HOLLY MCDEVITT
PITTSBURGH, PA
Holly started working on farms 15 years ago. Currently she is a full-time student for horticulture technology at a school in Pittsburgh that is completely free if you are accepted. She will become certified in pesticide application and tree tending.
WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY DOING? (WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING, ETC)
I’m basically unemployed right now. I have this very seldomly worked side job as a balloon artist. We do organic balloon installations, blobs of different colors and different sized balloons for free-formed shapes for events and things. I don’t do that very often at all. No one is really having events right now because of COVID. I’m a full-time student for horticulture. It’s not a degree, but there’s a really good school in Pittsburgh that is completely free if you get in. They have five different programs and mine is a certificate in Horticulture technology. I’ll get a certified pesticide application and tree tending.
Ultimately I’m really interested in conservation and sustainability and stewardship. I’m also interested in soil and plant health, too. I probably need to go to more school. I’m leaving my options open for that and where I end up.
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN FARMING?
It did start with farming and that was 15 years ago. I lived in a really small town near Pittsburgh and my friend found this farm that if we volunteered our time, we would get vegetables. I thought that was the coolest thing. Before that I didn’t really care about plants that much. Neither of my parents were gardeners. It was really the experience on that farm that made me really interested and from there I got interested in the wild plants that I was in the same community as - medicinal plants and flowers, and that kind of kickstarted being interested in horticulture.
I showed up at that same farm the next season with the intention of volunteering still and I kept working more and more days. The farmer was like “I need to start paying you money.” I became the farm apprentice and I worked there for 3 or 4 seasons. It was a certified organic vegetable farm, 11 acres, and he only did vegetables.
In the winter, I just didn’t have a job. I’ve always been really good at living well below my means and saving money. Not working in the winter was totally fine money wise.
WHAT INITIALLY BROUGHT YOU TO THE FIELDS?
I think at that time, I was 19, I was very uninterested in the typical average person’s life going to school. I was very uninterested in that. I thought about other means of getting what you need like bartering, and dumpster diving. I just thought all that stuff was really eye opening for me. That idea of being able to get food just by volunteering my time was cool.
I didn’t live on the farm at first. That ends up being part of bad stuff later. At first I just lived in town. The farm was just outside of the small town, maybe 5 miles away, so I lived in town at first. The last summer I worked on the farm, he had bought a house that was already on property that an old woman had been living in who owned the land. He had been leasing some of her land to grow stuff on and she died, and he bought the house. He bought the house and he didn’t communicate with me what he was thinking, that he wanted me to live in that house. I had said, “oh maybe next year” and he kind of pressured me into moving into the house. I ended up living there the last season. The house he lived in was down the road a bit. I wasn’t directly in the space of the main farm. I paid rent, but it was not a lot. It was a very small amount of rent, probably just covered the utilities.
WHY HAVE YOU CHOSEN TO FARM FOR SOMEONE ELSE (NOW OR IN THE PAST?)
I thought I had found something that I really wanted to do. I was really young, too, like the ages of 19 to 21.
I didn’t really think about starting my own farm. Honestly thought I would keep working there with him and then maybe some day it would just be mine, but I really didn’t think about it that much also. He would kind of voice out loud a lot of the stuff, all this idealistic stuff fantasy stuff that had to do with me working there with him. It was honestly like a Me too situation.
He was just inappropriate with me . It was an inappropriate relationship and I was too young and probably too naive and didn’t have the vocabulary that we have now, plus he was my boss. How could I confront him? Say: You should stop being like this! You should stop being in love with the idea of me. It was just me and him most days. There was one day a week that the CSA members volunteered on the farm and the last season I worked there, my boyfriend I had at the time, we both worked on the farm the last season. That was part of my negotiating to stay working there and living in that house, that my boyfriend was going to move in, too. But besides volunteers sometimes, there was nobody else on the farm.
WHAT ARE SOME ISSUES FOR FARMERS WORKING ON SOMEONE ELSE'S FARM - ISSUES THAT YOU'VE WITNESSED OR EXPERIENCED?
So I have worked on other farms more recently and it’s been my friends who lease the lands off of the owner, and there is just no infrastructure for comfort. You have to go to the bathroom outside all the time. Even something like that, I think some people might not mind that, but I think that if its not your farm, then that is a bigger deal to have something like that. .
Also I think it’s difficult to have to commute to the farm. You’re not there and you’re not really observing and being a part of it if you’re not living on it. I just think that there is an imbalance there and you’re not in tune with what’s going on. I just think that is really hard.
Those things trickle down and make it kind of harder for somebody just working there. There’s no where to go, there is no upward mobility really, and if it’s a small farm, I don’t know how you could really pay somebody more up to a certain point. I think my pay rate from when I was on that farm over 15 years ago, I was still making that same amount on my friend’s small farm recently, that was about it.
I don’t know the business of having a farm, I guess there’s a lot of things that I don’t know about or am unaware of. For me, all the work that you have to do, the physical toll, it’s too much to do for somebody else and not get paid well. I’ve been paid under the table, and I’ve done it because it’s been a convenient thing and I’ve had the connections, but at this point, I’d never choose that as a profession because they can’t offer me benefits, a higher pay, retirement, etc., that has come to matter to me as I get older. I guess that’s mainly what makes it difficult to want to work on a farm.
CAN YOU TELL ME THE QUALITIES OF A DREAM FARM NOT LEADING TO OWNERSHIP - THAT YOU WOULD WANT TO WORK ON?
I’ve never thought of that.
I would think being able to offer all the things I previously said. Having spaces that are a designated break space, a way to get out from the elements, even just a place to crash if you need it. At the first farm I worked at, we would work the Friday before a Saturday market until 10/11pm.
Maybe more opportunities to further educate, be educated. Being more involved in learning about the business side of farming, more transparency.
“I had a bad situation with a farm owner. It was honestly a Me too situation. He was just inappropriate with me – it was an inappropriate relationship and I was too young and probably too naive and didn’t have the vocabulary that we have now. Plus he was my boss. How could I confront him?”
WHAT KEEPS YOU COMING BACK?
I really like having very fresh vegetables. A lot of my friend circle in Pittsburgh have their own farms, and the past few years when I wasn’t really doing any full-time work, I was kind of doing whatever gig jobs and if they offered me work I would do it mostly because of that.
I love being outside and moving. That is very important to me. But the actual work of it, I find to be very monotonous and not that enjoyable. The farm I worked at, I really really loved making the flower bouquets because of the creativity involved in that. I appreciated that. There’s been so many farms I’ve worked on where they didn’t pay that much attention to the nutritional needs of vegetables, they would just throw down compost. It was a crap shoot with certain crops, some things wouldn’t be good and I didn’t find that to be very inspiring really. I’m thinking of one specific person I know who has a farm and he pays attention and he grows very nice things now because he researchers everything so meticulously and really pays attention to plant health. That was something before no farmer I knew was ever really talking about in such a specific way. The recent past made me appreciate farming more again.
WHAT IS YOUR TAKE ON THE DIFFERENCE (IF ANY) BETWEEN A FARMER AND A "FARM WORKER"/"FARM EMPLOYEE" BESIDES PROPRIETORSHIP?
I think a farmer implicates that you’re the one in charge.
A farm worker/farm employee kind of means you’re not.
In charge means the farmer is making all of the decisions on what to plant, when to plant, what to harvest, what to weed, they are making all those calls on a small farm.
DO YOU CALL YOURSELF A FARMER? WHY OR WHY NOT.
Yeah I did on that first farm because I was the farm apprentice, but I also use words in ways that are a little more creative and they shouldn’t be used. I actually went to culinary arts school, too.
I give myself grander titles sometimes just to entertain myself, that’s why I’ve said I’m a farmer before.
WHAT KIND OF SUPPORT WOULD BE HELPFUL FOR PEOPLE WORKING ON FARMS NOT THEIR OWN?
I think farm workers need mental health support because there is just a point that I notice in September where there is just such burnout. It needs to be treated like a job where you can have sick days, but I know that is very idealistic on a farm because the works needs done. Some days you are just so tired and need to not do it.
In my experience working on farms in Pennsylvania, I’ve never worked with any migrant workers either. I’ve only ever worked on farms with white people.
I would say we need all the things, it would be similar to what I’m getting at my school right now: I have a job placement person and I have a school counselor and there’s resources if you need clothes for an interview. Basic stuff like that for other people on farms, that sounds good to me.
I’ve been on a farm where I got cut and there was nothing! Make sure you have a first aid kit.
ANYTHING ELSE YOU'D LIKE TO SHARE ABOUT YOURSELF & YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH FARMING? WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT?
Do you remember the Double Rainbow guy?
I got in an internet fight with him couch surfing. This was before he went viral. That was a long time ago. I had just had this experience with the farmer I mentioned before, the '“creep farmer,” and in the WWOOF group on couch surfing, I was talking about it, sharing that this is something that ladies have to think about. Well, the title “creep farmer” really upset the Double Rainbow guy. He had taken in WWOOFers before. I looked at his youtube channel and he had videos of young women WWOOFer farmers and he would pan down their whole entire body very slowly. I’m thinking that he’s problematic.
I think he just had a problem with my wordage. He was also doing the victim blaming things, like what are you putting out there that these farmers are picking up on?
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....)
I’ve experienced all of it. The last farm I worked at for my friend, we did take lunch and it was a little more elaborate. We only worked one day together, and the day I worked was harvest day and we would be in the barn washing stuff and she had the little camp stoves and we had cookware and stuff and somebody would cook lunch for everybody. Then we would go sit out on a little patch of grass and eat food. We took our time and hung out. I thought that is how it should be. If it’s a small farm, and you're not usually talking side by side with someone, that lunch with the socializing is nice.
We would all volunteer to cook. I would volunteer to do it because I know how to cook and I didn’t mind cooking for everybody.
On another farm, we would work 12 hour days and we would have lunch for 20 minutes. The owner didn’t really eat a lot. He would eat spoonfuls of peanut butter, and he expected people to be keeping up with him. You can’t expect everybody to be like that.
Bringing and packing a lunch is hugely stressful especially working on a farm that doesn’t have a fridge or a microwave and trying to figure out what to bring that’s not the same exact thing every day. That’s an important thing: provide the people who are working for you with a little more amenities.