JESSE SCHAFFER

CHICAGO, IL

Jesse has been farming on farms not his own for about 10 years. He currently manages a series of 14 (!) rooftop farms in Chicago, and recently had been managing a farm in Alabama for 4 years.

WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY DOING? (WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING, ETC)

  • I’m currently managing a rooftop farm in Chicago. It’s a series of 14 rooftop farms. I 10/10 wouldn’t recommend it. 

    We sort of have 2-ish crews . One crew is dedicated to veggie and apothecary and the other crew is for cut-flower production. It is a for profit-farm. This is my first foray in being on a for-profit farm.

HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN FARMING?

  • I’ve had ebbs and flows for about 10 years . Farming catalyzed for me as a career probably around 2011. 

WHAT INITIALLY BROUGHT YOU TO THE FIELDS?

  • My background is in education and community organizing work. As I was doing organizing work, in that context, the more I did it, the more I started to realize that talking theoretically about food justice was meaningful and interesting, but the more I did the farming side of things, I realized that I could be using farming as a tool to do this type of community work. It became less and less of a hobby and more and more that I should do this full time. 

    I went to CASFS (Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems) at UC Santa Cruz and it all came together in such a way to become an interesting Ven diagram for opportunities of visioning a different world, while also inspiring and challenging the food system, and dabbling in food security work.

WHY HAVE YOU CHOSEN TO FARM FOR SOMEONE ELSE (NOW OR IN THE PAST?)

  • I have no money. I have known that I have no chance of money. I’ve always been of the mindset, if I don’t have my money to spend, why not spend others? The best way to get taught is to work on someone else’s dime. From 2011 until now, I have realized my vision to some degree, while realizing other people’s vision in the process. The dream for awhile was to be a salaried farmer. There is no other way for me to begin to make money farming then to get paid a salaried job because I saw so many amazing people and friends basically destroying themselves trying to do this type of work. I wanted to learn from these people and not replicate that. 

    I’m not super optimistic about it (starting my own farm). I thought about it a lot. I have a deeply held belief that all power comes from the land. I have a strong interest in figuring out a way to have a lifestyle that allows me to feel safe and comforted, I guess, so I haven’t figured out how to do that while owning a farm.

  • I’m always scheming. My current scheme is to buy land with some folks and grow an orchard. 

    I love growing fruit and the thought of growing fruit for people I’ve never met before to eat in the future. After all these years, I’m not so sure about it. The more I learn, the more wary I am about doing it (starting a farm).

WHAT ARE SOME ISSUES FOR FARMERS WORKING ON SOMEONE ELSE'S FARM - ISSUES THAT YOU'VE WITNESSED OR EXPERIENCED?

  • I’m a white cis masculine presenting dude. The world was built for me in a real way.

    I’m not the person who people notice. I blend in. The struggles I experience are very different than what my coworkers experience. 

    There’s a lack of trust. People who own the shit…it takes years for them to believe that you’re not just an idiot who is working for them. It’s shocking to think in the farming world, the amount of people who believe farmers are idiots, literal stupid people, it can’t be undersold. It is profound and super real. From people in society, all the way to the micro level, to the farm owners themselves. People devalue the brains of farmers. That has been a huge element for me. 

  • I have intentionally sought out places that I knew that I would feel safe, or safe enough, to make it through the season there. I understand a good deal about myself to not lead with certain things. As a Jewish person or Queer person, who has lived in a rural places, the life that I've led has taught me to not give too much of who I am unless I think it’s to my benefit and unless I feel safe enough to do so. 

  • 10 years into farming and my boss has genuinely no trust for me. I’ve been planning, building out our crop plans, and establishing the first crop plan they have ever had. My boss is a millionaire. She told me to do it this one way and I knew we were doing it the wrong way. We did crop plan backwards…long story short, my boss witnessed through another conversation that we did it wrong, but she ha no trust in that I’ve been doing this for years.

    I’ve worked for enough non-profit farms to know that they are not going to appreciate what we have to say, but we’re going to work with it. 

    I have found safety and trust in my network of farmers. 

    My boss, Layton, in 2014, one of the things I could trust was their identity as a trans person. They were having to deal with so much by being there. The network that I knew they were connected to gave me a sense of trust. If they didn’t feel good going to that place, they probably wouldn’t let me fall into that situation. My network is much bigger now. I am part of the Jewish Farmer Network and Queer contingency of that network. A huge part of the group discusses how to feel safe as a Queer person. As these networks are being built and expanded, you know you'll be safe in certain spots. 

  • In some ways I chose farming and in and some ways i just needed a job. The last four years in Birmingham took a big chunk out of me and I’m processing it now. I needed to make money and wanted to learn a lot of things by managing the same farm for 4 or5 years. In retrospect it was the hardest four years of my life. I was everyone’s first Jew. I didn’t let on to other aspects of my identity and I accepted for a very long time, that I would be a mostly partial version of myself. It felt too hard to bring in cross cultural stuff. 

    It was easier when I was just a bozo, a couple seasons in. I want to apprentice here and do that, if the work is there, and I’m down with it, i’m flexible. Later in the seasons of doing it, I have less flexibility and there aren’t that many semi-cushy urban farmer, salaried, mission based non-profit farms in the U.S.

CAN YOU TELL ME THE QUALITIES OF A DREAM FARM NOT LEADING TO OWNERSHIP - THAT YOU WOULD WANT TO WORK ON?

  • As the farm manager, I trying to figure that out when running my own farm. I wanted to sort of create aspects of a dream situation here, closer to what I wish I could have had. 

    One quality is an actual intentional educational process. Lots of people talk a big game about intentionally teaching their apprentices. They say, ‘Well we paid you, we’re good on our end.’ But the point is we are trying to learn something in the process. 

  • I think the aspects of safety and comfort are harder to put in tangibles. I don’t know about that, but that is something. I’ve lucked out, the fact that generally speaking I was mostly safe at the places that I’ve worked at. All people deserve that, especially in environments that are so isolated like this.

“I have intentionally sought out places that I knew that I would feel safe, or safe enough, to make it through the season there. I understand a good deal about myself to not lead with certain things. As a Jewish person or Queer person who has lived in a rural places, the life that I've led has taught me to not give too much of who I am unless I think it’s to my benefit and unless I feel safe enough to do so.”

WHAT KEEPS YOU COMING BACK?

  • I mean, what keeps people coming back to capitalism? Why would you want to do something other than this? There are very few things that bring this much joy. 

    9 months into the pandemic and the quality of life that I see in people who don’t get to work outside on a regular basis is not great.

  • The Venn diagram that I talked about earlier - I came into farming from an element of talking a big game about the food system, but if I have never really grown food, am I an accurate representative of what is going on here? The part I like the best is the farming itself.

    Farming was always a means to an end of larger ambition of education and food justice and somewhere in the process I found out I actually like the whole thing. The physical nature of it; and knowing time, really knowing time in the way only farmers do; the love and care that you get to do. I’d be here a while if I really want to talk about why I come back to farming. It’s hard to put into words, the beautiful and beneficial things I get to experience. 

  • It’s ableist. I realize I am in an ableist field. I think a lot of people's lives would be better if they got to work outside. Literally providing love by the thing you do for work. Giving people love through food.  It’s easy to talk all day about why it’s worth it. 

WHAT IS YOUR TAKE ON THE DIFFERENCE (IF ANY) BETWEEN A FARMER AND A "FARM WORKER"/"FARM EMPLOYEE" BESIDES PROPRIETORSHIP?

  • The first thing that comes to mind are visceral racist reactions, my internalized racist shit. Those words are very political. We as a society even if we believe they are dumb collectively, we as a society have put value on the meaning of farmer and devalued and put unskilled labor in the term farm worker. 

    I don’t like to describe myself as a farmworker because I don’t have the skills of any person harvesting head lettuce in southern California. I’m not as fast, will never be as fast, and don’t have that set of skills. It’s hard for me to call myself a farm worker from a lot of different standpoints. 

    It is a super racist and problematic context where those terms come about. 

    Something we experienced in Alabama, the state would give out these informational things about farmers to public schools that were related to their meal program. Eery single photo was a middle aged white dude. WTF. What piece of shit USDA program is producing this shit? The school is 99% Black. IT’s a straight up slap in face. It erases everyone else, erases all the women. There are so many different layers; what’s wrapped up in those titles; who people picture when they think of farmers and farm workers. There is so so much to unpack there.  

    When I was mentoring young folks, I had a lot of problems with that. The last thing they need is more white dudes showing them how to farm. It’s partially why I quit that job. Those elements of who is represented in the basic words we use is really critical.

DO YOU CALL YOURSELF A FARMER? WHY OR WHY NOT.

  • I could say I call myself a farmer. I would say that the profound lack of nuance in the non-farming world is super massive. Even the people who know me and I’m usually the only farmer they know in any form, I don’t even go in depth with them with what farmer vs. farm worker, even means. They don’t have the nuance there. In the US. less than 1% of us are farmers. We are relating to people in this completely abstract way. They have no concept of actually what I do. To most people I’m a farmer because the context is too nuanced. Not to say I couldn’t have those conversations… most farmers could have an interesting conversation because most people don’t have an idea of nitty gritty breakdown of what that looks like.

WHAT KIND OF SUPPORT WOULD BE HELPFUL FOR PEOPLE WORKING ON FARMS NOT THEIR OWN?

  • There is this mentorship program in Chicago, a farmer to farmer program in the city with 20 mentors and 20 mentees. It’s an intentional process. We are getting paid to do it and it’s a nice perk of the program. The gist of it is that we are expected for a year to mentor people and spend a maximum of 25 hours doing it. I’m going to go over. I love getting to teach and getting to learn from farmers.

    All this to say: 1. It’s already been profoundly meaningful for me. It’s been huge for me in my learning journey. Something with working on other farms, you'll be on a farm that wants to genuinely teach you , other times not. How can you make use of the season? You’re about to work not just hours, but months and potentially years for somebody, maybe you’ll get a lot faster at transplanting and harvesting, but I think one way to make the process more meaningful for learning would be having a diffused program where there is a farmer to farmer network across the US where people are learning and teaching and making meaningful opportunities. 

    CRAFT exists and other programs, but what about an online platform where you could feel held in that way?

    That said, I know people don’t have all of this free time when you are cranking out winter squash for hours and days. But the potential of these mentorship programs is pretty cool. 

  • There’s a lot of hot takes going around on justice for Black farmers. The concept of people being paid through the USDA, rather than being paid through the farms. Who is doing the education? What is going on there? I’m still trying to formulate opinions even after reading up on it. 

  • I do think there is something to be said for these online support platforms for people who normally wouldn't feel safe in these rural environments, allowing people who would otherwise not want to do this because of fear for a lot of different reasons. The limitations of rural living for people who want to be trained in production agriculture are real. I’d be curious in how we can make that accessible and safer for people.

ANYTHING ELSE YOU'D LIKE TO SHARE ABOUT YOURSELF & YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH FARMING? WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT?

  • I mean the baseline idea of me knowing that I might never get to own my own land and work. Landless people, Jews never got to own land anywhere for the last 2000 years. The feeling of transience and feeling of knowing that I’ll work this place and might not see its benefits. I won’t be remembered through its success or failures. The longer I've done this stuff, there are elements that don’t feel that at odds with the history of my people and the spiritual connection I have to the land. There is an element of knowing a place and feeling deeply connected to it, but knowing it will never be mine. Even if it was mine in American capitalist way, it’s still stolen land. I sit with it a lot. What it is to know that 2000 years of people who came before me were mainly agriculturalists for at least 1500-1000 years of that time and they never owned a piece of that shit. Obviously farming has a lot of spiritual layers to it. The longer I’ve done it with the Jewish agrarian knowledge that I do have, it’s something I’ve come more to terms with and feel more comfortable with. I may never see the last harvest on a place. I don't particularly mind it at the same time, there is something special and beautiful about realizing other people’s dreams. 

    There is a lot of humility to know that it isn’t yours and that you are just a steward. The more time you spend working on other people’s ideas, dreams and land, the more you know what it is to be a steward. There can be a sense of entitlement tied with ownership, but when you are literally working for someone else, it teaches a lot of humility, and I’m grateful for that humility. 

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....)

  • Farmer lunch! I love farmer lunch! What a special thing farmer lunch is. 

    All of the fun and joy that I used to associate with it has been ripped apart with this current job. Farms that are not started by farmers are a nightmare. It’s corporate. They take away all the beautiful things like using the fresh produce to make food, a culture of you getting the seconds, etc. The culture being created on the farm is not created by a farmer.

  • When I farmed in 2014, it was a lot of fun, but also extremely stressful. We only had an hour, but had to cook the food for the crew in a tiny office that was also a kitchen and bathroom. Everyone is cooking at same time and cleaning up. It was a madhouse, but I have a lot of nostalgia for it. 

  • It suits extraverts more than introverts. We had a big extraverted crew that year. I think when I was the farm manager and one of the bosses, the holiest thing in my whole day was making sure we all had an hour. That was not allowed to be fucked with. It was a line to respect. It was the one hour of the day that myself and my entire crew had. If a customer came up, I would sacrifice myself.

    We created a culture where we bust our ass and need to take a break. It’s a special time and beautiful associations with it.