It’s a farm life after all

My partner, Jaz, and I planting onions this spring on the little farmstead we live on

If you asked 10 year old me what I would be when I grew up, farmer would definitely not have been my answer. Honestly, the only “farm” I’d heard of by that age was old McDonald who had a farm... e-i-e-i-o. I couldn’t have told you how veggies grew or where food came from. But what I was fortunate to have was a grandmother who had a green thumb and loved to garden, albeit mostly flowers and shrubs, and a place I called home that was along the coast of the Chesapeake Bay which provided me a deep foundational connection to the outdoors. I credit those experiences as a child to my ease of transition into the wild world of growing food today.

Lil ole me, circa 2019, during my first official year working on a farm, stoked with our first big home garden harvest.

I came into farming from a budding love of food. At the ripe age of 19, I finally burst my teenage bubble and became curious of the great world beyond me. I so happened to stumble upon some unsettling information along the way... It was brought to my awareness that climate change, pollution, and habitat loss were the biggest threats to life on earth as we know it in my lifetime, and that agriculture was a large contributor to it. I opened that can of worms nearly a decade ago and haven't put it down since.

At first, I merely wanted to understand the system. As I studied, I began learning my own role in it as a consumer. I became very conscientious of my consumption. Coming from a hyper-consumer suburban cultural upbringing (though thankfully - less so within my immediate family, mom hates shopping!), my first instinct was to continue being a consumer, but to simply swap all my goods to sustainably produced alternatives. USDA Organic, Non-GMO, Fair Trade, Equal Exchange... Those were the labels I sought out and refused anything else. I still follow those same consumer habits today, but my journey has shifted considerably. I know now that it takes so much more than consuming "better" to make a difference in the world. We need to change our relationship to consumption completely, and significantly limit the quantities we consume. But that's another story for a different day. Back to farming...

So, I became aware of where my food came from.  My partner, Jaz, was the first person to pique my interest in growing food. He found an interest in it from high school thanks to a great teacher he had, and his love for it grew from there. He started gardening while still living with family. Together, as our interest in food grew, we started going to farmers markets for the first time in my life and were transformed by the exposure. I quickly got the itch to grow my own food, too. I'll always remember the first vegetable plant I ever grew. A pepper plant from a seed that I planted from a pepper I bought at the grocery store. I was so proud of that pepper! We quickly expanded from there.

Jaz building our first (and only) backyard garden. We scaled up to farming quickly!

Once we moved in together, we started our first garden, and our journey toward farming began. We were living in a house in a downtown urban area at the time, luckily with a nice little backyard. We built 4 raised beds and started experimenting. Over the next few years, we both started volunteering and working on local vegetable farms. That's where we really honed in our growing skills.

Today, Jaz is running a little subsistence farm - meaning we're primarily growing food for our own consumption - and I am managing a small-scale educational/demonstration vegetable production farm at our local university. It's wild to think how far we have come in just a short 10 years, considering neither of us grew up with agriculture.

So we grow food... But farming to me is so much more than just growing food. Managing a farm is challenging. In many ways it’s no different than building and running any other business. You need infrastructure, you need structure and systems - both physical and digital, you need people power - and you need to organize said people in a way that is mutually beneficial. And you have to figure out how to financially sustain it. All while keeping the ecosystem in mind and using ecological practices.

But on a farm, you’re also at the will of nature. It doesn’t matter how perfect my field plan looks on paper or how healthy my little transplants look in their greenhouse pots… once those plants enter the great outdoors - nature always makes the final call. Sure, over time of trial and error you begin to figure out best practices and techniques to help minimize your risks and overcome obstacles, but nature is unpredictable. What happened last year isn’t guaranteed the next and is more realistically not going to happen again - for better or worse.

Photo of me, captured by one of my students, Abigale Masel, during a harvest day of my second year managing the university farm.

I think this is part of why folks are so intimidated by farming. Sure, it’s laborious work. It’s unpredictable to a degree. It’s cold and wet and frozen and hot and sunny and dry and humid. It throws you into natures arms, sometimes she hugs you - sometimes she threatens to break you. But you see… that’s the beauty of it. Those really rough days make the good days shine so much brighter. Farming has so many amazing analogies for life wrapped up in it. There are lessons to be learned every day. It’s a very intense job, don’t get me wrong, but dang... Is it rewarding.

A moment of bliss after a day of hard work during my first year farming… falling in love with this lifestyle.

There’s no feeling that I’ve experienced that compares to that peak season moment, when all your hard work of planning in the winter, prepping in the spring, and planting into the summer finally pays off. When those cabbages you babied from little seedlings and were threatened to be destroyed by pesky cabbage moths finally, FINALLY have grown into big, beautiful round heads. And then when you deliver that produce you worked so hard for, and the gratitude and awe that pour from your customers just smother you… those are the moments that make it all worth it.

For me, farming is my current life’s work. It's not much money, and it's hard work, but what I’m realizing now is that what I am gaining runs so much deeper than just any old job.

Because of the natural ecosystems that farming interacts with, I know the names of all the bugs that want to eat my plants, and the ones that help me out. I know the names of most of the weeds, when and how they grow. I can read the sky to tell what weather is coming and when. I ebb and flow with the seasons. I know the bird and animal calls and who made them... the list goes on.

This necessary awareness of the nature and its elements that farming has gifted me a deep connection to the natural world that I will cherish forever. It’s really taught me how to be hyper observant. Not a detail passes by without me noticing. Every new hole in a leaf or yellowing edge is an opportunity for improvement. Who/what caused this? Why? How can I stop it and do better next time?

Its forced me to learn how to move my body better, safer. I’ve always been a clumsy person. Not super aware of my surroundings. But that doesn’t fly on a farm - or you risk hurting yourself. You only fall off a ladder, walk onto a forgotten tool, cut your hand on a harvest knife, slam your finger in a greenhouse door, trip over irrigation lines, cause an entire cart full of produce to tip over, so many times until you either improve your bodily mindfulness… or you choose a new profession. Lucky for me, my body is learning - because I’m consciously trying to improve my skills, and it’s finally starting to sink in.

Getting my butt kicked by weeds, second year farming. Actively gaining muscle and endurance like I’ve never had before.

I’m so much stronger than I’ve ever been. I can pop 200 squats over the course of two hours while I harvest 30 lbs of salad greens- no problem. I can load and wheel 20 cartloads of compost and evenly distribute said compost across my field - you betcha. I remember the first summer I ever farmed my boss was always 10 steps ahead of me. Now - I’m the boss, and I amaze myself at how quick and efficient I’ve become. And now it's my own workers who are amazed at how fast and easy I make everything look. I always remind them...

Practice. Patience. Perseverance. Persistence.

Those are definitely some key characteristics that farming has given me and are essential to be a successful farmer. Beyond that, the farm I work for is a non-profit educational farm funneled through a university, so I’ve also been forced to learn how to navigate challenging world of institutions, bureaucracy, politics, administration, and government… it’s probably my least favorite component of my work because it makes everything feel like a battle, but ultimately - it’s taught me a lot.

The majority of the people I train are college students with little to no background in farming. Sure, maybe they also helped their grannies in the gardens as a kid, but that’s definitely not the same as farming. We also have a high turn over rate given the nature of both seasonal work and students graduating. So I’m constantly training new people from scratch. Which has forced me to learn how to delegate, build structure, create flow.

One of my biggest observations is how wild it feels to realize that I hold all the power. I set the tone of the workplace each day. I have to monitor my workers for their well being, and set boundaries both for their own sake and the farms to keep things flowing. I have the choice each day to take my work seriously and others will follow suit, or to slack off and they do too. When you’re in a position of leadership, there is a lot of pressure to steer your team in the right direction. It's an essential yet incredibly difficult role. But, I honestly can't picture myself in a non-leadership role. I need the creative freedom to pave the path toward the vision I see.

While I don't foresee myself keeping the job I currently have long-term, farming has become a central role in my life. I will always grow food. Ultimately, my goal is to be able to work more with Jaz on growing our own food. At this point, we grow roughly 80% of our own produce, and we have at minimum a few different vegetables that we grew available to us year-round. And that feels pretty incredible.

After all, what got me into farming in the first place was a budding love for fresh, healthy food and passion for leaving a positive impact on the world. This way of life has also given me a deep thirst for community. Farming was never intended to be done alone. As we continue on our journey of subsistence based living, we are also working toward a goal of collective farming, because in our view, the two are synchronous. So it seems, for us, it is indeed, a farm life after all.

"If it weren't for agriculture,

there would be no culture at all"

~ Wendell Berry

Farmer Mads, beyond proud of her hard work. Nothing compares to literally reaping the fruits of your labor!