ANYA ROSEN
Brooklyn, NY
Anya has been farming for 6 years, and now works at a hydroponic farm in Brooklyn, NY that grows in shipping containers. She was the farm manager at a production farm in VA for 3 years, and has dirt farmed in NY state and PA, as well.
Anya has illustrated flyers for Not Our Farm’s Free School for Farmworkers session, specifically Caring for Yourself and Your Crew in Extreme Heat.
https://www.anyarosen.com/
WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY DOING?
I work at a hydroponic farm in Brooklyn. We grow herbs in shipping containers. Everything is fabricated: light, climate, everything. I work in facility maintenance - making sure that the sensors are working, that the climate is perfect. I got into it because I liked the understanding of what it takes - what is the cost of a life, what do you have to do to make it happen, how do you organize these pieces to make this work and I think ultimately that is what i’m doing now. I am doing the part of farming that initially got me interested in farming. Facilities management does a lot more maintenance and cleaning and the farm team does more transplanting and harvest.
Every farm manager I’ve worked under knows how to maintain their own tools - you don’t get someone else to do it like what is happening here. It’s definitely an interesting kind of social experience in a lot of ways…it’s not exactly how I would structure it, but it’s how it is.
I’m doing the farm work that I like. Learning what it takes to make this thing run.
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN FARMING?
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN FARMING?
I began farming in the spring of 2014, so 6 years.
WHAT INITIALLY BROUGHT YOU TO THE FIELDS?
I went to school for art and always was kind of interested in making things with my hands and building things and I had gotten an apprenticeship for an artist in New Mexico, Charles Ross, who lived off the grid. I spent 6-7 months out there with him. We were using solar powered generators for energy and harvested rainwater to shower. There were rattle snakes everywhere.
I wanted to continue to explore that - nature - and I had a friend at the time who was ranching in Colorado and he encouraged at the time to try farming.
I knew what WOOFing was because people had told me about that, and I had moved back to Pittsburgh and just started searching for farms that had apprenticeships in the greater Pittsburgh area because that is where I was living. I just went out to a farm in the winter - everything was covered in snow and the farm owner showed me the farm and she liked me and offered me a job. The fact that I had a lot of experience with building things, carpentry and metal working from art school and apprenticing with the artist with New Mexico was a plus - that is how I sold myself. I didn’t go to school for biology, didn’t have an interest in plants at the time. My interest was definitely coming from a place like what is the cost of a life, how do you sustain a life? If you have nothing, how can you survive? Taking it from my experience in New Mexico, wondering how do we survive, how do we get water, how do we get food. That’s the way I approached looking at a farming job.
WHY HAVE YOU CHOSEN TO FARM FOR SOMEONE ELSE (NOW OR IN THE PAST?)
I never had the money to start my own farm. And looking back on it, I was never the type of young farmer that if I had the money would have invested it in that. I was very interested in learning what it means to grow things, take care of land. Yeah I think taking care of land - land stewardship was very interesting to me.
There is this macho American ideal that taking care of land is about power - I don’t think I was explicitly thinking this at the time. I romanticized it like a lot of young farmers. I wanted to harness nature in some way and understand land in some way and that would give me power. I knew that I knew nothing when I began and maybe because I didn’t study plants, I approached it with a very open mind. Teach me everything, I want to learn everything. I don’t want to invest in this before I really understand what I’m doing and I don’t want to lose money before I know what I’m investing in. I knew that it would be the wrong choice. I also had no money at time.
The idea of owning my own land at some point does seem attractive. It would be nice to have a garden. I don’t really want to take care of 10 acres by myself. That seems insane from my experience of how much work caring for land is. Even if you don’t farm, even if you just own it, if you want it to be habitable for people, you have to mow it, take care of the fence, have proper drainage, pave the road, put a house, like it’s just an incredible amount of work and understanding of how to build things, engineering, landscape architecture and it’s very complex. When someone builds a property, there are a lot of people involved. Farming is whole estate - it’s huge piece of land that you’re driving vehicles around, a house on it, you live on it and care for it. If I were to go into that, I would need to be willing to drop a lot of money and pay for a lot of resources in order to make to it successful.
I just feel like even 6 years in you’re not a beginner anymore, but you’re not an expert yet.
WHAT ARE SOME ISSUES FOR FARMERS WORKING ON SOMEONE ELSE'S FARM - ISSUES THAT YOU'VE WITNESSED OR EXPERIENCED?
Well like working for anyone ever, a business, when you don’t own the business, you have to reconcile certain decisions being made and recognized that it’s not your place to decide the future of the company. You can certainly have input and work hard. If people recognize that you work hard and want to keep you on and give you a raise, maybe eventually you have more say. But ultimately the brand of the farm, how they are marketing themselves, what they are selling, you have to consult with whoever owns the business to make all those choices. That’s also a learning opportunity about how people want to run their business - how they appear to the public.
I’m not even going to say the long hours - I don’t believe that would change even if I did it on my own. You’re going to work really hard no matter what.
“Those variables that make you feel so insane are the things that keep you coming back. It's exciting to have to work with things that are out of your hands. It’s humbling - no matter how hard you work sometimes, you’re still going to have a deer eat your whole field of lettuce. ”
WHAT KEEPS YOU COMING BACK?
Good question. I feel like there are a lot of farmers out there who don’t even know the answer to that. I think it’s just because plants are slow and nature is slow, you are forced to learn slowly and something that I always think about now that I am farming indoors with grow lights is how many more chances we get to try something than someone farming outside.
When you’re farming winter squash, you get one shot a year to do a good job at it. There is something kind of amazing of the rush, adrenaline, thrill, one shot to grow this and do it differently than last year. You’re pouring over your notes - it was hot that day, what can I do better, it was dry that day we planted. It’s insane. You are trying to improve on something you did 365 days ago. How I farm now, we have shorter crops, greens, more chances to do it right, but then there are still all these variables that are out of your control.
Those variables that make you feel so insane are the things that make you keep coming back. It’s what makes it exciting. It’s exciting to have to work with things that are out of your hands. It’s exciting to have to work with things that are out of your hands. It’s humbling - no matter how hard you work sometimes, you’re still going to have a deer eat your whole field of lettuce.
WHAT IS YOUR TAKE ON THE DIFFERENCE (IF ANY) BETWEEN A FARMER AND A "FARM WORKER"/"FARM EMPLOYEE" BESIDES PROPRIETORSHIP?
Well that’s interesting. I tend to call anyone who is farming a farmer.
WHAT KIND OF SUPPORT WOULD BE HELPFUL FOR PEOPLE WORKING ON FARMS NOT THEIR OWN?
I think that it would be helpful if the farmers (I mean farm workers - anyone who works on a farm) if there was some kind of union where people could join where hourly wage was agreed upon and it was easier for farmers to get health insurance. I look around NYC and there are construction workers everywhere. And with construction workers, there is an apprenticeship program, hourly wage, health insurance because what they are doing is dangerous work. They are benefiting the city and fixing things. I don’t see the difference between that type of work than that and farming.
If something on the subway is broken and getting fixed versus growing food for people. Both are benefiting society.
People who work on farms often aren't supported by society in that way. People who own farms and land can’t afford that - I get it - we need more government support, some type of organization that people who run farms could apply to for help to give health insurance to their employees. It would make it a more sustainable career. I never had health insurance when I was working on other farms outside.
ANYTHING ELSE YOU'D LIKE TO SHARE ABOUT YOURSELF & YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH FARMING? WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT?
A lot of times people who own farms or want to own farms and work in not the actual farming part of farming, don’t really understand how hard it is and how emotional it is and how unfair it is that the people who do this work are seen and treated the way they are. They are treated like lower class citizens and they aren’t paid anything because it’s not seen as skilled work. As if it doesn't require attention to detail, stamina, experience.
A suitable amount of time in an apprenticeship is probably 3 years of farming before you’re ready to move up and be in a more managerial position if you want that.
There is so much ignorance and discrediting people who have farm experience as if they probably don’t know anything.
Maybe this has kept me in it - I want to advocate for the people who are in this industry. How can we care so much about farm to table and care so much about organic whatever, this polished view of farm food and health benefits and care so little about the work that goes into making that food and the knowledge that goes into making that food, too. There is very little visibility and I feel dedicated to creating that visibility. I want to make people see the value. Maybe that’s a losing batter - many days I feel that way.
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....)
A half an hour in the dead of the summer is not enough time - it’s so hot, you’re so exhausted, you need time to rest. You need time to sit under shade and eat something and drink water and prepare for the next 5 hours of the day.
If I could afford it as a farm manager, I would love to pay my employees to eat lunch.
I think that it’s really important that your team has an adequate amount of time to eat and rest. Pushing people causes bad energy. And it’s not sustainable. It’s another thing - because you’re farmers, we’re going to treat you like your less than or not human. People in farming should have health insurance, have lunch breaks be treated like human beings.