Even Star Organic farm in Lexington Park, Maryland was the first farm I worked on and I would go back there any time. If I had community down there, I would be there now. 

Brett Grohsgal is the owner/manager there and he and I are still very close. I feel so spoiled that my first farm experience got to be working for someone who was so fair and such a good communicator. 

Fair is my biggest word for him in that space. When I first started working there I don’t remember what minimum wage was (2012) - he was like “I’m starting you at this rate, and when I see you’re starting to get the hang of things, I’m going to raise your hourly rate”. I was always getting little raises, 50 cent an hour raises. I never once had to ask for one. He would see what I was doing and give me a raise...with a degree of regularity that I never even thought about it. 

It was just fair. 

It helped me feel seen and valued in my growth and want to do better, not because I’m money motivated, but because I’m a praise motivated person. I like to be useful. I just wanted to be more and more useful - it was a great incentive. I don’t mind high expectations. What I can't handle are high expectations without good communication with what those expectations are. 

Brett had really high expectations, I've never worked for a farm with cleaner produce. I’ve worked for farms sending shitty looking tomatoes, holey kale -- but Brett’s standards were so high, and he was so clear about it. He would say, ‘Okay, this is the first time you're doing this. This person is going to check your bucket every 10 feet”. What that set up is that instead of feeling micromanaged by my coworkers, he was clear: this person is going to help you figure it out. She’s going to monitor you so you learn to monitor yourself. And then you get good, and you meet those expectations. Expectations of cleanliness, quality, showing up on time...expectations that you’re never standing around doing nothing - there is always something to be done. 

I've gone to work for other farmers where people sit around doing nothing and shooting the shit and I feel like they are literally wasting my time. 

That’s because Brett made me this way. He made me into the productivity monster that I am. 

If ever I was sick, he would check on me. He took care of us, he cooked us lunch every day - eggs, beans and rice was the foundation, plus other stuff. He used to cook the eggs in pig lard and he would make me eggs separately in chicken fat because he knows I'm Jewish and I don't eat pork. Every day he would make me separate eggs without me ever saying a word. Amazing. And it was the most productive farm.

People think if you want to have a productive farm you have to be skimping on your care for your crew, but the way you have high standards and good quality produce and all of this is by caring about your people. 

Fairness, caring, clear communication - cultivating a safe culture of question asking. 

I’m not dumb, I’m a smart woman, but with little details, sometimes I’ll forget them or I’ll know them and second guess myself. When I worked for Brett, I would ask him over and over again the same questions. “Is it this bed of kale or that bed of kale?” He would always be like “Thank you for asking” and answer my questions. Then I went to work on other farms and I would ask questions and supervisors would get mad at me. If it’s not a safe space for question asking then you get mistakes. When I supervised apprentices, I made sure they knew they could ask me a million questions and I over-explain everything. Questions show that you are thinking critically and you care about doing it right.

Brett didn’t bat an eye and now I think about the dirty looks I would get for asking questions at other farms. 

After work, I also got to learn all this stuff.- mushroom cultivation, slaughtering chickens (we would cull our laying flock for personal consumption). He was just really fair about teaching. 

He’s a soil scientist and he runs a winter csa. I spent my first bunch of seasons working for him and I didn’t realize most farms weren't four season farms. When we were working in the freezing cold, he would bring us ginger tea to warm us up. Just like the little things.

He does 70% of his own genetics. Everything there is special. He supported me when I was trying to do a perennial project at campus, he let me dig up stuff after hours. 

At Even Star, there weren’t apprentices - it was just people who were working for their job and it was a wildly diverse crew of people. There was this woman who had two kids when she was a teenager and face tattoos and went home and bought her kids Burger King even though she worked on an organic farm, and then college students like me, and this couple in their 40s who both worked there and were music teachers on the side. I was 18 at a liberal arts college, the farm wasn’t associated with the college at all. Instead of having this isolating liberal arts education, I was thrust into this other situation where I had a lot more diverse interactions, which I haven't seen at a lot of farms, so it’s interesting.