CRISTINA FLORES
WASHINGTON, DC
Cristina is entering her 4th season farming, and has been at the same farm the entire time. Her focus now is on cut flowers, and Cristina farms alongside a vegetable farmer on an urban farm in Washington, DC.
WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY DOING? (WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING, ETC)
Currently I am working alongside a vegetable farmer here in DC. My focus is cut flowers and I grow at Three Part Harmony Farm. It’s a pretty notable farm with a 150 member CSA. I wanted to partner with a vegetable farm because cut flowers are such a high value added project that I feel like I couldn't have done the flower growing independent of a vegetable farm because of the issues that currently exist: people being hungry and low food access.
It’s shaping up to be more of a cooperative framework so that we are holding each other up, not just being there for each other physically, but also financially.
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN FARMING?
I’ve been farming for four seasons. It’s not very much time and it’s constantly humbling. You think you know something and it doesn’t quite work out how you plan. You have to think on your feet. I’ve been at Three Part Harmony Farm the entire time.
WHAT INITIALLY BROUGHT YOU TO THE FIELDS?
I am an accidental farmer to be honest. I started as a volunteer. I lived in the Brookland area where the farm currently sits and in a winter anxiety burst, I decided to start to jog. I took to running a couple nights a week and took a turn one day and jogged past the farm. Long story short, I emailed Gail (the farm owner) and started volunteering. The only day I was available is the day that the veggies were being harvested. I joined the harvest team and fell in love. Now I understand and have uncovered my own story and narrative. I wonder to some degree if the ancestors were calling me back. My family ended up in California as a result of agriculture. It wasn’t something I learned, but I was always around plants. My mom is an avid gardener with fruit trees in the backyard. I always had access to a garden despite being in the middle of the city. The skill wasn’t passed on to me per se, but I dug my heels into something that I love and now I’ve been doing it for the past four years.
WHY HAVE YOU CHOSEN TO FARM FOR SOMEONE ELSE (NOW OR IN THE PAST?)
Farming is hard work. I am saying that to someone who knows that very very well. I think in terms of a farming future and actually building a farm that would make me the most happy, it really needs to happen in community, partly because the work is so hard and partly that is how I understand farming to be. When I hear stories that my dad tells about being out in the field, it’s many hands make light work. He talks about how much he used to enjoy being out there with people he felt close to. He was the tail end of the Bracero program, season to season traveling back from Mexico and coming back to the States depending on the crop. It was a reuniting of sorts during harvest season. From the little I did hear, it also conjured these thoughts of community. I think that’s why in thinking about my future in farming, I want to do it in commuinity for sure.
WHAT ARE SOME ISSUES FOR FARMERS WORKING ON SOMEONE ELSE'S FARM - ISSUES THAT YOU'VE WITNESSED OR EXPERIENCED?
Agency - it took a season or season and a half for my voice to be really be counted. Now it’s to the point of where we very much share the labor and decision making, but before then I was very much an employee. I’ve had to, to some degree, carve a space for myself. Something that I’ve experienced is maybe not being counted at the beginning. I was also really new to farming. I really did not know what farming was and with time, my voice has also become more confident with what I’m doing.
For me the issues that arise are me finding my own voice. To that end, it was due to my own restraints, doubts in my own abilities. As I’ve rooted a little better, I can express myself with more clarity and I feel heard.
In branching out and starting this flower endeavor, not being seen as an independent entity and being seen as a “branch of” - it’s people’s perception and the fact that the ⅛ of an acre that I grow on is on someone’s else’s farm.
I will say that the way my mind works and where my heart, I'’m trying to think of all of the sides. It’s not too difficult to really look at things from different angles even though I have certain feelings leaning in one way. I want a well rounded perspective.
“I love improving the small piece of earth that I’m on. I’ve enjoyed building the soil with the hope of inspiring people to do the same right where they are.”
WHAT KEEPS YOU COMING BACK?
I think that the very fact that you can start again. Every spring you get another shot. You can refine your skills.
I can delve into an interest with more depth, knowing that I will be constantly learning something.
How dynamic the work actually is and working on a farm that has such a large community. It’s inspiring to have contact with lots of people on any given day. What keeps me coming back is what I might learn from someone who might come on any given day. We all learn from each other.
I think if we all understood the food chain a little better, we would all have a better hold on how the climate is spiraling. I love improving small piece of earth that I’m on. I’ve enjoyed building the soil with the hope to inspire people to do the same right where they are.
There are reminders on the farm that things will shift and change and pass. That can be incredibly uplifting.
WHAT IS YOUR TAKE ON THE DIFFERENCE (IF ANY) BETWEEN A FARMER AND A "FARM WORKER"/"FARM EMPLOYEE" BESIDES PROPRIETORSHIP?
In my experience it’s been one and the same. My mind kind of wandered to agriculture as an industry. Inc conversations with my dad, he was an employee and he recognizes that so when I think to my own experience, there is really no difference there for me. From the structural perspective, it leads to abuses, lack of agency and everything that is built into the DNA of the ag system. Personally for me on this small two acre, those two words (farmer and farm worker) mean one and the same to me. I wonder if I were on a larger operation that would be different for me. I’m almost pretty sure it would be.
Words are important. Words are what those interactions are built on.
WHAT KIND OF SUPPORT WOULD BE HELPFUL FOR PEOPLE WORKING ON FARMS NOT THEIR OWN?
Having a dedicated person on a farm to sort of access what needs exist for individual farmers. Help people take next steps if they have bigger plans like starting their own farm, being part of a cooperative, processing chiles and making salsa, etc. All of us have dreams and capabilities that maybe we don’t get to tap into because no one asked. So having an individual or group perhaps to hold space for those dreams, even if it’s just for the farmer to say them aloud - that would be really helpful.
ANYTHING ELSE YOU'D LIKE TO SHARE ABOUT YOURSELF & YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH FARMING? WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT?
Representation. In the cut flower industry, I’m a drop in the bucket. We need more folks of color who are both growing and running the operation. Farmers and farm owners - the examples don’t look like us.
That component of how much my work matters - rooting more deeply in what I’m doing with confidence and heart, so others can see me doing it.
Farming conferences are dominated by white faces and even in the moments where boards have taken time and effort to provide keynote speakers who are folks of color and prominent voices, in these conference spaces, there needs to be spaces where white farmers can deal with their feelings on their own. Facilitation from someone who is adept in issues of whiteness and how it manifests itself in this industry. It’s more than just getting a keynote person and thinking that’s enough. It’s not enough because it often leads to averted gazes, awkward conversation. POC (people of color) are doing emotional labor in return.
Being a farm in the middle of the city and having a work share program, we see a lot of folks coming through who work for non-profits, and they spend the morning with us because they are working from home. There is a lot of healing that happens. Folks that are drawn to the farm are often folks that are going through some stuff. I have witnessed how hands in the dirt can be positive and inspiring.
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....)
Chips for dinner comes up regularly. We push each other - no chips for dinner, make sure you have a salad.
Lunch on the farm has morphed. Those first couple years, I would just push through. Part of it was because I didn’t feel actual hunger, it was more thirst that I felt. As of late, as I have learned more, as I have gained experience, I think more about this component of self care. I’m very much in an aging body, slowing down to take a 30 minute meal shouldn’t be a whole lot to ask of myself. This season I have made a note for myself in my journal to bring a bottle of dressing so I can greens in a bowl and have that in the middle of the day
It’s taken some effort.
I feel my most full at the end of the day when I have the energy to roast veggies and steam rice and eat the thing that I grow. It’s a feeling of connection that no other thing that I’ve done has given me.
