ANDREA PARKER
HUDSON, NY
Andrea has been farming on farms not her own for 9 years. Currently she is farming and taking part in a medicinal plant apprenticeship at Churchtown Dairy in the Hudson, NY.
Andrea started off working in finance in midtown Manhattan, but the strong desire to work outside led her to quit her job. Her farming career began with growing annual plants in a greenhouse, but didn’t like working with fertilizers and pesticides, and eventually began volunteering and then working full-time at an organic farm in eastern Long Island. She stayed there for several seasons before moving to the Catskills to continue farming upstate.
WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY DOING? (WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING, ETC)
Right now I’m doing the medicinal plant apprenticeship at Churchtown Dairy - a dairy farm in Hudson, NY. It is mid-March through November. I have a mentor - myself and a second apprentice starts tomorrow. We grow medicinal plants for various people - an herbalist in Maine, a pharmacist in Wisconsin. Prides himself on growing the highest quality medicinal plants.
Part of the farm is that there is a healing garden - open to the public, anyone can come and sit.
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN FARMING?
I started farming 9 years ago.
I started farming on eastern Long Island and prior to that I was working in finance in mid-town Manhattan. That atmosphere didn’t feel right. I felt a strong desire to work outside. I initially managed a greenhouse growing annual plants. I didn’t like working with fertilizer and pesticides, so I thought of farming organic vegetables. I started by volunteering in the winter because the farmer wasn’t able to pay me - she didn’t have any income coming in at the time. Once Memorial day came and the farmers' market opened, it became a paid position and I was there for 3 years.
I moved to Brooklyn for a few years and started working in coffee, but during those years, I was volunteering at a farm. I wasn’t farming full-time, but also probably wasn’t farming part-time either.
Last year I moved up to the Catskills to start farming full-time.
WHAT INITIALLY BROUGHT YOU TO THE FIELDS?
I think at the time, I was thinking what is next for me? Where do I want to work, what do I want to do? I don’t know that I really had a specific reason, I just felt like it was the right path for me.
WHY HAVE YOU CHOSEN TO FARM FOR SOMEONE ELSE (NOW OR IN THE PAST?)
I personally don’t want to take that financial risk.
From my experience I’ve see that it’s a lot of hard work, it’s a lot of work, I mean the farmer I worked for works everyday for a long time, at least 12 hours a day, sometimes 15-16 hours a day she is farming. I feel like unless you really really love it, I’m not sure what the pay off is. Just from my experience, I see that you put so much money into it and so much time and labor, and then you don’t really net much financially at the end of the season. That is just what I’ve seen from my personal experience. So for me, I’m not interested in taking out business loans; I’m not interested in putting a lot of money into something that is so uncertain. I don’t own any land. That farmer I worked for, she leases land and she was putting so much money into the land amending the soil and after a few years she had to move to a different piece of land, reasons like that.
It’s very tight. It’s really like the money is always tight. At one farm, I had several part time jobs and still felt even at times, I would be using savings just to pay the monthly bills. I’m very minimal with my spending but last years in the Catskills, it was just paycheck to paycheck, very tight. Where I am now, I’m making a few more dollars per hour, but it’s definitely going to be tight month to month.
WHAT ARE SOME ISSUES FOR FARMERS WORKING ON SOMEONE ELSE'S FARM - ISSUES THAT YOU'VE WITNESSED OR EXPERIENCED?
At one farm, the farmer pushed herself to the point of exhaustion, as most farmers do. I remember feeling nervous and concerned about the farmer’s wellbeing, as it was obvious she was under extreme pressure to succeed.
And last year in the Catskills, I was at a farm that was owned by a married couple and they were extremely unorganized. That was a huge challenge, arriving to work everyday… I would arrive on time, but the owners were often late, and it just was very frustrating how unorganized they were. It caused a lot of challenges each day. It was myself and 3 other pretty reliable people. We had been farming for a long time, so we would kind of have an idea of what needed to be done so we would start doing something. We didn’t want to just stand around. That was really frustrating. I am very organized and I have managed businesses before so I know that if it were my business I would not have been in that position. That was a huge challenge. Those owners were really pushing the four of us really hard. We were in a lot of physical pain.
It just kind of amazed me how challenging the owners made each work day. An example – they would send us out into the field, tell us they needed 300 bunches of radishes. We would harvest all the radishes, then the owners would realize that they already had 150 bunches in the walk-in. That was a common occurrence, stuff like that.
We were just doing a lot of unnecessary work due to lack of organization.
CAN YOU TELL ME THE QUALITIES OF A DREAM FARM NOT LEADING TO OWNERSHIP - THAT YOU WOULD WANT TO WORK ON?
For me it would be definitely an organized farmer.
The farm has to have a bathroom. I have been in some really not good situations with bathrooms. I think that is really important because of what could be transmitted to the field or the vegetables.
The energy needs to be positive. And the communication - open communication - and then I think the quality of the produce really needs to be high. What is being sold at market or to restaurants should be high quality.
I’ve been to farmers’ markets where I’ve seen produce I felt should have been in the compost pile.
“I’m trying to not look that far ahead in my life. I do think that if I keep farming I’m going to be making probably $13-$16/hour and that is not really sustainable. I don’t know that I can farm for many more years, and then I wonder what will I do?”
WHAT KEEPS YOU COMING BACK?
I love working with the earth. I feel really good. It helps me feel like I have a purpose in life. I feel like in the past personally I’ve struggled a lot with asking myself why I am here and what my purpose is. I like to help people - I just have a strong desire to be helpful. This gives me an outlet to help people, just a part of something much larger.
In the small scheme of things, I’m helping to grow vegetables that might really help somebody lead a more healthy life. I like working outside and I like working in general. I like being really busy. There is so much to do on a farm, so the to-do list is just endless.
DO YOU CALL YOURSELF A FARMER? WHY OR WHY NOT.
I used to and then I felt like I was using the term incorrectly. I think if I tell people I’m a farmer, they assume I have my own farm. So I think I’m more like a farm hand because I don’t have my own farm. I just work at farms that are owned by other people. I’m really farming someone else’s vegetables. I’m one of the farmer’s farmhands.
WHAT KIND OF SUPPORT WOULD BE HELPFUL FOR PEOPLE WORKING ON FARMS NOT THEIR OWN?
I think I read that something is being passed that will give farm workers overtime. I’m not sure if it is legit. Definitely a higher wage would be nice, but honestly from my experience, the farmers that I work for, the farmers can’t afford to pay their employees more than what they pay them. I mean health benefits would be nice, again I can’t see the farmers being able to offer stuff like that.
So for me personally - I’m not sure what could be offered that would be able to help me.
My best friend’s mother keeps pressing me to get a job with a pension, I don’t even know what job that would be for me.
I’m trying to not look that far ahead in my life, I do think that if I keep farming, I’m going to be making probably $13-$16/hour and that is like not really sustainable. I don’t know that I can farm for many more years, and then I wonder what will I do. I thought maybe somewhere down the line, I might meet the right people - open a farm with the right people, that might be an option that has less of a financial risk. I’m being patient, just to see where life takes me.
WHAT IS YOUR OPINION/TAKE ON THE FARMER LUNCH? (DO YOU TAKE LUNCH, DO YOU SKIP LUNCH, DO YOU ENJOY TAKING LUNCH WITH YOUR CREW - FOR COMMUNITY BUILDING, IS THERE PRESSURE TO BE SOCIAL....)
The farm in the Catskills was a mandatory one hour and myself and my 3 coworkers felt like an hour was too long. It was unpaid. It just didn’t seem like it could be changed, it seemed concrete. I was there from 8 - 5 and I was commuting an hour each way. I would have preferred to just do a 30 minute lunch.
Another farm I worked at was very laid back. When I was there, it was paid lunch and it was really nice. We would eat together and the farm owner brought a rice cooker and every morning she would put rice in the rice cooker. Just before lunch we would harvest what we would like to eat. Lunch there was really nice - like we all enjoyed each other’s company and we would talk and hang out. We probably took a break for an hour, definitely.
I worked at another farm that to me felt really strange because the person managing the farm didn’t really talk, so that environment felt very uncomfortable. At that farm, most people would work with their headphones in and nobody took lunch together, nobody ate together. The vibe there didn’t feel good, it felt kind of strange.
