RUE POLICASTRO
MARYLAND
Rue has been farming for 5 years, and are in their 4th season at the same farm. They also plan and operate the farm’s winter CSA program, which successfully shepherded the farm into a four-season farm.
Rue is one of the co-authors of Not Our Farm’s worker zine: Guide to Working on Farms and toolkit: Farming into the Future by Centering Farmworkers.
WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY DOING? (WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING, ETC)
I work on a small diversified vegetable farm in Maryland. The farm is growing on about 4.5 acres currently and we are a four season farm, which is really exciting. Part of my journey as a worker has been assisting us into that transition of taking winters “off” to having winter be a time that farmworkers can continue to have access to work and the CSA gets to continue a bit. This is my second year planning and operating our winter CDA program. That is kind of what I'm in the midst of in a big way right now, in addition to all of the winter planning that goes into other areas of the farm that I manage. It’s a big dreaming time.
We don’t really use language like farm manager in an attempt to break down hierarchy among all of us. There is an interesting way that it is reflected among worker-owner culture. There is a real attempt to not refer to ourselves as managers of people, but more managers of areas of the farm and specific areas of exploration. For me, it’s irrigation and water systems, high tunnel management and winter production as a whole, and even though I take on a role that is a manager and mover of people, I don’t really identify as a farm manager, and that’s not the language we use to describe my role at the farm.
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN FARMING?
I’ve been farming about 5 years. I’m going into my 4th season at this particular farm. Before I worked here, I worked at a non-profit educational farm where I did some farm education work with them for a season. There was lots of volunteering and farm work there.
WHAT INITIALLY BROUGHT YOU TO THE FIELDS?
For most of my adult life, I have really struggled with both severe mental illness and chronic illness.
An inability to function in the world and take care of myself and just working desk jobs and restaurants too, I really felt disconnected from my own existence.
Having my hands in soil and being connected to the earth, it wasn't just grounding for me or a breath of fresh air, it was bringing me what’s tangible in a real way. It felt like I had a home and a space where I could be at whatever pace I needed to be.
There is a gentleness and an embrace of the natural world that was really life changing for me.
It really changed my functionality in the world and my ability to navigate space with ease and feel rooted in something that was a constant support. That is my relationship with nature. That drew me to farm spaces.
At first it wasn’t in an interest of production farming, it was more an interest in sharing that space with children and the community in a broader way. I had a year where I was still really struggling and throwing myself into digging in the dirt and realized that as much as I could keep my hands in the soil, the happier I would feel and the better I was going to be. I kind of found my way there out of a restaurant job with really grueling hours and into the first steps of a production farm life where I could see and feel both my identities, to be in community and wanting to grow food.
WHY HAVE YOU CHOSEN TO FARM FOR SOMEONE ELSE (NOW OR IN THE PAST?)
The amount of colonialism and entitlement to land that is wrapped up in the idea of starting your own farm business is not really appealing to me as a young person who is really excited about building a new world that serves all of us and navigating how to be in relationship deeply with people who don’t mimic the structure of family farms. For me that is one of the most important reasons that I farm for someone else right now. Sure maybe I have the skills and the ability to start my own thing and maybe I could take out loans to access land and I would have my farming family to help me do that, but being in relationship and partnership with people who aren’t my closest, most intertwined family, but are people I value and respect and want to support is such a benefit to all of us, to really lean in to that sort of collaboration versus the idea of the kind of independent enterprise being what we want to put our energy into.
I think of myself as having a lot of access to power and privilege in this world and for me thinking about what it looks like to not choose to become a boss, to own other people’s labor, to “own” stolen land, but instead to find collaborative ways to be in relationship, to value the work that people are already doing and the spaces that we already have that are doing what they can to create something better and different.
I think that my interest in deep collaboration really is what stops me from farming for myself. And within that, I think that I’ve been incredibly lucky. I know so many folks who don’t feel like farming for someone else is a partnership or is a process of feeling seen, and for me I have been so incredibly lucky to feel seen and feel valued and feel like my labor and my ideas are incredibly important and that makes me feel like there is space for my dreams. That is just the most valuable thing there is.
WHAT ARE SOME ISSUES FOR FARMERS WORKING ON SOMEONE ELSE'S FARM - ISSUES THAT YOU'VE WITNESSED OR EXPERIENCED?
I think that we’ve been saying on the farm that I work at lately that sometimes working with plants can be hard, but working with people can be harder. It’s said with affection. The biggest issues in my farm worker life and space have been issues with having to share power, how to feel seen, how to live your dreams while in the confines of the dream of someone else. How to ask for what we really need from a space and feel like there is the possibility of it being received. I think that the challenge for me in a space where there is deep collaboration and deep power sharing is kind of these ideas of breaking down hierarchy and being in a more fluid way of managing and operating a farm, and that bumping up against the financial and larger business reality that there is one owner. We aren’t a worker owned cooperative, we aren’t any more dynamic (on paper) than norms of other farm businesses around us, and feeling that disconnect in the way that I feel on the day to day and the way that is reflected in who owns the business, what can be asked of the business by whom, and who gets to be at home there, really.
One of the ways that this end of the day hierarchy dichotomy is here is in the winter season. Part of of my interest in starting this winter CSA, having worked 8 out of 12 months of the year making less than minimum wage, is not just to have a livelihood, but to survive under conditions this world places on us. During the winter when farm owners are working on the incredibly important crop plan, buying supplies to run business, this void is left for workers. We have to find another job. We have to find other sources of income. In Maryland and the region that I’m in, four season farming is not necessary. You can do it, but it’s not a given. I’m looking outside the window at snow right now. It’s a cold time to continue to grow food. It does take extra work, and I have heard again and again this kind of verbal memento: You can’t go hard four seasons of the year. You have to have a season to rest and recover and plan. I think that is true and also a luxury that as a farm worker I don’t get. I love the dreaming and the planning that happens in the winter, but that includes growing for me, because that is how I can support a livelihood in a farm that isn’t mine. And support job for other farm workers, too. There is a pressure around survival that farm workers hold that owners do not. How do we get through this season of scarcity, when the person supported by the business at the end of the day is often the owner and not the workers.
I have been working really hard on shifting my relationship to winter as a time of scarcity to something that holds a different kind of beauty and abundance, inspired by the resilience that comes out for winter growing. There is a lot of joy for me in that. The amount of planning work to run a farm enterprise that I have dug into in the past two years, the kind of holding the whole of winter production, both administratively and field work that has to happen has been really rooted in my need to continue having a connection to farm space and not to lose that for a quarter of the year. But also to yeah be able to make the money that I need to continue to pay my rent and buy groceries. We aren’t talking about anything extravagant to meet my basic expenses. I haven't been paid enough as a farm worker to save any money to get through the winter. It’s not an option to get another job to support myself through the winter. If I have to choose to work at the farm or somewhere where my identities or the whole of myself isn’t seen, then I choose the farm.
I feel a sense of luckiness around that that the farm owner has openness and has made so much space for me to create this dream of mine to make it a reality for myself and other workers in my space. It’s also a reckoning on my part that the amount of money I bring in from winter CSA is more than I’ll ever see from it in a year. It’s stark to see the value of your labor on a spreadsheet with a line item “winter CSA” and think ‘Oh, I don’t get paid that much.” There is something that really continues to sit with me about the disposition of the true value of my labor and what I get paid, which is the reality for both farmers and farm workers. There is a specific way as a farm worker, that kind of seeing what it is that you create not return to you. It can feel challenging. I again feel a sense of luckiness that is something that I have navigated with the farm owner around how do I ask for the compensation of a year round livelihood that I really need from the farm if what I’m doing is helping the farm operate year round. It is a life changing shift.
Last year when I piloted the CSA program, I spent more hours than you can track, seeding, planting, planning, but, I still only had 10 hours/week on paper paying myself minimum wage. It was an incredible amount of work for something that didn’t really support me. It gave me a connection to farm, but didn’t make space for me to have a livelihood. Without these sustainable points of how we can work with land and be seen as whole people who need to be supported, not 8 months out of the year, but 12 . Without that, there is this feeling of disposability, which is heartbreaking when you feel drawn to a space.
CAN YOU TELL ME THE QUALITIES OF A DREAM FARM NOT LEADING TO OWNERSHIP - THAT YOU WOULD WANT TO WORK ON?
I hope that when you ask people this question, they say that is where they already are.
For me, it is a space where there is interest and excitement and curiosity of myself and other farm workers. And not just those with the privilege of access to land and a business and structure of power. That there is space for the learning and excitement and contribution that all of us have that bring what is truly special to a farm. I think that for me the kind of complexity and intricacy and wovenness of so many different types of farm interests is what creates a really vibrant farm space. When there is space for that, there is space for a ton of joy and a ton of excitement. When there is not, we can feel really stifled by the spaces that we are in. I have really loved in the past few years, learning into a relationship with honeybees and doing some bee keeping. It is an increasingly beautiful part of my farm life and having access to land to put those bees on and excitement around the work that they do in our field, and the space for this winter CSA project and this dream for year round support for all of us has been really been what I would ask for. I think probably a second, near second, is just having these structures of communications again where we are seen as whole people and we can show up as authentic, vulnerable versions of ourselves to work through conflict and share in what is wonderful and beautiful, to be in silliness together and feel like our labor, our work, our growing doesn’t have to be alienated and separate from who we are, that it’s kind of tied together and our values around our interpersonal dynamics with each other makes that possible.
“I do want to say as a nonbinary queer farm person, I often feel a sense of anxiety around feeling fully seen in farm spaces, around if folks are going to use my name right or my pronouns and a worry that my full self can’t exist in the space and be taken seriously or seen as valuable. The farm spaces that have most felt like home for me are places that other trans and queer people gather and make home and exist in relationship with the land.”
WHAT KEEPS YOU COMING BACK?
I guess for me there is this way that I’m undeniably drawn to being in relation with land. It’s a healing practice for me and a coping through mental health and trauma and seeing the very tangible building of a new world. The very touchable and possible-to-smell kind of feeling of watching a flower from seed bloom and find its home in the earth and create seeds again. I think the way in which farm spaces are so woven together from little microbes in the dirt to the water that falls from the sky from the way to plants blooms. The way in which everything is kind of intertwined in ways that we don’t even understand is incredibly comforting to me. The kind of active change that is always happening on farms is I hope something I never lose my sense of awe or wonder around. For me, there is a constant reminder in there for me that we have everything that we need. There is something deeply personal and spiritual for me in seeing the way that nature reflects that to us and that farm spaces really are in a practice of constant reminder for us.
WHAT IS YOUR TAKE ON THE DIFFERENCE (IF ANY) BETWEEN A FARMER AND A "FARM WORKER"/"FARM EMPLOYEE" BESIDES PROPRIETORSHIP?
There is all sorts of messiness mixed in there. For me I feel a strong draw to identifying myself as a farm worker. And I think that a part of that comes from my sort of interest and reality in being someone who does the work, who has my hands in the dirt, who is growing the food. I think that in this world it is often workers who are the ones who are creating what we consume. There is kind of a feeling of solidarity with other folks who don’t get the community recognition or the end of year tax break, the interview on podcasts or newspaper articles, but are the ones who day after day show up to weed the fields and put the plants in the ground. I think there is something beautiful in that and at the same time, it’s true for me that at the same time maybe I would call myself a “landless farmer,” too. I’m still learning into so many of the skills that I think farmers who operate land and own businesses and take on multitude of roles that I envision of holding, all of the things that they do.
It’s devaluing to many farmworkers, year in year out, for farmworkers to not call ourselves farmers. I think that we know so much more than we are given credit for in this world. We are valuable. We are the ones growing the food and doing the work, and that’s just as much a farmer than someone who has access to land to me.
The added complexity is around when I say farmworker, I’m often using it in a community surrounded with folks who are also farmers who own a business. In the larger world, to friend or family member, when I say farm worker, what is conjured is something that is different.
As a farmer where I am, I’m incredibly privilege. I am not paid by bushel of apples that I pick. I hold so much more privilege and access to financial and tangible resources than what the farm worker picking the majority of America’s food have. I think that there is a way that using farm worker for myself feels disingenuous to the authenticity of that experience that is not mine. I’m thinking of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers here and others fighting for the right to fair labor conditions. In my mind those are farm workers and that reality is very different than mine.
I have some questions around how we use those words. Especially for me as a young white farm worker who speaks no Spanish.
DO YOU CALL YOURSELF A FARMER? WHY OR WHY NOT.
I think there is value in naming ourselves as farmers when we have spent the years of time and energy of mastery of growing food. I think not doing that is a way of devaluing our labor in the same way that the larger world does. I really want to see a space where farm workers who really help and support and are critical in running operations are being named as farmers and being seen by the community as that. I think that often I feel tentative and some anxiety around questions like, do I have enough experience, have I spent enough time learning to warrant myself putting myself in that category? To me, it’s not about having land or not. I’m not sure at the end of the day if I can call myself a farmer quite yet. I’m more oriented toward farm worker and solidarity with workers that is implied in that for me. I do see a real power in claiming the word farmer for ourselves. And not letting the lack of access to capital or land be a disqualifier from being seen as a grower.
WHAT KIND OF SUPPORT WOULD BE HELPFUL FOR PEOPLE WORKING ON FARMS NOT THEIR OWN?
I think that really hearing each other’s voices and input and having shared decision making power is just an incredibly powerful form of support. It makes people feel valued and that their ideas matter. That kind of fosters a sense of togetherness. This unity that, ‘This thing we create is all of ours.” There is emotional steadiness from having a farm space that creates that alongside you.
And again, if we truly value our farm workers as farmers, we also need to value that they have livelihoods to support, they have homes, they have families and they deserve just as much as anyone else to feel like they have what they need. We need kind of a sense of transparency around finances that allows everyone to feel clear on the farm’s larger reality, but also the kind of carved out space for how do we choose to move money to support people in their whole lives, not just frame paying farm workers as paying compensation for picking tomatoes, but as a form of valuing and supporting people with lives outside of the farm.
ANYTHING ELSE YOU'D LIKE TO SHARE ABOUT YOURSELF & YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH FARMING? WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT?
I do want to say as a nonbinary queer farm person, I often feel a sense of anxiety around feeling fully seen in farm spaces, around if folks are going to use my name right or my pronouns and a worry that my full self can’t exist in the space and be taken seriously or seen as valuable. The farm spaces that have most felt like home for me are places that other trans and queer people gather and make home and exist in relationship with the land.
I think we put each other at ease with having a space that is filled with enough gentleness and understanding around the nuance of our identities. We can be together in the experience of riding tractors with lipstick on and passing around the same kind of weird sweater in the farm truck. All of the silly wonderful, beautiful things that queer farms are is not really what the larger world probably thinks of as the serious act of growing food. This kind of creating a space for joy and us to exist in that way is really powerful for me and really important for me.
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....)
It’s definitely an incredibly important part of the day. It’s a core time of gathering and building community and kind of sitting in the silly joyfulness of who we are outside of the time that we are doing any particular task. For me, that time feels like a sigh of relief. We just worked really hard and now we are taking a break and joined in this time together. There is something really wonderful in there. On our farm, we do share food. Potlucks and the sharing of different and special creations around the food that we grew together feels very heart warming to me. In the past we have also had farm lunch. The farm owner cooks a meal, once a week, for all of us to share and I think that feels really special to be cooked for and to feel cared for in that way. There is kind of a way that food is not just this central thing to gather around, but that making food is an act of care. Even more so of potluck, it reminds me of family gathering over one shared pot and being together and the excitement of fresh food. I think the culture around caring for each other through food, not just that we grow, but what we eat, is really special.