Rock & Roll Farm

Sunday! Mar 19 2006 // 2:34 pm //

Choosing an experience

This past week I had phone interviews with my top three choices of farms for this summer. They could not be more different from each other and I’m having a hard time deciding which would be the most beneficial to my training. The interviews went very well with all three, and I’m confident that in each case I’d be a good match with the personalities in charge. But that is where the similarities end.

Geographically speaking, they are spread across the US. The farm in Wisconsin would be quite similar to where I was the past two years. Maine seems like it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch as far as climate but I think the area would be a little mountainous. Fairbanks, Alaska is exotic when compared to my previous farming experience and the two other farms under consideration. According to Explore Fairbanks, the sun is up for around 20 hours a day in July. I’ve seen some photos of vegetables grown with that much light input, and they get big. Really, really big.

The living situations are drastically different - yet when compared to the experience of most Americans the differences seem negligible. Communal living is so outside the realm of acceptability for almost every person I talk to about it. I happen to like it and I think it’s because of this affinity that I see striking differences where others may not. At one farm I’d live in a massive, ancient farm house, where I’d have my own bedroom but share a bathroom with one or two other people. We’d eat most meals together and share cooking/cleaning responsibilities. At another farm I’d be sleeping in a tent, and sharing common living spaces with other people on the land. As it was explained to me, “you’d be sleeping in a tent, but there’s more than enough living space in the buildings.” I find this distinction interesting and endearing. At the third I’d have my own sleeping space, possibly in a platformed, canvas-walled tent, and share a kitchen with another intern. I’d have a hard time deciding which of these is most appealing. None present any major problems for me.

Socially speaking, they also represent drastically different areas on the spectrum of farmers. One is a nice-sized CSA, run by a couple who support themselves entirely with the farming operation. They like farming, they are seeking to train new farmers, and seemed like they’d be a good couple for me to learn a lot from. The second is a collective, in the building stage (what collective isn’t?), that grows food expressly for their own consumption. They do a lot preserving and share food with their neighbors. They run a community gardening program in a nearby city and I’d spend a lot of time there with community members. The third is a CSA farm that also runs an ecology center and a small gardening/CSA program at a local alternative high school. Part of the work would be at the farm, and part at the garden working with students in an after school program. The social environment here seems the most “formal” or “professional.” but subtly so.

In terms of learning experience, it’s hard for me to say which would teach me the most about farming. And I’m not even certain that’s what I’m setting out to learn at this point. All three represent a blend of different skills I’m interested in learning, and have nearly balanced positive points when compared to each other. The experience I’d have specific to learning style would be as strikingly different as the operations themselves. In the case of the collective, I think there would be a lot of room for experimentation (in terms of gardening technique) without a great deal of supervision. This is not to say that there wouldn’t be supervision - but it seems like the most “anything goes” of the three. This seems like an opportunity to learn more about communal living and functional collectives. At the CSA farm I’d be working alongside the farmers in a very production oriented environment, and would perhaps learn the most about the mechanics of a farm that size - equipment, variety selection, soil preparation, etc. The farm and ecology center would be a risk/support relationship that would allow for experiment while being supported in a semi-formal or organized way by the other farmers.

This latter example is the most attractive to me because of this risk/support environment. I feel that it suits my current skills well, and would expose me to the right set of problem solving situations and information resources, providing a rich and effective learning experience. This is not to say that the other two wouldn’t bring me to a new level of skill or knowledge, and I am hesitant to say that this analysis is final.

Sometime in the next few days I should know where I’ll be farming and living and I’ll write a follow-up to this post outlining the specifics of my new home and place of employment.