Memories from VA

This post will be a blast from the past of sorts. This morning while on the computer I came across this report I wrote 3 years ago when I had just ended my time working on an organic vegetable farm in the mountains of Virginia. I had forgotten that I earned horticulture credit for Clemson that summer and that in order to finalize the credit I had to put together a presentation for a professor and Hort class at Clemson (during one crazy, blurry week in between returning from the farm and leaving for L'abri). It's a bit long, but I think it captures some of that excitement one has when you've come fresh off the farm in all your stained-tomato hand, strong-armed glory. If you're new to thinking about local food and small farms, maybe it'll be a bit educational too!

A Summer on a Farm in Virginia

Where I worked:

Last summer began what I see as a lifetime love of growing vegetables in a sustainable way. I worked on a 5-acre organic vegetable farm in Minnesota during the summer of 2005, and when I got back to Clemson in the fall, I immediately began looking for a farm to work on for the next summer. I couldn’t wait to get my hands dirty again and to be involved in the growing movement for locally and sustainably grown food. What I found was Waterpenny Farm in tiny Sperryville, VA. The farm is located sixty-five miles west of Washington, D.C., nestled in the Shenandoah mountains in a county famous for its rural community. The farm was started seven years ago by a young, energetic couple, Rachel and Eric, who were excited about growing healthy food for people in the surrounding area. The farm is about ten acres of vegetables, herbs, and flowers, and the farmers hire five interns each year for the duration of the growing season. I was the fifth intern to arrive, and as I turned my car down the long driveway on a dusky spring evening and took in the fields for the first time, I remember feeling so much excitement about being a part of Waterpenny Farm.

What did I do?...a LOT!

When I arrived at Waterpenny, it was mid-May, and there was a lot of planting yet to be done. The greenhouse was full of tiny plants, some more ready than others to stretch out their roots into the soil. Since the farm uses all organic growing methods and is relatively small, the work is very labor-intensive. The first several weeks I was there, the bulk of the work consisted of mulching, planting, and weeding. The farmers’ method for planting, after preparing a bed with the tractor, was to lay black plastic with a line a drip tape underneath for irrigation. Once this was done, mulching was the next task to complete. The farm bought large, 500 lb. hay bales from a nearby farmer for a discounted price, and the 5 interns, all strong women, proceeded to push these bales down the aisles in between rows for planting. The hay was often wet, moldy, dusty, prickly, and always heavy. The justification for this apparent torture (and I say apparent, because like any hard labor, once your muscles adjust and your mental side accepts the work at hand, it is quite bearable) was weed control. Waterpenny farm is surrounded by a river and the land is called “bottomland,” meaning it is low-lying and the soil is very nutrient-rich. It also means weeds thrive there, and mulching is one of the major methods of organic weed control. The benefits of mulching include the suppression of weeds, protection of soil, containing moisture in the soil, and less disease spread since rain doesn’t hit the soil straight on. Once a field was mulched, planting was done in the cool of the evening into holes in the plastic filled with a bit of a fishy-smelling liquid containing trace minerals. Weeding was also a constant presence on our list of things to do, though using black plastic and mulch eliminating much of the weeding.

Each morning, beginning around 7:30, the crew of interns met with Eric on the picnic table in between the two houses. There he would give us the morning’s duties and usually say something rather unrelated and hilarious. His sense of humor was quite necessary at times to face the hard work with a positive attitude. Once the summer really came with its long days and hot temperatures, the little plants we’d placed so lovingly and hopefully in the ground burst forth and began requiring a lot of work from us to harvest the fruits they produced. By the end of my time at Waterpenny, the schedule included harvesting on every day of the week. Some vegetables, like summer squash, required picking every day, but others, like tomatoes and peppers, were a twice a week event. Our mid-summer hours were 7:30-12 and 2:30-7, with weekends sometimes going longer.

The Marketing

The vegetables we grew were sold at 3 farmer’s markets and through a CSA program, where shareholders pay at the beginning of the season to receive a box of fresh produce each week. CSAs, and there are a few thousand in the US now, help create a relationship between farmers and their customers, they provide people with incredibly fresh food that has traveled only a short distance to them, and they give people an understanding of eating seasonally. The CSA at Waterpenny Farm generates about $50,000 during the winter and spring months, which is helpful to cover start up costs like seeds. The work involved in the CSA for the interns included harvesting the vegetables, packing the boxes, and contributing to the bi-weekly newsletter. There are 2 Saturday markets, one in Warrenton and the other in Charlottesville, where Waterpenny sells plants in the spring and produce in the summer and fall. The Sunday morning market in Takoma Park, MD, near DC, is the most profitable market, with a good day generating over $4000 in only 4 hours. I had off on Sundays, so I usually went to the Warrenton farmer’s market by myself. This was a big responsibility as it required waking up before 5 am, setting up the stand in the dim hours of the morning, and continually making change and making the display beautiful during market. To provide local people with access to the farm’s vegetables, we had a self-service stand in the barn where customers bought whatever had been recently picked and paid in a little tin on the counter. The stand required no worker to leave the fields, and often two or three hundred dollars would be generated on a weekend day. Waterpenny Farm is a great example of a farm that is not only environmentally sustainable but also economically sustainable. I believe many people think that organic agriculture is economically unrealistic. But I experienced first hand this summer a real family making real money selling to people who were eager to buy their produce. In fact, every year they have to turn people away from their CSA, and if the farm wanted to be bigger and sell more, they could, as there are farmer’s markets every day of the week in D.C. Eric and Rachel are very smart with money and keep a detailed account of how much is spent and earned on the farm. Labor is their highest cost, as five interns hired for up to nine months at $600/month adds up.

Learning

Eric and Rachel really made this internship educational, which was a major reason that I came to Waterpenny. Manual labor in the heat, cold, rain, mud, and bugs can be mentally difficult if you are not aware of the greater purpose and are not learning why you do certain tasks. A lot of the teaching took place in informal conversations in the field working with the farmers or in the van on the way to market. I had a lot of questions, and they were happy to answer all of them. We also took field trips to other farms twice a month. This showed in a big way Waterpenny’s commitment to education to stop in the middle of a busy week and drive one hour to visit a farm, even though there was endless work to be done at the home farm. It also gave the interns a greater perspective on sustainable agriculture to see the different methods employed at each farm. We visited people doing sustainable forestry, where trees are selected on a “worst-first, tree by tree” basis and hauled out by work-horses which have a minimum impact on the forest. We saw a homestead run by an industrious couple in their 70s who grow Christmas trees, an acre of vegetables, keep bees from which they make honey and candles, grow mushrooms in their woods, make jam from their berries, and host educational events at their farm. We went to a flower farm and got a whirlwind tour of exotic flowers none of us had ever seen before. We visited farms bigger and smaller than Waterpenny, and we got to make cheese and watch the milking happen at a farm in PA where the milk we drank all summer came from. In addition to off the farm field trips, Rachel and Eric gave several talks on the farm, giving more details about the CSA program, farm machinery, and the water quality in the bordering river. I learned more than I even thought I would!

Community Living

Not only did I learn about growing and selling vegetables, but living and working with 4-6 other people all summer taught me valuable lessons on sharing space and how to have healthy relationships with all kinds of people, some very different from myself. The interns lived in a small house together, most of us with our own rooms, and we shared cooking and cleaning duties. Whoever was the chef for the night’s supper got off work 30 minutes early to prepare the meal. We must have said at least a hundred times this summer while enjoying a meal, “we eat SO GOOD here!!” It was true, as we had several talented cooks who took our already tasty vegetables, threw them together with minimal other ingredients, and created amazing dishes. It certainly makes the work easier when you are personally excited for the basil to grow big enough for a harvest for pesto, the first tomato to ripen, and the winter squash to come in for soup. Every Wednesday we had a house meeting where anyone could bring up any issues, good or bad, that needed to be addressed. This communication was essential, and it helped our small community to thrive. The enthusiasm for agriculture coming from each person was unique, and it was contagious. When one of us was feeling worn out, another would be ready to go, and this helped balance everyone. Also, the interns’ relationship with Eric and Rachel was not strictly employer-employee. Each week we took turns cooking for each other and eating at each other’s houses. We all got to know and love their baby Nicholas, and it was a great learning experience to watch their family simply living life.

All in all, I can’t say enough good things about my summer internship. The location was breathtaking, the work was fulfilling and important, and the community was a joy to be a part of. I learned and laughed a LOT this summer, which is a great combination. I grew strong, got a good tan, and I ate a lot of yummy, healthy vegetables. What more could you ask for?