providing produce to the restaurant, but it helps that most of the land is on the owner’s property. Similarly, the owners of the Farmhouse Inn in Forestville, Sonoma use their own land for their garden, and have set up a share-cropping arrangement with a farmer to make it affordable. Co-owner Catherine Bartolomei says the garden could probably be more profitable if she wanted it to be, but that the larger goal is to adhere to the business’s eating philosophy.

While more and more restaurants are finding ways to make it work, putting in a garden is not a business move that would make sense for every eatery.

Providing boutique vegetables for high-end diners also might not be the philosophical goal for many of the area’s young farmers, although Nuyttens does find connection to a greater cause in her work with the Central Market garden.

“It is a bridge to increasing awareness about the benefits of food grown this way,” said Nuyttens. Restaurant farms, she says, provide, “a springboard for this movement, allowing a new generation of natural process farmers to get established.”

Above, Oxheart carrots grown in Ubuntu’s garden. Photo: Rose Robertson. Below, Ubuntu restaurant’s chefs standing in the garden. Photo: Karen Mann.

This post is part of an ongoing partnership between Civil Eats and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism News21 course on food reporting.

Ana Catalán may seem young, but don’t let this 23-year-old fool you; when it comes to farming, she’s wise beyond her years. As the youngest child and only daughter of María Catalán, matriarch and owner of Catalán Family Farm, Ana plays a crucial role in the workings of this Hollister-based organic farm.

“I am basically trained to run the business right alongside my mother,” she said on a recent Thursday at the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market, while waiting in line at the Blue Bottle kiosk for her second (or was it third?) soy latte of the day. Anna’s three older brothers all work for the farm as well—one manages restaurant relations and orders while the other two sell produce at farmers markets for a commission—but, as Ana sees it, “together, my mother and I are the brain of the business.”

Being the brain of the business generally means working seven days a week, either at a market, in the office, or around the 15-acre farm. It’s not a lifestyle Ana shares with many other people her age. “I honestly only have close friends, because they understand that my job consumes my life,” she said.

Boss-Ladies

When it comes to co-supervising the farm’s crew of workers (a group that ranges in size from six full-time people in December to 40 part-time workers in the summer harvest months), Ana takes cues from her mom. Once a farmworker herself, María graduated from the Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA) over 15 years ago and has run her own organic farm ever since.

But getting established as a woman farmer (and single mom) wasn’t easy; many in their extended family were skeptical. “People did not value organic farming as they do now,” recalled Ana. “It was a hard time. My mom knew how to farm, but she didn’t know about marketing. She invested a lot and lost a lot.”

Throughout it all, the drive to treat workers with respect has remained central. “My mom tries to be the best boss that she can be,” said Ana. “She says, ‘I’d rather pay my last dollar to my worker than pay myself.’” Like on any farm with a shifting, seasonal workload, retention can be a challenge. But, Ana said, “No one who has ever worked for us hasn’t wanted to come back.”

Not that it’s easy supervising people twice your age. Ana is a social person and she says it took her a while to figure out how to draw the line between work relationships and personal ones, since she spends so much time at the farm. “I tell them, ‘Once we’re working I’m your boss; off the clock I’m your friend. That stays there and the job stays here. Don’t think I’m going to mix it up.’ But I started so young—it took me a long time to figure this out,” she said.

She Hearts SF

Ana has been coming to the Ferry Plaza since she was 19; these days she runs the Catalán booth on Thursdays and Saturdays, along with one or two other markets in San Francisco. And although the drive from the farm can be grueling at times, she loves coming to the city for its exciting mix of people, food, languages, and cultures. “I started off doing markets in Berkeley. It was fun; but the City has my heart.”

It’s hard to say which came first, Ana’s love of San Francisco or her sense of independence, but there’s no doubt the two things are related. Last year, Ana moved off the farm to an apartment in San Jose with friends–a decision that requires her to drive 45 extra minutes every day (on Saturdays, it means she often leaves her house by 3 am).

“I was the first in the family to move out. In my culture, for a woman to be out of the house, unmarried, and without children…it’s a big deal,” she said. But Ana held her ground. “I’m the only one of my cousins who didn’t get pregnant in high school. I do want to get married and have children some day, but I want my kids to be raised in the home that I choose.” She’s had to have “a lot of sit-downs” with members of her extended family, who like to say she’s become too Americanized.

Since graduating from high school Ana has taken classes at several different community colleges in Gilroy and the Salinas area. But, in the end, it’s always hard to prioritize because the farm has to come first. On the bright side, she said, dealing with family politics primed Ana for her favorite class: Political Science. She thinks often about moving in with relatives in Southern California in order to get just far enough away from the farm to focus on finishing her degree. But for now, it’s hard to leave a family that depends on her (“everyone knows me as Maria’s daughter…I’m her Junior.”) and a job she loves.

The Farmer’s Daughter

“There’s just something about the farm when you’re harvesting. The work that you’ve done has paid off and you get to see the fruit of your labor, literally,” said Ana. “I like waking up before sunrise and going out on the field. The air is so fresh; it’s really beautiful out there.”

On top of growing vegetables, Ana has also been planning to expand on a canning experiment she started last fall; “I want it to be like Happy Girl Kitchen, but Mexican,” she says. And no matter what happens next, it’s clear that Ana enjoys being at the helm of the farm she’s built alongside her mother.

“When I was 13 I was so embarrassed to tell my friends that I had to get dirty and help in the fields. I didn’t want them to think I was just another farmworker.” Now, she said, “they’re all like, ‘Can you hook me up with a job?’”

Originally published by CUESA

With young people revolutionizing the good food movement, it’s slightly ironic that at 29, I’m farming on one of the oldest agricultural landmarks in Missouri. I first visited the Mueller Farm as a teenager, when my dad took me there to visit Al and Caroline Mueller, who had been working the land since FDR was president. Since I was his “vegetable-eating” kid who grew food in our backyard, my dad thought I might like to see a “bigger garden.” It seems only fitting that now I’m back, trying to help the Mueller’s legacy grow into even bigger “gardens” throughout St. Louis.

I’ve had vignettes of EarthDance dancing around in my head for more than a decade–a sometimes fuzzy image of using food and farming (and some good music, too) to organize communities to live more sustainably. But it took traveling to farms on the other side of the world to realize that my food calling was here at home in St. Louis, right on the Mueller’s farm. By 2008, Al Mueller had long since passed, and Caroline was quickly nearing 90 years old, without any children to carry on the farm. It was clear that if someone didn’t step forward to steward the farm, it would soon fall victim to cement and bricks–in fact, today it’s surrounded on all sides by housing.

I realized the only way to preserve the farm was to connect more people to it. And in my mind, the best way to help people feel connected to the ground was to grow food on it.

And so began the EarthDance Organic Farming Apprenticeship program. Typically farms require apprentices and interns to live on the farm for the full season and be physically capable of working all day in the fields. I wanted my program to be different–to be accessible to people who didn’t have the luxury of temporarily throwing their day jobs out the window.

My goal was to reach a wider range of people, particularly urban residents who often feel disconnected from the rural agricultural communities that neighbor them. EarthDance apprentices can stay living in town and at their jobs or schooling, yet learn everything they need to be successful organic farmers. Although part-time, the program is designed to maximize learning opportunities by requiring eight hours per week in the field or selling at farmers markets, and two hours per week at enrichment sessions or on field trips to other organic farms in the area.

Our apprentices are as diverse as the crops we grow. This year, our apprentices span five decades in age, from a high school student to retirees. We’ve had nurses, welders, teachers, graphic designers, nutritionists, bookstore managers, landscape architects, baristas–you name it. They come to EarthDance excited and nervous, and emerge as farmers and family.

What I didn’t realize was how our students wouldn’t just grow vegetables or herbs–they grow personally, and they forge relationships with others. This has been one of the most gratifying aspects of EarthDance for me. People come to us wanting to learn organic farming–to engage in food production in a way that builds healthy soil, keeps our waterways clean, and is beneficial for all living beings–and they come away with so much more.

Our apprentices find a community that shares their values, create bonds with people from entirely different socioeconomic backgrounds, become more self-aware and confident in their abilities to pursue their own goals, and learn to truly be team players all at the same time.

Now in our third year, we’ve seen 42 apprentices complete our nine-month training program. And our graduates are already making a difference in the community: starting school gardens, selling at farmers markets, operating Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs, and cultivating urban gardens. EarthDance’s presence continues to crop up throughout St. Louis, as we sell at three local farmers markets, host an educational film series, convene an Educators Learning Circle, and offer farm tours to school and community groups.

I’m thrilled with what we’ve achieved so far, but I know that there is so much more we can do. Although we’ve temporarily put down roots at the Mueller Farm, we’re now gearing up to start a capital campaign in conjunction with our local land trust partner, The Open Space Council, to purchase the farm. We want to preserve the farm, the production that happens in its soil, and the community that grows as a result, for generations to come. We’ll continue to teach folks of all ages where their food comes from and how to grow it themselves, incubating beginning farmers as they develop their own farming enterprises.

I feel so fortunate and grateful to do this work and be living my dream, especially at my age. Too often, people feel compelled to put their dreams on hold until retirement. Today, young people all around the country are doing incredible work to change our nation’s foodscape: growing vegetables and raising animals, running farmers markets, teaching gardening to children, hosting healthy cooking classes, getting fresh produce into food banks, securing conservation easements on farmland, and driving grassroots campaigns to affect policy changes.

I am both humbled and honored to receive this Growing Green Award from NRDC, as I am just one thread in the patchwork quilt that is our good food movement. It is a quilt that has been handed down to us from our ancestors. I know that Caroline and Al Mueller created a patch on this quilt and I am hopeful for the day when I know that that patch–the Mueller Farm–will be preserved as a working organic farm forever.

Originally published on NRDC’s OnEarth

As the average age of farmers in the U.S. continues to raise, young farmers are beginning to sprout up across the nation. The recent documentary GROW!, directed by Christine Anthony and Owen Masterson, showcases the resurgence of young organic farmers in the state of Georgia. The film highlights 20 individuals across 12 farms who have found their way back to the land, whether working on a family-owned farm, buying their own, or, in most cases, using another farmer’s land to grow food for their community.

GROW! is a story that does not seek to convince the moviegoer of any particular viewpoint, but instead offers the opportunity to understand a new generation of farmer and why they seek to live a lifestyle removed from the hustle and bustle of the corporate world. “It’s a beautiful story and we wanted these young farmers to tell it in their own words; no narrator, no scientific experts, no hand wringing gloom and doom, just an honest, on the ground account of a movement taking place at this very moment in time,” said directors Anthony and Masterson.

While we might be tempted to write their farming endeavors off as young, idealistic attempts at a simple life that simply no longer exists, what we get is a picture of hardworking, passionate and, yes, idealistic 20 and 30-somethings who feel called to a “real” job with tangible results. Not least of their reasons for becoming farmers is a desire to fight injustice and create a healthier, more sustainable world by growing “clean, fair food.” Being self-employed has its perks too.

Far from the back-to-the-land movement of the 60s and 70s where, as Anthony and Masterson suggested, individuals were mainly concerned with dropping out of society and being self-sufficient, the young farmers of today are “fully engaged and participating in all aspects of society.”

“After the excesses of the 80′s and 90′s there is a sea change of values. A lot of young people no longer are drawn to earning a bunch of money working hard for somebody else in an unrewarding career.”

Add to this the fact that many young people are graduating college to find there are no jobs in their chosen career field, whether it be in accounting, chemistry or medicine, like some of the farmers in the film. But there are deeper reasons for becoming a farmer. “A lot of people of this generation want to work towards changing this world for the better, be it the environment or simply improving things in their local communities.”

As Rebecca Williams of Manyfold farm put it, “I got into farming because I like the idea of feeding people, and I like the idea of feeding people stuff that’s good for them, that makes them feel good, that makes their days better, that’s pleasurable and nourishing.”

The directors hope the film will inspire more would-be farmers and retired land owners to find each other and continue a legacy of small, organic farming, while working to change laws in support of small, sustainable farmers. They also hope it will encourage viewers to think about where their food comes. But viewers should also be prepared to leave with a desire to do more. As one moviegoer stated, “[it] makes me want to quit my job and become a farmer.”

To schedule a local screening of GROW! for your community or classroom, contact the filmmakers through the film’s Web site.

The hard-working young couple that runs Brookford Farm in Rollinsford, New Hampshire did not grow up farming. Luke and Catarina Mahoney are part of a generation of farmers raised in cities and suburbs that has returned to the land, not out of family duty, but because of their own desire to make a connection with the land.

The Mahoneys have embraced the rewards and frustrations of a life centered on the small-scale production of local food. Without inherited land, one of the major obstacles for first-generation farmers is the actual leasing of farm land that guarantees little long-term, definite success. Will their venture to grow food for their community and support themselves and their children end with success?

My film, Brookford Almanac, a cinema verité documentary currently in production, explores their story. Since reading a 2008 New York Times article about the trend of young people moving out of the city to farm, I have wanted to find out why highly educated people would walk away from specific career paths to choose a life of farming. There are a wealth of great films about food and farming but I don’t know of any that dig into the story of one, first-generation farming family. Brookford Almanac will communicate a rich sense of place through an observational lens, tracing the intimacy a farmer feels towards his land. My approach to filming the importance of small farms is not through a purely informational production, nor is it through a purely activist one. Brookford Almanac seeks to capture the grit of labor.

Now entering their fifth year at Brookford Farm, Luke and Catarina have expanded their operation considerably. They have hired a dedicated team of farm apprentices and increased their acreage. They are supplying raw milk, cheese, butter, meat, eggs, and produce to hundreds of nearby families who have come to depend on these products. But with this expansion has come problems with their landlord, a strong-willed, retired farmer who holds different opinions about the way things should be done. Because of these divergent philosophies, the landlord has decided not to renew the Mahoney’s lease. Soon they will have to leave the land that has become their livelihood. The issues of land access and cost–challenges that almost all first-generation farmers struggle with–are now harsh realities in the Mahoney’s lives. Those challenges are the focus of my film.

I am raising money for the second year of production. Please visit my Kickstarter page by April 30th to learn more about the film and become a part of the production!

Photo: Julian Russell

It’s not the first farmer apprenticeship program of its kind, but the University of Vermont’s upcoming curriculum aims to be just as revolutionary as its university counterparts. Farming apprenticeships at Michigan State and UC Santa Cruz, have already proven that college graduates are not only ready for intensive, professional training in sustainable agriculture, but are capable of turning their experiential education into sustainable jobs.

As the demand for small-scale, locally-grown produce steadily increases, the mission of UVM’s apprenticeship is quite clear: provide graduates with an education and support system that encourage them to create and maintain sustainable farms and food businesses.

The university recently launched its own research initiative, the Spires Of Excellence in Food Systems, to promote education, training, and outreach in the field of sustainable food systems. Students of this particular apprenticeship will have the opportunity to learn along side program directors, Corie Pierce and Susie Walsh Daloz, two experienced farmers in their own right who have also had much success as educational trainers at the university and elementary school level. They, along with a community of participating farmers (Intervale Community Farm, Half Pint Farm, Bread and Butter Farm) and food businesses (City Market Coop), will introduce students to fields and marketplaces that will become their classrooms.

The university has received overwhelming interest in the program, which will begin on May 31st and finish five months later on November 4th. Different from other farm apprenticeships, there is an application fee of $4,800 for student enrollment. But Susie Walsh Daloz views the cost as a long-term asset: “We believe it’s a great investment to gain a comprehensive view of running a farm, or local foods business that can be quickly recouped after a student launches his own enterprise.” At the end of their 5-month training, students will receive a Certificate in Sustainable Farming from UVM’s Continuing Education Department. They will also leave equipped with a tremendous skill set, having learned from farmers, harvested their own land, and participated in Burlington’s local economy.

Students begin each week with a farm walk at Intervale Community Farm. Regular review of the land is practice in evaluating short-term farm duties and season-long strategy for productivity. “Thinking like a farmer,” is how Walsh Daloz describes Monday morning assessment. From there, the students spend time farming their 2-acre university plot, where crop selection and overall farm management is entirely their responsibility. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, students work at participating farms. Their experience weeding, harvesting and planting, is also an opportunity to “engage with the farmer in the planning and big picture thinking on the farm,” Walsh Daloz explains. Wednesday are reserved for classroom labs, which can mean anything farm trips to lectures by farmers, UVM professors, and other local food activists.

The curriculum is rigorous and full-time. It is also not intended for undergraduate students. But Walsh Daloz envisions a student-base rich with varying motivations: “Ideal applicants for this program have a passion for joining the sustainable food movement and can come from a wide variety of academic and work backgrounds: new and aspiring farmers, career changers, back-to-landers, urban and community gardeners, students of sustainable agriculture, environmental studies or nutrition/culinary arts, educators, and activists who want to promote and sustain local food systems.”

Upon completing their apprenticeships, students are encouraged to create their own farming opportunities—a chance to put their education into practice. It is Walsh Daloz’s belief that “people graduating from this program will go on to educate others–through a CSA, a local food restaurant, an educational garden project–about the important and integral role of sustainable food systems in our lives.”

The question of how to bring small-scale farmers back to the land is a thorny issue. Land preservation, government approval, and start-up costs are real challenges to the larger food system framework. But beneath the politics of economy and environment, is the strength of a skilled farmer. A farming education is intuitive—the mind learns to observe and care for the needs of the land. It is also instructive about the greater effect of local agriculture: Give an apprentice the opportunity to witness a growing season, to manage an acre or two, and she will harvest enough food for her own kitchen and sale at a local farmer’s market. That is the defined deliverable of this apprenticeship. As graduates engage with other farmers, they learn the value of partnership and together, they create a powerful marketplace.

For Walsh Daloz, the supporting farmers of UVM’s apprenticeship program also have much to gain from a shared local economy. By allowing “more motivated folks [to help] on their farms, [they] support and grow even more new farmers.”

“We are all working towards the same end,” Walsh Daloz says, “and [we] are happy to have found a way to collaborate.”

To learn more about the 5-month Farmer Apprenticeship Program, visit: http://learn.uvm.edu/sustainability/farmer-apprentice-program. Applications received by May 2, 2011 will be given priority. Rolling admissions accepted, depending on space.

Photos: Rebecca Bloomfield, Charu Singh

Trading a comfortable job in a big city for a labor job on a small farm is no longer a novelty. I joined the trend this past season, leaving an editing job in Manhattan to intern at Waterpenny Farm, an ecological vegetable farm in rural Virginia. My intentions were simple: learn how to grow the food I spent half my paycheck on at Whole Foods.

I was one of six interns working the 10-acre farm owned by a husband and wife team who were also the head farmers and parents of two young boys. Overseen and aided by our bosses, we interns were responsible for every aspect of creating and selling a vegetable, which includes (but is not limited to) seeding, planting, mulching, staking, stringing, weeding, harvesting, washing, bunching, pricing, composting, and vending. We were taught in a learn-as-you-work fashion, given enough instruction to complete each task. Though generally satisfied and grateful for the experience, I often wondered during the stifling 12-hour August days if the term “intern” was merely fancy nomenclature for a minimum wage loophole. Was I no more than an able-bodied worker? Or was I a valued, soon-to-be-learned apprentice? With application deadlines for this upcoming season approaching, these terms are helpful to consider before taking a first step toward farm work.

The titles “intern” and “apprentice” often appear interchangeable. Many small farm employers will have an “apprentice” link on their Web site that opens up to a page describing the terms of the “internship.” One can expect a small stipend, access to the vegetables one grows, and a place to sleep as an intern or an apprentice on nearly any small farm. Both interns and apprentices should also expect some theoretical education on the methods, business, and philosophies of farming. Many organic, sustainable, and biodynamic farms participate in a program called C.R.A.F.T. (Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training). This cooperative training provides educational opportunities for apprentices and interns. Throughout the growing season, local contingencies of the alliance arrange visits to each other’s farms, allowing farmers to present and discuss every aspect of their business, from beneficial bugs to working around Sabbath.

Despite their similarities, the terms are not arbitrary. While an internship introduces inexperienced people to farming via hands on training, an apprenticeship eventually creates a farmer by passing on an entire set of skills. Eric Plaksin, co-owner of Waterpenny Farm, explains why he calls his interns, interns: “We chose the label intern, and not apprentice, deliberately. I think apprentice implies training to eventually have the occupation you’re learning about. Over time you gradually learn what you need to know to do it yourself, and then you do it. Maybe 10% of our interns use their experience here in that way, and are farming for a living. We’re glad that happens sometimes. But the vast majority go on to other things, maybe related to agriculture in some way and maybe not.”

In such a way, the nature of the job can be dictated as much by the employee as the employer. Interns on small farms are often transient workers–young people in transition, either occupationally or geographically, or both. Transient workers on small farms are what migrant workers are to large-scale industrial farms: valuable to their employers for their crop-harvesting manpower. Those workers, like myself, who have an interest in farming but no prior experience nor defined agricultural ambitions will most often opt for an internship.

Apprentices hired at Smith Meadows in Berryville, Virginia, a farm specializing in grass-fed meat, will find the differentiation between intern and apprentice to be quite simple. Forrest Pritchard, who inherited the family farm that has been in operation since the 1800’s, defines apprenticeship in this way: “My apprentices come to me with the intention of farming. The onus is totally on me to make the yearlong apprenticeship worthwhile for them, to teach them the skills necessary to be able to farm on their own. I consider an intern someone that is hired to work for a shorter period of time, and learns by being put in the middle of the job, but not necessarily taught career skills. On the farm, we have apprentices and we have workers. I’m not sure what I’d do with an intern here,” says Pritchard.

An apprenticeship most traditionally means the training of a new generation to inherent the job of the previous. Apprentices are expected to grow into their roles and eventually transcend the title to become farmers in their own right. With only two apprentices per year, working the 500-acre farm, it is no surprise that six out of the eight apprentices Pritchard has trained since 2004 have gone on to be farmers or work in farming–versus the estimated 10% of Plaksin’s interns. Apprentices regarded as protégés are given a more deliberate education to offset the lower wages throughout the season. C.R.A.F.T. trips and farm talks might be offered, as well as access to organic gardening classes and project assigments on farm design. In some cases, earning a stipend of $200 a month versus an intern’s $900, the apprentice must find value in long-term investment over immediate compensation.

Farms are private businesses and while wage and labor laws for workers are regulated, terms of internships and apprenticeships are not. It is possible to enter an apprenticeship that turns out to be mostly labor or an internship that offers the work of an apprentice. Thankfully, many of these farmers rooted in sustainable, organic, biological practices are intent on seeing their methods propagate. So, before settling on a farm position this upcoming season, question the terms behind the title to get the most from your farm job.

For additional information on farm apprenticeships and internships, the following three websites prove particularly helpful:

Growfood connects farmers interested in teaching with those interested in learning. Domestic and international opportunities range from short farm stays to long-term internships, to more permanent live-in positions.

The National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service website provides a wealth of information for finding internships and apprenticeships, to resources on urban farming.

WWOOF, or World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, provides a list of opportunities for those looking to live and work on an organic farm in exchange for room and board and food. Monetary compensation is usually not offered.

Growing up I had these artsy parents who served “thoughtful” food. At lunchtime I got my avocado and cheese whole-wheat sandwiches out of wax bags, while my friends were getting fun foods like Lunchables.  That’s what I wanted—plastic food. I wanted to be like the rest of the kids–who wouldn’t? I grew up in the woods in Colorado, and while we had a vegetable garden, it was at high altitude and the soil was parched. Then, we moved to New York City. That change was a real shock to my system. For the next seven years, I barely survived science, played on soccer fields covered with syringes and trash, and dreamed about summer when I could go back to Colorado and raft down the Animas River.

In my junior year of high school, I went to the Mountain School where I found my Northeastern wilderness. Environmental science was taught within the context of the outdoors. We each had a little plot of land where we studied the history of the trees and the lay of the land. Within this context, science made a lot more sense to me, as did tending animals. I took care of Murray the ram; I fed him, watered him. I loved the way he smelled. I also took care of the chickens–boy, were they weird. I connected to the land in a deep and personal way.

By the end of college, I decided to go back to New York City. I got a job in the publishing world because I felt obligated to make something of my degree. But I hated working in a cubicle, and I hated midtown Manhattan and those horrible soggy salads. It was a confusing time for me; I felt alienated from everything. Work seemed to be about earning enough money to afford a life which I didn’t want.

So one day, 26 floors above midtown, I walked into my boss’ office—the corner office—and looked at the view of Hoboken. This is what I’m supposed to be working towards? I decided to move to Vermont.

Eventually I moved in with my boyfriend Sam and helped him develop the small piece of land he had bought. I took over the garden, starting the seeds in our sunroom. When those little sprouts started to show, it was like a miracle. Life began to make a lot more sense to me. We increased the amount of animals (sheep, pigs, cows, chickens, hens), and started a maple sugaring operation.

One morning, not so long ago, I heard serious squawking coming from the henhouse. When I climbed out the bedroom window onto our roof, I saw a coyote trotting off with a hen in its jaws. I yelled, “HEY!” The coyote turned back to look at me, and then kept on going. I felt sorry for the hen, but I respected the coyote. I cheered it on. That week, we built the henhouse and started fencing the girls in.

I feel really lucky to have moved onto Sam’s farm. I’ve found mentors, too—many of whom are older than my parents. Without them I’d be lost. I would suggest to anyone who thinks they want to farm, to find someone to apprentice with, team up with an old-timer in your area, help them hay, help them lug lumber, help them shovel some manure. I think it’s really important to be around other people who’ve been farming longer than you have: we all need to start somewhere.

There’s a big difference between growing tomatoes on your balcony and farming acreage. Rural living isn’t easy. It’s no wonder that some farmers’ children move to cities. But for those of us who do choose to move into the rural regions, we have a responsibility to keep it as close to its natural state as possible, to farm with humility (even towards those farmers whose practices we may not agree with), and to keep the tradition of farming alive. In doing so, we support a food system that allows our kids an opportunity to opt out of eating plastic food.

The one thing I know for sure is this: if you’re going to be a farmer, you can’t be afraid to fail. The best advice I ever got was from Joel Salatin, who said exactly that. He told me, do what you like.  If you don’t like to weed, then mulch. Practice permaculture. Start an edible forest garden instead of a traditional French bed garden. If you don’t like chickens, don’t raise chickens. Most important to me, is uniting my life with my work. When the two connect, there’s a possibility for deep happiness.

Food is life, after all.