MADELEINE BAVLEY
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH
Madeleine is currently in the off season in Salt Lake City, but plans to return to farming in some capacity this year.
WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY DOING? (WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING, ETC)
I’m not currently farming, as it’s winter still. At the moment, I’m teaching undergraduate writing classes. I want to continue farming. Though I’m looking to move mid farm season, so I can’t commit to a full season anywhere. I’m in a transition phase and have a lot of figuring out to do.
Last season, I worked on a small urban farm in Salt Lake City called Backyard Urban Garden Farms. The farm was comprised of borrowed backyard plots that totaled around an acre. It was CSA farm with a crew of 4-5. The season prior, I worked on the farm of a farm-to-table restaurant in Boulder, Utah. Boulder is a tiny town of a couple hundred people nestled in the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN FARMING?
I have just done two seasons now. Before that I was working in growing food, but not on a farm.
WHAT INITIALLY BROUGHT YOU TO THE FIELDS?
Before farming, I worked at a botanical garden for a couple of years. A lot of what I did there involved gardening with kids, growing food that way. I loved getting to grow food and thought it might be something I’d want to focus on more in the future. I imagined that growing food in a farm setting would be incredibly different, though working at the botanical garden made me realize how much joy I find with my hands in the soil.
I put that feeling aside though and moved to Salt Lake City in 2019 to pursue an MA in Environmental Humanities. The pandemic started my second semester. So there I was, studying all about our environmental crises, while living in the midst of one, stuck sitting at a computer, plucking away at keyboard. It felt so disconnected. I didn’t feel useful. I felt silly. And I got a bit disillusioned with academia.
I was trying to find a way to move forward doing the least amount of harm, particularly in how I would be making money. So little seems to make sense about our economic/energy systems. But something that is true irrespective of these systems is that people need to eat. So growing food was something that I thought I could do while having a bit less cognitive dissonance.
After finishing grad school, I moved to Boulder, Utah to work a season on a farm. Then I returned to Salt Lake City and worked at another season on a different farm. All that time studying about our environmental crises didn’t feel anywhere as useful as it did growing food for people. More specifically, I had studied concepts of labor and pleasure, considering what a pleasure activism approach could provide environmentalism. A lot of our pleasures are so entwined with consumerism. And a lot of pleasure in our culture is experienced at the expense of others. I was trying to think more about pleasures that could be life affirming. Food is a pleasure that can be cultivated in a ways pleasurable for those eating it, as well as for the land and labor who provided it. Food has always been a great source of pleasure for me.
WHY HAVE YOU CHOSEN TO FARM FOR SOMEONE ELSE (NOW OR IN THE PAST?)
I began by working on other people’s farms because there’s a lot of knowledge I don’t have. I had grown vegetables with kids at a botanical garden, but I had so much more to learn and still do. I’ve talked many times with my fellow farm crew members about how to go about having a future in farming, and it seems somewhat unsustainable without owning land. Whether or not that’s something I’d want, I don’t think I’d ever have the money for it. I haven’t really let myself imagine the possibility because it feels so unattainable, property ownership of any kind really. But in any case, I still have so much more learning to do before I really think more about that. Owning my own farm sounds pretty daunting too. I love farming, but I also love being able to put work away at the end of a day. In my experience, those who own the farms never get to fully do that. I’m not sure that’s a position I want to be in.
WHAT ARE SOME ISSUES FOR FARMERS WORKING ON SOMEONE ELSE'S FARM - ISSUES THAT YOU'VE WITNESSED OR EXPERIENCED?
There are a lot of challenges that farmers face. We lack a lot of protections as workers. For example, if you need to take a day off because you’re sick, you’re likely not paid for it (at least, I haven’t been). And when your hourly wage is already pretty low, missing a full day’s wages, you feel it. Where I’ve farmed, there aren’t sick days, there isn’t PTO, there isn’t health insurance. And while I don’t believe health insurance should be tied to employment, that’s how we’ve decided to do it in the U.S. So not having your employer provide it is challenging.
This past season, one of the farm crew developed a severe neck injury from overuse. He had to stop working and undergo an expensive surgery. He was out those wages as well as the money to meet his insurance deductible. There weren’t many systems of support in place for that sort of thing. Earlier in the season, we’d been discussing the possibility of establishing a mutual aid fund for farmers, which could be used to provide people their wages when out sick and whatnot. But that only existed as an idea when this happened. We set up a GoFundMe, which was better than nothing but far from ideal. No one should be put in that situation, of having to advertise their pain to the public, asking people to donate, and then waiting for people to decide whether or not to be philanthropic. We should have systems of support already in place. This experience absolutely affirmed our prior discussions regarding the establishment of a mutual aid fund. There isn’t much of a margin for farmers, financially or physically, when something goes wrong. So we have to get creative in thinking about the ways in which we can support one another.
CAN YOU TELL ME THE QUALITIES OF A DREAM FARM NOT LEADING TO OWNERSHIP - THAT YOU WOULD WANT TO WORK ON?
I’ve had the most incredible coworkers when farming. The farm I worked at last season was such an emotionally supportive environment. I wouldn’t change a thing about that.
What changes I would make are mostly matters of money. Farming can be damn hard. I think that farmers should be paid during the winter to rest, to get deep rest, because the farming season demands so much. So yeah, paid winter vacation for all farmers everywhere is my dream, which is, obviously, me dreaming pretty big.
Something I’ve also been reflecting on is the speed at which one must work while farming. This was something I thought about a lot my first season, which was on the farm of a farm-to-table restaurant. I also served a couple nights a week at the restaurant, because I made way more money serving than I did farming. That itself is an interesting thing to think about. This restaurant had a Slow Food ® designation, but it was always required of us to work so damn fast—on the farm and in the restaurant. We had all these white, wealthy customers coming to the restaurant wanting slow food. What I want is slow labor. I want to be able to work at a sustainable pace. The idea of slow food needs to be considered more comprehensively. Enough farmers employed on a farm, so that we can all work at a sustainable pace is my other dream.
“Something I’ve also been reflecting on is the speed at which one must work while farming. This was something I thought about a lot my first season, which was on the farm of a farm-to-table restaurant. I also served a couple nights a week at the restaurant, because I made way more money serving than I did farming. That itself is an interesting thing to think about. This restaurant had a Slow Food ® designation, but it was always required of us to work so damn fast—on the farm and in the restaurant. We had all these white, wealthy customers coming to the restaurant wanting slow food. What I want is slow labor. I want to be able to work at a sustainable pace. The idea of slow food needs to be considered more comprehensively.”
WHAT KEEPS YOU COMING BACK?
The fundamentals of farming I love so much. I love food. I love the people I work with. It’s a community of people I’ve felt so held by. I love playing with plants. I always feel so much better in body and spirit when I have my hands in the soil. When I come back to that question of how to move forward doing the least amount of harm while living in these systems that make so little sense, this is one of the few things that still makes sense to me. So I suppose I’ll stick with it, as I keep contemplating that question.
WHAT IS YOUR TAKE ON THE DIFFERENCE (IF ANY) BETWEEN A FARMER AND A "FARM WORKER"/"FARM EMPLOYEE" BESIDES PROPRIETORSHIP?
What do I call myself? What can I call myself? What should I call myself? I think that politically/philosophically, I believe that people who work on farms should be called farmers. I don’t see a reason for distinguishing between farmers and farmworkers/farmhands. The distinction feels diminutive, disempowering. But I think that personally, I haven’t always felt comfortable calling myself a farmer. I never want to be told “you don’t count,” or be considered a fake farmer. I suppose I code switch between farmer and farmworker depending on the context, even though I’d rather not participate in that hierarchical stuff at all.
WHAT KIND OF SUPPORT WOULD BE HELPFUL FOR PEOPLE WORKING ON FARMS NOT THEIR OWN?
Thinking big picture, inflation has been hard on a lot of us, particularly those of us in low wage work. I’ve heard friends and other folks talk about how high food prices are. And I have such conflicted feelings when I hear this. Everyone should be able to afford good food. But good food isn’t cheap. When food is cheap its because the costs are offloaded onto the labor and the land. I think it’s less about access to cheap food and more about addressing income inequality. Because again, everyone should be able to afford good food.
Now thinking tiny picture, the farm I worked on my first season had a pond. It was sooo nice to be able to swim in that cool body of water on the supremely sweat and sun soaked days. It would be wonderful for there to be a swimming spot on all farms. The farm I worked on my second season provided us with a yoga session once a week. One of our CSA members was a yoga instructor, and they would come to teach us. It was such a supportive thing to receive.
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....)
At both farms I’ve worked on, it was generally expected that we’d take lunch at the same time, though not necessarily together. It was unpaid. This past season, we’d cooked lunch once a week as well. It was always so lovely, a moment for slowing down and spending some time really together.
