TL;DR

Today we harvested kale, daikon radishes, and leeks. I checked and baited the electric fence as well. We also moved hen coops, cleaned some onions, and packed the van for CSA pickup.

I also had some time to reflect on my experience volunteering on farms last year in comparison to working at the farm full-time this year.

From Last Year to This Year

Last year I found ways to volunteer on three different local farms throughout the week: Marshview in Ipswitch, Moraine Farm in Beverly, and Cedar Rock Farm in Gloucester. Each were very different in their approaches to farming, their type of land and space, their business models, and their primary operators. I was on a mission to find which farm I was most compatible with and it turned out that this was Marshview.

This year, I’ve been working 4 days a week on the farm since late March, reserving one day a week for tech-related commitments that I still have going on. Every day is hard work, often with a lot of physical labor and requiring a lot of mental focus. So, for thirty one weeks and two days (129 days, over 1000 hours of experiences), through snow and hail, drowning rains and searing heat, I’ve done that hard work. On days where my body is trashed from the last day but I still have commitments to the team to show up, I’ve been able to do it because I know that I’m contributing to the success of the farm and also learning how to do harder and harder things.

I now know how to do a lot of things on this farm, but I still have a lot to learn. I’ve spent most of this year anticipating and exercising prediction of what Jamie will say are the projects and the next steps in the farm’s operations. I’m often wrong, but mostly due to things I wasn’t privy to or stuff that happened elsewhere. I now prioritize activity based on our commitments for the week (i.e. fulfilling the CSA distributions and deliveries), weather conditions which change frequently, available resources and team morale, optimal plant and crop timings, and other miscellaneous administrative preferences expressed at one time or another.

No one knows everything, so we look to those who are more experienced to guide us. The person who logs more hours is who I ask for direction…that’s how it tends to work best. But I know what I know because whether I’ve felt up to it or not, I’ve driven my own learning and growth intentionally every day, hundreds of mornings and afternoons. I’ve also learned a lot from the team, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this crew.

On Volunteering and Team Dynamics

While many farms accept volunteering labor, often as educational opportunities for community members, corporate team building or otherwise agro-tourism expeditions, or even simply for people to gain experience around farming work, some farms chose to rely solely on team members chosen carefully and with pre-existing skills and experience. It’s hard enough to find people who are good and willing to work for close-to minimum wage, so declining volunteer labor is a tough decision to make.

Volunteering on a farm can be…tricky. From the perspective of the volunteer, it’s free labor so no one can really complain unless there’s a very solid reason to. From the crew perspective, an extra pair of hands can be a big help, especially when the farm crew is small or short-handed. Hands aren’t the only thing volunteers bring either…ideas, perspectives, and energy. These can be good or not so good, useful or not so useful, depending on the team and work to be done.

The thing is that there’s a disparity between the expectations of volunteers and paid farm workers. Volunteers get to tap out when they feel like it, show up or not, do the work correctly or not…it’s not the same with paid farm workers. Volunteers require patience and understanding from the rest of the crew which can seem like a burden as much as a help some days, but it’s important for everyone (operators, crew, volunteers) to be respectful and considerate with each other.

Case in point: when I first volunteered at Cedar Rock last year, I knew absolutely nothing about farming. I was also fresh off of a long career path in tech and very curious about everything, asking questions and learning as much as I could. But this can be both a positive and a negative energy, now understanding more about what a farm crew does and the challenges they face. Having your own mental and cognitive space is really important to farm work, since there’s so many things to do that you have to have a clear head for constant prioritization as well as doing the task at hand correctly. Constantly talking and asking questions can be overwhelming for others on the team, so it’s important to be sensitive to both the way in which others are working and how the rest of the team is doing that day.

In general, most farming folks aren’t intentionally exclusionary, but there’s a sort of aversion to input by non-farming folks and equally an earned trust of farming folks who also have a deep understanding of the work and the challenges. This makes sense the more you work in and around farming. Some farm crews can seem downright rude or dismissive of folks new to farming, but each person has different reasons for this kind of behavior. It could just be a bad day for them, they could have other personal issues going on, they don’t know how to express concerns to the farm operator about volunteers, or (in the current climate) something worse like fear of getting deported or loss of SNAP benefits could be contributing to their prickliness. You never know, but it’s important to be patient and understanding with everyone, even if they don’t reciprocate.

A Place for Spicy Peppers and People Too

As I walked through the hot peppers to go get the tractor this morning, I reflected on how the habaneros faired this year. I loved them last year when I was just thinking of them as an ingredient, but after caring for them all the way through from seedling to last harvest, I realized that the effort is higher than the value of the output for me personally. They rot faster than other hot peppers, their so potent that often I can’t eat even a whole one in one meal, they’re not very resilient to the cold…and for some reason, the deer or turkey love to eat their leaves (while not eating any other variety).

This is not to say we shouldn’t have them on the farm…in fact, they’re a great addition to the farm’s diversity and what goes in to the CSA member’s shares each week. But they need to be managed and dosed out carefully, otherwise too much of a thing can be overwhelming. Same with volunteers. They usually tire quickly, bring extreme flavor, and don’t show up when weather conditions are forecasted to be unfavorable. But they are an interesting addition to what’s in the farm bag and so are the habaneros.

AI Summary from Field Notes

Aside from confusion about logistics like ‘moving wine racks’ and ‘equipment like a gator’, today my summarization process got most of the details right as usual. Convolutions are often an outcome of bouncing around a bit in my voice notes, remembering later on that there was some detail I forgot to mention about a prior discussion point, and I’ve seen this before in prior summaries.

While I’m sure this is one of the things I’ll have time to improve once I’m on winter break from the farm, in my cosy homelab on a computer again most of the waking day, it’s not something I can do between evening hours. For today, the following stands as good enough of a summary.

Summary