Heavy D
OREGON
WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY DOING? (WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING, ETC)
Currently I work at a garden center and I’m pretty busy raising my kid. I just moved here about a year ago right before the pandemic with plans to find a farm to work on. I haven’t felt comfortable or able. I don’t want to be in the fields where the fires are going because I have asthma. I have a really weak immune system so I’ve had to tailor down what I’m doing at the nursery,
I’m desperately trying to keep my roots in farming and plants in some way.
The garden center has been there forever with new owners who don’t particularly know how prune or water or rotate. They have somewhat of a grip but there are missing pieces - over fertilization, what needs to come in greenhouse and needs to winter over, etc.
They don’t understand that customers coming to buy stuff don’t want to search for blueberries. I’m trying to keep them all in the same area, categorize, organize.
The owners have a hand in a lot of the stuff. They are selling Christmas trees and flocking. Flocking is this very not great for the environment practice of putting a processed powder paste to make it look like it was snowed on. It is not good for ingestion or to breathe in or the environment.
They are building a commissary kitchen in the back and housing food trucks.
The nursery was easy connection for me. My mother is a landscape designer and they needed someone for a little while.
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN FARMING?
Not very long - probably about 6 or 7 years. I worked in the restaurant industry for a long time and my last job was in downtown LA at this very giant fancy restaurant and I was starting to get really tired of so much food being thrown out and waste and lack of appreciation for where things come from. I realized I didn't have that appreciation either. I happened across an internship for a student ag education farm in partnership with several local colleges and saw that you could apply for it even if you’re not in the college. I applied for it and the person who runs it and now runs the UW program shared her resources and was a wealth of information. If I wanted to, I could text her and ask her about growing questions. She had a farm on the east coast for a long time, but it was destroyed from increasing weather problems so she moved out west to teach.
WHAT INITIALLY BROUGHT YOU TO THE FIELDS?
I’m just on a larger journey of trying to figure out how to disconnect from the larger systems in general and still be able to give back to the community I live in. In the store you have no idea how much work it takes for food to get there. The more I dig and the more I learn, I’m seeing human rights issues, people not getting paid or not getting paid enough, sexism, racism, all this stuff that you don't realize when you pick up a piece of fruit or produce. All the stuff that has happened for it to get to you. Making ethical decision is so hard. You have to know your farmers. A good way to get involved for me was to grow my own food.
WHY HAVE YOU CHOSEN TO FARM FOR SOMEONE ELSE (NOW OR IN THE PAST?)
Yes, I am interested in growing my own farm.
At the farm, if you took the internship 3 times, they would rent ¼ acre to you for $50/year. You would be on the same property as the instructor. She would come and help you and come and talk to you about what was happening with your plants or your pests so you weren’t alone trying to start something like that for yourself. There were a bunch of farmers doing the same thing so you could come and talk to them.
I didn’t do it for two reasons. I was finishing up internship, it costs money to be in it. The only available plots of land were in the flood plains, right off the Shumanesh river. Initially the land had been fertile, but over tillage and without crop rotation had created a hard pan. There was only 6 inches of soil to grow in, so when the rains would come, you’d be underwater and the crops would be ruined. I decided it was not worth it, and I’d rather wait until another plot opens up.
The instructor quit and went on to U of W, and I had just given birth to my daughter. So I didn’t have a lot of incentives.
I fell back on restaurants where I had a lot more knowledge and to keep head above water.
The trajectory for me looks like I won’t have a farm for quite a long while - 5 to 10 years. My trajectory is to buy a house with land on it. To afford a house I have to have other jobs to stash away money, which means a whole different career or more restaurant work. My partner is currently going to school so that is another deficit for someone trying to buy land, going into debt for something else. It’s the best I’m doing right now. The current home I live in is owned by my grandmother. It has a large backyard and I’m turning every available square inch into gardens. My plan in the front is to start with 3 beds and have them be a community garden and grow into moving it to the backyard. Everyone is welcome to come and peruse through and pick what they want.
I liked the idea of working in a nursery in that what could happen, but I’m met with resistance. Nurseries have tons and tons of seeds and starts and tons and tons of dirt. Every year as the season change, they just dump it when it’s no longer salable, instead of donating to a food bank or starting a food program where they build beds and teach, or donate to schools with ag farms. That was my initial thought with working at the nursery. Instead of doing that, they throw it away because they see it as a weakness because if they throw it out, who would come and pay for what is for sale.
WHAT ARE SOME ISSUES FOR FARMERS WORKING ON SOMEONE ELSE'S FARM - ISSUES THAT YOU'VE WITNESSED OR EXPERIENCED?
There’s a lot of inner personal issues of how people come to farming or how people perceive farming. My time on the farm was really lovely and most of it passed without too much trouble but I do know the owner who owned the program, who owned the actual farm probably couldn’t have cared less about what was happening on the farm or how much people were or were not learning. Often it felt like the needs of the farm were second to the way it looked from the outside and I thought that was a real shame since farming and food are essential to the way our society works right now. The focus never seems to be how can we get the food to the people who need it the most, it’s always about how many pretty pictures can we take while we are growing, who is most palatable to be seen for commercials or for volunteers coming in.
Farming was more about the grants we could get over the impact in the community.
They only did for the sake of looking good, not the sake of doing good.
There are a bunch of us who crave farming, who want to work the long hours rather than an office.
I didn’t feel like there were any race or gender problems, but the group I worked with were so small and so tight knit. It was just me and 3 other interns and whoever came to volunteer that day. I didn’t see the bigger interactions with 21 acres or our CSA program.
CAN YOU TELL ME THE QUALITIES OF A DREAM FARM NOT LEADING TO OWNERSHIP - THAT YOU WOULD WANT TO WORK ON?
Organic, doesn’t have to be certified. As machine free as you can be - I don’t want to work on a huge farm with combines. For me I want to preserve as much of the ecosystem around the farm as possible. The more connected you are, the better it is.
Indigenous or Black led/owned, like Chris Newman - pretty much him. He seems very difficult and adamant, but I really like to be challenged by a different perspective on things. I like his viewpoint.
Small scale with animals, some chickens, some cows. A farm where the whole of what is happening is considered - big picture view of the farm.
Also a farm where your workers and their rights are considered before making choices about the day to day - a worker owned farm/a coop, that is sort of my dream.
I want to be on land that I can allow other people to be on and work together to better ourselves and everyone around us. I want to get back to living in harmony with the seasons and the earth instead working against it.
“I want to be on land that I can allow other people to be on and work together to better ourselves and everyone around us. I want to get back to living in harmony with the seasons and the earth instead working against it.”
WHAT KEEPS YOU COMING BACK?
My mental illness. Without being outside, without active movement of my body, digging in the dirt, without eating things that I’ve grown, I tend to have really bad depression. I’ve been in restaurants my whole youth; a bartender and a server and worked in kitchens, every aspect of a restaurant. I find myself at the end of the day really angry at people. They are disconnected from reality of what it takes to make a meal, both on the kitchen side and the patron side. The lack of appreciation for how extremely lucky we are to send something back or to have exactly what we want - whether it’s in season or not. Like we want pineapple right now and it’s available to us. It’s crazy to me. People get angry about little things, like people who send a steak back because it wasn’t the exact temp. The chef ordering way too much and ditching it in the garbage, not feeding us because they think we will become complacent.
Being out in nature, I feel more peaceful and it feels more correct than being inside.
I love food and cooking and eating. The natural progression was to get back to where it all starts, understand it better, bring it back around - see if that knowledge can affect what is happening in the restaurants and larger society.
To remain peaceful inside and remain connected, it keeps bringing me back outside.
WHAT IS YOUR TAKE ON THE DIFFERENCE (IF ANY) BETWEEN A FARMER AND A "FARM WORKER"/"FARM EMPLOYEE" BESIDES PROPRIETORSHIP?
I tend to think of farmer as someone who works on their own land with the help of their family. Farmworker works for a much bigger farm that may or may not be owned by an actual farmer, more of a corporation. Farmworkers to me aren't any less knowledgeable or caring or concerned or integrated, but there is that power structure. People tend to think of farmworkers as people who couldn’t get a job doing something else.
In American society, they are thought of as immigrants, people who don’t speak the language.
There is a stigma attached to that.
DO YOU CALL YOURSELF A FARMER? WHY OR WHY NOT.
At best I consider myself a gardener with a farmer background. I answer a lot of farm based questions like how to harvest, how to spray, how to prune, what to plant near what. There was this woman who had all her radishes eaten by worms, she sprayed her bed with neem and I talked with her about what she could do,
It’s not a hobby, it’s about how to feed yourself, feed your community, learn to seed save, share tips, share knowledge.
WHAT KIND OF SUPPORT WOULD BE HELPFUL FOR PEOPLE WORKING ON FARMS NOT THEIR OWN?
Healthcare, that’s a huge part of it. I also think a better understanding from the every day person. Not everyone has to farm, but it is unreasonable to ask people to be out picking strawberries while the sky is black from a fire that is so close. I understand there are multiple levels to that as the owner, as the worker.
It does start with a better education just in general of people understanding how the food gets to their table so there can be a better understanding how to help people.
A lot of farms are always operating just above bare minimum, trying to get by, you need your equipment not to break down, the harvest not to fail, workers need to be there and healthy, money. But money is also part of the problem because the big farms have thousands and thousand of acres and tons of cows, the whole corn thing, it’s not simple. We need education of the larger public.
There are a lot of similarities in restaurant industry
I had to quit working in the bar because it was an all male crew and the bar backs didn't like the way I talked to them. I had to walk on egg shells the entire time.
The question is so overwhelming, there is so much.
It’s so many things. I don’t even know how to begin talking about it.
ANYTHING ELSE YOU'D LIKE TO SHARE ABOUT YOURSELF & YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH FARMING? WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT?
It all keeps me up at night. Farming is bigger than the word farming. I don’t necessarily want to be a farmer. I know that I want to hold space to help other people, including me, to learn and grow and figure out how to respect mother nature in general. How to harvest and feed ourselves and not be greedy. How we keep coming closer to the edge, and there’s still no accountability and we aren’t changing anything. It’s crazy to watch the train keep rolling.
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 instructor at the farm was nice and very good and made sure we took our lunches. They were learning lunches - we would sit down and she would give a lecture about something. It was part of the learning farm - they wanted her to give lectures, but you can’t possibly sit down and lecture on stuff, that’s a waste of our time. We need to actually be out planting and weeding and harvesting and setting up drip line. There’s no time for lectures because of the CSA or farmers’ markets. They were short lectures while we ate and it was much better than anything I’ve had so far.
I will tell you about the last restaurant I’ve worked in - everyone above you will scream and yell that you need to take lunch because it’s legally required, but then they only expect you to do it if there is nothing going on. Eating is skipped. In LA, I worked at a restaurant that would force you to take your lunch before we started our shift! The law was that you were to take a lunch 4 hours into the shift - you needed to take a lunch and two 10 minute breaks. In my career from 16 years old until a couple years ago, I had never taken a 10 minute break unless I was smoking (but I quit), which is why so many people smoke in restaurant industry.
There is no time, no money. Restaurants run on such a fine budget, they really take advantage of you. When I went to the farm, I felt the same urgency. Everyone was sitting down so I did. I kept thinking, “I should go, I should get to what we were doing, what is rest? This isn’t making us any money.” I’m trying to break away from that.
It’s the same at garden center. You get yelled at to take a lunch. When I go to take a lunch, someone always needs me. It’s never fully a break. If I’m going to eat lunch and need a break, I go out to the greenhouse and shut the door.
I see the intrinsic value of the break now, the restorative value of that. My own spirituality, my connection to the plants and my ability to understand where there is hurting and where there is healing, it’s directly affected by if I’m taking care of myself. I' can’t do the things that need to be done if I’m not taking care of myself
I take a full break now. They want you to so they don’t legally get in trouble, but if there weren’t rules, you wouldn’t get a break. Capitalism.