I started farming after high school, so 2002. I worked on a farm close to where my parents lived and I was living at home. 

I worked a summer farm job for a couple years - I've been basically farming ever since. After college I worked on small farms in New Zealand for 7 months.  When I came back, I got a job at a farm in Massachusetts, a very large CSA farm, at the time I think they were at 1000 members and then cranked up to 1500 and now may have 2000. They send most of their farm shares to Boston. I was there for 3 years as their farm chef/food educator. The food educator piece was nice because I would go to the csa distributions and farmers’ markets and talk about how to prepare different vegetables, so there was some good engagement. The farm provided two lunches and one dinner to the whole crew each week so I cooked those, and then had some small projects on the sides that I would do.

Pretty much from there I went to my current farm, though we were in Georgia for a year and a half and I worked on a farm down there, but then returned to my current farm. 

When I started out the crew was maybe four people in addition to the owners, so pretty small, so every person wore a couple of hats. I was in charge of bagging salad greens and filling orders for that and also doing all the greenhouse work. That didn’t leave a lot of time for anything else. The joke was that by Thursday afternoon rolled around, I might go out in the field for a few hours. In doing flowers I’m in the field a lot more because I’m harvesting flowers a lot of the time. I have been in charge of overseeing flower field work projects and maintenance. 

I would not have said I was skilled at bouquet making but doing it over and over enough times you figure out certain tricks. I work with a couple of floral designers on the flower team. I’ve learned a lot from them about what is attractive florally. When I started I was more about speed and production and making what you can with what you have.

My attitude around farming has changed a lot. My youth of ‘we must work as efficiently as possible, no slacking off’ task master has passed and my attitude now is that I want everyone comfortable in the work that they do. If you're working particularly slow, I might ask if you’re feeling okay. 

We give a lot to this work and thankfully I feel well compensated on an hourly rate, but there are no benefits. I am giving this farm my best working years and at the end of it I have whatever little bit I have saved on my own. I don't feel like I owe them more than what I am comfortable to give. I wouldn’t ask anymore of anybody else at the farm. Whatever someone is comfortable to give changes based on their age and bodily health but if you're feeling crummy someday and you're not up for a task, where I work, we have enough autonomy, we can, as the farmworkers, decide who is going to do what task based on what people’s bodies feel like - hoeing vs. standing in one place making bouquets. I want farming to be as sustainable for people’s bodies as possible. 

I say all this knowing so well that I’m in an extremely privileged position. There are not that many farms where someone can have as much control over what tasks they do.  I feel very grateful and fortunate but that is not the way it is for most people. 

This is why I keep coming back to this particular farm and why I think I could do it for years to come. I feel like the farm is understanding of our bodies’ limitations. If I were to become less capable, to a degree, I imagine the farm would accommodate what I could do. 

I had relatively easy pregnancies and worked through both of them. My first kid is just about 5 and he was born at the end of April.  I had a winter job somewhere else, but then worked a month and a half on the farm up til my due date and then was out for the rest of the season.

As a worker and a mother, I would be willing to make less money and scrimp and save a little more and not have to deal with the headache of juggling childcare and getting sick more often from daycare. It just seems like a tradeoff - do I want to work enough to make that little bit above child care expenses? It doesn’t make sense. For my first child, I was home with him for ten months before going back to work and we saved a lot of money on childcare. 

With my second child I was pregnant during the whole season and had her in September. In both cases, I don’t feel like it compromised my abilities particularly. Everyone was understanding if I had needed to take more accommodations. The farming was helping my pregnancies - being active makes it a lot easier. I felt a lot of support from my farm but didn’t feel like I needed to take advantage of some of the stuff they were offering. 

Before I had my first child, I talked to the farm about what it could look like if I wanted to come back during the season - bringing him to work - they were pretty opposed. Both farm owners had recently started families and a couple coworkers had babies that year and it’s possible if no one else had kids, they maybe would have tried to accommodate, but the attitude was like ‘if we let you do it then…’ so I didn’t try to push it. There was some accommodation made, they wanted us to work Saturdays and said ‘if you want to bring your kid on Saturday you can, just prorate your hours to reflect when you’re doing childcare.’ It made everything pretty complicated so I just kept it separate.