KELSEY CRAWFORD
WILKES COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA
Kelsey has been farming on farms not her own for 5 years. She is entering her fourth season at the same farm in the Appalachian foothills.
WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY DOING? (WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING, ETC)
I work on an organic vegetable farm. We have about 3 acres in production. We’re really a main season farm, so we typically run from April through November with multiple market outlets. We have a big CSA and also sell at 3 farmers’ markets. My bosses take the winter off actually, but in an effort for employee retention, we decided to grow this winter.
I’ve been independently growing for a 60 person CSA and selling to our local food banks. I’ve been staying pretty busy with that and also understanding a lot more of the back end of things.
In the main season we are 6 person crew with our two owners who work full time. In the winter time, one of my coworkers does cover cropping, turning, rebuilding, and fixing everything that we didn’t have time to fix during the summer, so she’s around. And I do the production and really that is all that I have time to do.
I initially lived on the farm for the first season, but then a coworker and I moved off the farm, and now I live with my girlfriend in town.
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN FARMING?
I’ve been farming for going on 5 years. That is way longer than I feel like I’ve been doing this. You sort of feel so new because you’re learning so many things every day. You get to a point where you’ve been doing this for a while.
This is going on the 4th season at my current farm. Prior to that, I did a season on a flower farm.
I worked part-time for my current farm while I was working a local food non-profit, but quickly realized where my passions are and went back to full-time farming.
WHAT INITIALLY BROUGHT YOU TO THE FIELDS?
It was a really weird way. I grew up in a really industrial farming community, a lot of soy and corn and tobacco farms. Once I got older, I was really compelled to leave that culture. It’s a really rural area. I was a first generation college student, and I was really on track thinking, how can i be the most successful? That ultimately leads you to lose your mind at some point. I was just looking for something different so I took an apprenticeship with a stipend. I was really just trying something different and did not expect it to stick.
Once I started doing it, I started remembering sort of where I came from and working in the garden with my grandma. I started of thinking of it more structurally. We grew up in this place that has such fertile ground but all of us are eating from the Dollar General. The nearest store to buy a vegetable is 30 -40 miles away. It made me sort of think of how farming can both help and exploit the people who live there. I became impassioned about that. I left again and tried to get back on the track of what I thought was success. I continually felt really hollow. Once I had done it, I knew I had to go back to farming. It was a complete 180.
I think I thought success before farming was being the opposite of the people around me growing up, which I feel so often we are being the people who brought us up or trying not to be the people that brought us up. I was trying to prove something and sort of realized that I am this people and the way that they lived was a success.
WHY HAVE YOU CHOSEN TO FARM FOR SOMEONE ELSE (NOW OR IN THE PAST?)
I have chosen to farm for someone else to reconnect in some way and when you are farming for someone else you’re put in this group of people who are very like-minded. I really just fell into the lap of farming.
I’m always dreaming of what the right way to farm is and kind of trying to see that in the techniques of the farmers that I work for.
I would like to have my own place eventually, I think, but I’m often constantly in a cyclical thought about what the right way is or even if there is a right way as a white person.
It’s so cost prohibitive acquiring land, and all the other things that go along with farming, so maybe if I win the lottery.
When I’m looking at a farm, I’m looking at if they have return employees. I always look at who is driving the tractors and their photos - whether it’s only men who are using equipment or using particular skills. I look at pay because that is such a weird thing that is particular to the farming community, the way that farm employees are compensated. I really look at a culture of learning and teaching.
I really look for sort of a dream farm. So when I look at farms in our surrounding area, it’s not a sustainable model for employee retention. The farmers who I work for offer year round employment opportunities in whatever way that they can. We have a good pay rate that also when you’re taking on more roles, you're making more money. The biggest thing for me is that the farmers that I currently work for really emphasize boundaries. We work a 40 hour work week and we get paid for every minute that we work. If we work an extra 15 minutes one day, we either take it off the next day or we get paid for it.
A lot of my other friends are working 60 hours/week and their pay does not reflect that. That is really a huge reason that I’ve stayed at the same farm for so long.
Usually every 4-5 months, we have a check in - what’s working, what’s not working, what do you want to learn? When I told them I would like to manage the CSA, they created a job and said, in the winter, you will manage the CSA. They really trust their employees and really believe that we have the ability to run the farm.
Thinking about Not Our Farm and talking about what makes a farmer: to me it’s really my farm owners believing that I’m a farmer.
WHAT ARE SOME ISSUES FOR FARMERS WORKING ON SOMEONE ELSE'S FARM - ISSUES THAT YOU'VE WITNESSED OR EXPERIENCED?
The main issues that I’ve either witnessed or experienced as a farm employee are centered around the idea that as farm workers we are putting a lot into the operation and often you’re in the heat of the season and the farm is the farm owner’s baby; so often as farm workers, we can confuse where we are valued and our opinions are valued versus where our labor is valued. Sometimes it just is that - this just needs to be done and there isn’t time to tweak or change things right now, but we’ll revisit it. In the heat of the season, it’s hard to remember that.
When I look at my farm owners, I see people who are also screwed by the same systems. The farm is their livelihood so they know what they are investing into it and they are going and going and going, so it’s hard for them to step back and see the way it’s affecting their employees. Being on the same farm for multiple seasons and these people becoming close people in my life, I’m able to see the ways that their stress is manifesting or ways that they are lashing out where newer employees aren’t seeing that. It really is a benefit of staying somewhere longer, you come to understand where people are coming from and not take things so personally and understand that they are people too and they are being screwed also.
For me, personally I have a hard time not getting really intertwined. I was actually reading your bio Anita and when you said when you’re not farming, you don’t know who you are. That totally resonates for me. In the main season, it’s who I am and it’s my entire life. It’s easy for me to get way more intertwined with the mission, way more than I need to be. I struggle with that boundary, how much to give to the farm and how much energy to put elsewhere.
CAN YOU TELL ME THE QUALITIES OF A DREAM FARM NOT LEADING TO OWNERSHIP - THAT YOU WOULD WANT TO WORK ON?
It’s the check in and the trust and the boundaries. Something that we do that really builds community is we have a yearly Halloween party in our packing shed. We sort of have this group of farms that are competitors in the market, but we have farm prom and bonfires. We are carpooling two hours away to stay with them. Building that community between farms while you’re working in once place, you’re able to go and know these people who run their operation a bit differently.
Every Friday we have something we call “Beer-30” when we’re winding down, and instead of adding a new project for the day, we stop. Not everyone drinks beer, we just call it that. We pull up chairs and talk. Our partners come, friends from the community come. Sometimes it’ll last til midnight and sometimes we leave at 5. It’s totally optional, but it’s a time when you can look at the people you’re working with and decide that you want to be with them in a different way.
A lot of that community building is a dream farm quality.
“I think I thought success before farming was being the opposite of the people around me growing up. So often we are being the people who brought us up or trying not to be the people that brought us up. I was trying to prove something and sort of realized that I am this people and the way that they lived was a success.”
WHAT KEEPS YOU COMING BACK?
When I’m farming, even when it’s just the crappiest day, you come home and you still feel full, like your day was full. Whereas in other professions even if it’s a philanthropic role and I feel like I’m contributing, I come home and want to be outside or I want to work in my garden. For me when I come home from work, I feel like I’ve had a full day even when it has sucked. With farming I’m able to take the good and the bad and it works together more fully.
When the pandemic started I stepped back and thought, how could I do anything else? This is really the place to be right now. I come back to farming for the community also. You see the deepest depths of the people around you and I think it just brings people around you in such an incredible way.
I also love about farming the ability to not have to be perceived by the general public. When I would go to work prior you are making sure you look fine and thinking about how people are going to think about your body. We just come to work now comfortable and we are trying to stay healthy and direct our bodies in the way that feels the best. That is also something that I love.
WHAT IS YOUR TAKE ON THE DIFFERENCE (IF ANY) BETWEEN A FARMER AND A "FARM WORKER"/"FARM EMPLOYEE" BESIDES PROPRIETORSHIP?
It’s a hard thing to decide when to call yourself a farmer. The first time I ever even thought about it, I was at a conference with my boss. The person facilitating ask all the farmers to raise our hands and I didn’t raise my hand. My boss looked at me like I was out of this world. She said, you’re a farmer, raise your hand! Since then I’ve always sort of questioned that definition. When is the time that you are a farmer?
A farmer is one who does the work of farming, who is cultivating land or raising animals, doing the work. It’s so much of the identity. When you can name yourself like that, you get fulfillment from that. You’re giving so much to the profession. When you call yourself a farmer, you feel like what you’re doing makes sense. You’re able to name it and identify with it.
DO YOU CALL YOURSELF A FARMER? WHY OR WHY NOT.
I do call myself a farmer and I do it for a lot of reasons. Sometimes I like to make people laugh because if an older man asks me what I do and I get to tell him I’m a farmer, it really brings me a lot of joy because it’s true. For that reason, for a visibility thing - like the founding tenets of Not Our Farm, who are the people who are growing food and who are the people who are feeding you? They look a lot different than you think.
WHAT KIND OF SUPPORT WOULD BE HELPFUL FOR PEOPLE WORKING ON FARMS NOT THEIR OWN?
I’ve seen how Not Our Farm has brought so many people together in this community that I had a really small vision of. I knew the people around me and the farm workers around me and our shared struggles and the ways that it affected us and what working on a farm was like for us, but then seeing this national database and national community of people who are going through the same thing really changed me in the way I thought about farming and farming for other people.
My partner and I were talking about what it would be like to have an even more interactive way, like monthly roundtables about creating that community and letting out how you’re feeling because sometimes talking to your peers on a farm if you have them, you have to be careful about how you talk about where you’re working. Once you start getting into that negative cyclical talk, it can really dampen where you’re working. Sometimes you just want to let it out and tell someone who relates, but it doesn’t affect them. It could be a really cool way to connect with other people and think about where you’re working in different ways.
When Not Our Farm sent out that worker zine, I don’t even know how that would have impacted my farm selection when I was going though it. I didn’t know these things when I started until years later.
ANYTHING ELSE YOU'D LIKE TO SHARE ABOUT YOURSELF & YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH FARMING? WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT?
I think the thing that really keeps me up at night is the way that farm owners get away with really exploiting labor and still being viewed in their communities as sustainable and ethical. How prevalent underpaying workers is and how important I think it is for farm workers to be hourly. I also lay in bed thinking about how if I ever owned my own place, how would I actually get food into people’s hands and ways to serve in the right ways as opposed to continuing on this trajectory of the inaccessibility of farmers markets and CSAs and selling your crappiest produce to food banks instead of what you put on your farmers’ markets stand. It’s hard. I just hate how tied up it is with capitalism. I just want to learn how to be an anticapitalist farmer and I haven’t figured it out yet.
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....)
Most of our employees are local so some of us will go home, some of us will go up to the communal kitchen. Our bosses live there and have air conditioning. For me, it would almost deter for me working on a farm to have structured farm lunches. For us, I can see how it helps for us to step back and have our alone time and come back together.
For me, lunch is my sacred alone time. We love each other and scatter and we don’t even talk about it.
I’ve not seen the farmer lunch modeled so maybe I wouldn’t be so against it if I saw it.
On Fridays for “Beer-30",” it feels more like a choice, we are choosing to be together instead of adding another layer of being together.
We are also all introverts.
We do absolutely break in the middle of day and take an hour lunch.
