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College Grads Flock to Farms
Maine's organic growers attract more than 200 applicants to work and learn this season.
ALFRED - Just three days into her summer apprenticeship at Wolf Pine Farm, Elizabeth Hartsig, 27, appeared to be adjusting quickly to her first experience as an organic farmhand, despite a sunburn.
Robin Wiesner, a Brown University graduate, cools off in the spray from a sprinkler as she walks with Luke Donahue at Wolf Pine Farm in Alfred on Wednesday. Since starting her apprenticeship at the farm April 1, she says she has found working and living there intensely satisfying. (Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer) Hartsig, who grew up in the Chicago suburbs and has a master's degree in creative writing from Washington University in St. Louis, eagerly demonstrated what to do about the cutworms that have been showing up in the Swiss chard.
"You pick them up and rip them in half," she said.
Pest management is just one of the lessons Hartsig has learned since leaving a teaching job in Atlanta to spend the summer at the 50-acre farm owned by Amy Sprague and her husband, Tom Harms.
Hartsig must work the fields, tend to 80 chickens and help with the couple's 5-year-old and 3-year-old daughters.
Water must be hand-pumped and warmed via a solar panel, and wood for the stove must be split and stacked.
In exchange, Hartsig gets to live rent-free in an off-the-grid cabin with the other two apprentices. She gets four free meals a week, all of the farm's vegetables she can eat, a week's vacation and $700 a month.
Hartsig said she couldn't be happier.
"It is an incredibly beautiful place. I am very pleased to be here," she said.
Hartsig is one of hundreds of people spending the growing season at one of Maine's organic farms.
The Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, which links apprentices with farmers, has been flooded with applications, which normally run about 70 a year. This year, 230 people applied for positions at the 85 farms that participate.
Organic farmers around southern Maine said they have seen a big increase in inquiries about farming positions this year, including people who travel the world, stopping off to work for a couple of weeks through the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms network, known as WWOOF.
Rachel Seemar, co-owner with Bethanny Peters of the Wildroot Farm in Kennebunk, said this year's apprentice heard about their horse-powered farm by word of mouth while hiking around Puerto Rico last winter.
Now she is happily residing in the apprentice's quarters - a tent on a raised platform - and learning how to drive workhorses for a $300 monthly stipend.
How much the recession and dreary job market play into the surge of interest is unclear. But for Andrew Marshall, educational programs coordinator at the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, the increase in apprenticeship applications reflects an explosion of interest in locally grown food and sustainable agriculture.
The fact that Maine's organic farming association is one of the country's oldest and one of only a few with an organized and staffed apprentice program might be responsible as well.
The apprentices tend to be educated, single adults in their 20s or 30s who have read all of the requisite books, such as Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" or Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle," but have little or no hands-on knowledge of food production.
"Frankly, most of the people who are interested don't have much experience with agriculture or even rural living," Marshall said.
Joey Listro, 22, is just a few college credits shy of graduating from the University of Southern Maine. He said his parents back in Connecticut were surprised when he announced his plan to spend his summer working at Rippling Waters Organic Farm in Standish.
"My parents were like, 'Wait a second, you are going to be a farmer? What were those four years of college education for?' " he said.
Organic farmers who take on apprentices rely heavily on them as a source of labor, and also take their responsibilities as teachers seriously.
Seth Kroeck of Crystal Spring Community Farm in Brunswick hands out notebooks with readings on agriculture to the four apprentices he takes on each year to help raise 125 lambs and 11 acres of vegetables for 225 customers who have bought shares of the harvest.
The apprentices have the choice of an apartment with all the amenities or a 1963 camper for their living quarters. They earn $800 a month and a small meal stipend.
"We pay at the top of the scale, but we are very selective," Kroeck said.
This year, the Crystal Spring group includes students or recent graduates from Brown University, St. Lawrence University, the University of New Hampshire and Prescott College.
Kroeck said that with all of that education, the level of discussion is high, which is important to him.
"Because we spend 60 hours a week together," he said.
Sprague, who got her own start in farming as an apprentice, said she has never had any of her helpers drop out, despite the long hours and hard work.
Robin Wiesner, 33, is a Brown graduate who majored in geology. She started her apprenticeship at Wolf Pine Farm on April 1 and said she quickly discovered why people don't leave.
The farm life is intensely satisfying, she said.
Although this is her first experience living outside a city, Wiesner said she relishes the dark and quiet at night. And she discovered that she had a real talent behind the wheel of a tractor.
"I'm in love with this place and this family," she said.
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30 Comments so far
Show AllMaybe this will catch on world wide. This kind of thinking is what the U.S. should be exporting!
Yes, that is absolutely right!
Good news and a good attitude, for a change.
In view of the limited opportunities for grads in the current economy, working on a farm sounds like a better choice than joining the military or flipping burgers.
Having grown up on a farm where all of our food was grown, and learning from the age of two to be a productive part of it all, I've often thought how good it would be for all kids to spend at least a year the way I spent my whole childhood.
Hard to implement, but a great, great idea. It would be formative for city kids. There is no room here to enumerate how it would change perceptions of time, space, development, color, materials, quiet and noise. It would be a different pace and a different understanding of our relationship to food and nature.
Joe
NYC was shutting down gardens people were farming in vacant lots.
The farm can be anywhere these days.
an uplifting story...how to achieve this without owning property...or depleting resources beyond need...funny what constitutes true education...not school...touch the maternal world...embrace the holy ground...lay on your back and feel the glorious, precious sun warm you...dive and soar into and out of, and splash and swim and fly around in the sky-spirit-sea between the stars...then return to the earth, and look around...let us stop destroying and start rebuilding...let us learn to want to live with less, to take only what we need from this world, which it is perfectly capable of providing, and leave the rest of the myriad plants and animals to flourish or no as they will, naturally...let us prepare now for the big change we must make in a couple of years...personal ability to secure water, food and shelter are paramount to liberty of thought and movement...
let's get those gardens growing! the problem we're facing isnt' a dying economy, it's a dying planet due to our economy...so much the result of our current thinking, or lack thereof...complete changes in education, religion, social structure...cessation of electrical, chemical and industrial activity...you get the idea...
GLobal Start Date: September 22, 2012...if the world's governments won't make changes, perhaps the world's citizens can...
We have WWOOFers every spring/summer/fall. Most of the people are students, or young people with typically very little experience, not only with farming, but also lack knowledge regarding even basic construction, or mechanical skills. Our current educational system is really deficient in providing people with real world learning. Hard to understand why someone would not know what a rake is, or how to hammer a nail, much less understand how the solar panels supply power. Most of the Woofers are enthusiastic and learn fast, but frequently they only are able to stay a few weeks, or months at a time. If we don't teach children how to grow food, or manufacture useful products, how will they ever survive? Maybe they should start teaching Chinese as a mandatory course.
What do you expect - they only have masters degrees.
For some professions such as agriculture, geology, and maybe even writing, getting into farming as a living might be more likely but for most professions, the best most will do is grow a small veggie garden or pay up at a local farmer's market. Then there's the issue of sustainability and warding off the agri-business interests.
Another thing not mentioned is that most of the population resides in the suburbs and urban areas where it is more difficult to sustain organic farming. And if you live in an apartment, forget about growing your own garden or even experimenting with solar panels and wind turbines. The ongoing housing crisis and unemployment rising rates are putting more people into apartments more than houses.
I'm afraid we have a long ways to go before organic farming is here to stay. Good luck though.
your comments on housing are dead on...without a revelation in the way we define, construct, and allocate housing, we will find it very difficult to break many, if any, of our current habits...
FYI, there are guides and online articles on growing your own urban veggie gardens which work even in the most crowded cities. If there are friends of yours who live in apartments and want to grow even a miniature garden but are not sure where to start, do a google search on urban farming and pass them the information. It all adds up and we can eventually cut down on bad groceries and send the supermarkets a strong message.
"I'd say farming might be a good employment option. It probably beats her other options of McDonalds and Walmart."
The more people farm, the better quality foods they produce and the more they can help punch a hole in MCD and WM's obscene profits. Plus, good food results in better minds and more socializing in sharp contrast to our corn-fed anti-social populace.
Cities are the most efficient places for large numbers of people to live and work (mass transit instead of single-occupant cars, housing density arranged vertically instead of horizontally, etc.), while so-called "green belts" surrounding the cities would be for organic farms, recreation etc.
Cul-de-sac suburbs are symbolic of the capitalist consumer culture that's helping kill the planet, their potential for backyard gardening notwithstanding. This is also true of the trend toward "industrial parks," with their hour-long commutes each way.
We can farm anywhere, if we put our minds to it. Suburbs, particularly cul-de-sacs are perfect opportunities. All they have to do is get rid of their burdensome CCR's. Imagine the poor gal, a few months back, who tried to do her part to save the earth by hanging her laundry out to dry. The neighbors had a fit! "Can you imagine," said one, "coming home to whole bunch of clotheslines?"
I can. It's a sign of life, and a good one. I had the personal privilege of washing my clothes and hanging them out to dry from a 17th floor apartment in Shanghai. How can we teach basic living if we don't provide opportunities for it. How much richer our lives would be if the kids in the cul-de-sacs were growing vegetables on the spaces now occupied by worthless, earth destroying lawns, chemically supported and water demanding. Isn't that a better, healthier opportunity for teaching children to value and preserve life, to become productive parts of a larger community than having them sit on their butts, playing hideously violent video games?
Re ontheres June 5th, 2009 2:07 pm
Agreed about lawns---what an energy sink (in addition to chemicals and water, how about the weekly mowing, edging, leaf-blowing and weed-whacking, with all that gas-guzzling, monoxide-spewing, oil-leaking machinery?)
But suburbs in general are a bad idea whose time has passed. The more impervious surfaces we produce, including roads, driveways, tennis courts, pool decks etc. as well as the houses themselves, the greater the runoff and the lower the groundwater recharge rate. Suburban housing is also energy-inefficient in terms of lighting and HVAC.
Dear Jethro,
Appreciate your reply to my post and agree with you in principal. However, we have the burbs and the cul-de-sacs, and we're not going to be able to mow them down. So, how can we make them better? Every little bit helps, right? Would also like to see the proliferation of little "Tiendas," or neighborhood stores like those in Latin America. Out of some basic foodstuff or supplies? Just walk a few doors down and buy it. Save driving miles to the nearest supermarket, stay home, talk to your neighbors. We need to re-cultivate village life and we need to start with what we've got. Talk to each other about what best to stock the Tienda with. I loved it in Central America when I could just walk two doors down and buy an egg (that's one) or 1 roll TP, or a cup of sugar. I didn't have to shop nearly as much and spent a whole lot less, too.
Elizabeth Hartsig, I love you for what you've done and shall pass this on to my wife. Perhaps she can turn her life of being a house wife into being an organic gardener just like you. Plus, I have a crush on female farmers. :)
Better yet, as the unemployment numbers keep going up, we all can each grow our own organic gardens and they don't have to be big. Just think. The more people grow their veggie gardens and engage in sharing each others' hard work with their neighbors, the more social we can be.
"Seth Kroeck of Crystal Spring Community Farm in Brunswick hands out notebooks with readings on agriculture to the four apprentices he takes on each year to help raise 125 lambs and 11 acres of vegetables for 225 customers who have bought shares of the harvest."
The syllabus should include information on Terra Preta do Indio to sequester carbon in the soil for 50,000 years, improve soil fertility, and reduce Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere, as well as material on EM (Effective Microorganisms).
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/research/terra%20preta/terrapretamain.html
http://emrojapan.com/
I liked to see the journalist follow these interns throughout their tenure on these farms. 3 days in isn't a very good feel. Interesting to know how many "return" applications come into play each year. I mean, teaching somebody how to run a team of horse seems like a something you'd hope to retain...then again, once someone knows the ins and outs of the operation, it might be hard to get a laborer for $300-$800/mo, plus food.
Seeing how the min wage in ME is $7.25/hr, the applicant better be certain the learning experience pays for itself with concrete applied skills that encompass the entire operation, including farm management.
Indeed, the young recruit may be better served if they secure their farming internship with a collegiate contract via your college or university. Not only could you still secure a monetary stipend, but you could also earn college credit in applied sciences and there would be oversight by the faculty to ensure the intern is best looked after.
However, for those other 200+ applicants who want to experience farm labor and aren't interested in pursuing the academic/worker training format an Ag Dept at a school like CowPoly might offer, there's often a shortage of laborers in CA. Pay is around $9-11/hr in Central CA (if you can stand the heat).
YOur kind of thinking is part of the problem. Why should monetary compensation be the top-most priority? If they are also learning some valuable practical skills which are sorely missing in recent generation, then they are getting something even more valuable- the path toward self-sufficiency. I'm not talking living alone in the woods providing your own food and shelter; I'm talking doing things for yourself and others in the "reciprocal-services economy" and not the "buy-your-every-solution-from-us dependence economy."
Cynicism stinks! It only confuses people, obscures the problem, and denigrates those its aimed at.
"denigrates those its aimed at".... "your kind of thinking is... problem..." "...cynicism stinks..."
You assume far too much. and are guilty of the very charges you attempt to level against me.
Fair and equal exchange.
What I'm talking about is fair and equal exchange and if the student intern is incapable of securing a guarantee, then they may wish to go somewhere else. Such as an Ag School where they can put together a collegiate independent contract where you'll secure both academic credits in applied sciences and time in the field.
Monetary compensation is but one level of the total picture in measuring if the intern is getting an equal exchange for the time they invested. College credit, applicable skills, such as experience at general management, are other points I made. And for those not interested in a future in farming and just want experience on a farm for a summer, they can always find work in CA and make enough to survive.
I offered specific examples whereas you offered pointed cliches and stereotyping.
What a wonderful thing this is! This is how life could be for all of us. Ontheres, I agree with your philosophy 100%. Life must change. Our economy, environment, government....everything, is on the brink of failure. A new plan is needed.
I have taken a big step in this direction. I cashed in my IRA's, which didn't amount to much, and retired from my job....which means the loss of health care, life insurance, and $$$ (basically amounting to early retirement), and have decided to build a small apartment connected to my daughters house. We are planning on getting involved in the local community farm and are planning a vegetable garden, fruit trees, some sort of crop (small field), and have goats and chickens. As my user name indicates, I am of the belief that the Sacred Feminine--Mother of All--is a paradigm shift that is occurring right now. We must return to the earth and take up our true position once again as part of the whole of nature. We can do this one by one. Quietly leave the system. Start your own other world.
This is the model for America's non-electric, pre-book, pre-medical care "Debt Bondage" in a 12th Century feudalism. Americans will love it. They will work from before sun up till after dark, get four free meals a week + vegetables (they will be GM vegetables under the new regime) and $700/mo for which Master will do the accounting - and there will be chargebacks against that money so that the "Debt Slave" will owe Master money at they end of the month, every month. That's where the "Permanent" word comes in. And of course if the "Debt Slaves" reproduce well, just more free labor for Master...but they'll be goooood Masters and won't fuck the females to death...hell if Master takes a fancy to the females like Tommy Jefferson did with Sally Hemmings, he may dress their children in slave livery and let them serve Master's "Free" family their meals in the "Big House", but of course the "Debt Slaves" will sleep in a raw wood shack and pump water by hand and they'll be allowed to make their own candles on their "Free Time" on Sunday - because Master is a Xrstian...
BUT, what to do with all the slaves during the winter after the harvests are in...hmmmmnnnn vexing question in a Slave Republic...
Forty acres and a mule (or two or three) should be the birthright of every American.
I've tried it. It's a hard life, but as somebody else said, deeply satisfying, and it's not as hard as what most of you are doing now.
The tractor was the beginning of the end of the family farm.
I love this notion of scholarly subsistence farmers, and by subsistence I don't mean poor. People used to live well and worked no more than half the days in the year.
I would bet that if you tried it you would never go back to the sixty hour work week. Pretty soon you would even forget about all those expensive toys you sold your soul for.
Sometime when you are not exhausted read Piers Ploughman, Thoreau, Robert Burns.
Slowly you will realize what a poor bargain you made when you agreed to make your employer rich.
I used to feel sorry for those old dirt farmers because they were ignorant, easy prey for salesmen who sold them things they did not need and could not afford.
They were easy prey for politicians who encouraged their backward notions of racial superiority.
I don't want to go back to that. Education is an indispensable part of a return to the land.
Yes, education is indispensable to farming. As it is to everything else we do. Making lots of money eats your life, leaves you empty with lots of toys you do not need.
No, we are not killing the planet. Gaia will survive. It is just the planet's ability to keep US alive that we are killing. There is a huge difference there.
Slave Republic? Do you work in a cubicle? Hello?
By all means, we should dig up all lawns and turn them into vegetable plots. It happened during the Depression ... the last one, that is, not this one. This time, I think too many people are too afraid. In fact, too many people are more afraid of their neighbors' censure than they are of their children going hungry.
Give them veggies and they will eat for a day. Teach them to grow the veggies and you make them free. A free society is a dangerous place, because people actually have time to think.
MichaelC
Your thoughts are precious, your mind invaluable [under-enriched] space.
Guard them with Life
Surround them with Life,
Your thoughts are precious commodities [in market speak].
Michael C....you are absolutely right!!! Read the book: "The Story of B" which attests to how corporate farms have locked up the food.