Growing season

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On the Farm

The move toward sustainable agriculture has some young adults deciding to spend a season -- or a lifetime -- in the fields.

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In the past few years, Wheatland has had far more inquiries from young people looking to try their hand at farm work. Even without a Web site, Chip was getting three inquiries a week as late as July.

Katherine Adam, agriculture specialist at the National Center for Appropriate Technology, said there were only six sustainable farms on a list for prospective student workers in 1989. Now there are 1,400, with 236 added from January to May. More than 3,000 workers spend their summers or a whole growing season on these farms.

"The whole zeitgeist about this stuff is changing. We couldn't ask for a better climate for our business," Chip says. He likes hiring college kids, because over the course of a season they can see the food through from start to finish; they plant the seeds, pick the produce and sell it at the farmers market. He smiles as he flips through a photo album with group pictures of 15 to 20 workers standing in front of a wagon. "It's almost like hiring yourself." Chip says fondly, "How could you not enjoy this group of people?"

But he admits they weren't all good workers. If someone was a bit of a slacker, the rest of the crew had to work around it. Since many recruits have never even gardened before, it takes some time before they become efficient in the field. Despite a greater pool to pick from than ever before, there's a risk that even the most idealistic worker will become disenchanted once the reality of long hours of hard work sets in.

That retention risk made it difficult for Stanley, Jabbar and Hirschhorn to get hired. "A lot of them didn't want three people who knew each other," Jabbar says, because farm owners feared if one left, they all would. "I'm quitting my job and moving across the country! I'm not quitting after two weeks," she says indignantly.

She'd worked as a business analyst for Williams-Sonoma in San Francisco, earning $80,000 a year. But she felt she was just marking time until she discovered what she really wanted to do with her life. Stanley felt the same way. "I was making a ridiculous amount of money and not working very hard, to be honest."

It was during a 2008 vacation that the college friends started to talk more seriously about how to escape. They wanted outdoor jobs, and their feelings about the politics of food -- such as their belief that industrial farming is headed for collapse, and is a culprit behind obesity and global warming -- drew them to farming. But it's more than that. Jabbar says its appeal is "a simplicity of life." Joined by Hirschhorn, they decided to learn how to grow food so that they could launch their own farm in 2010.

Jabbar, Stanley and Hirschhorn keep a blog, iheartnature.com, that documents their experience at Wheatland. In her first week, Jabbar wrote: "The first few days were rough and I was addicted to taking Tylenol in the morning, afternoon, and night -- most of you know I hate taking medicine so that in itself is a lot for me." She said on the seventh day, after six hours of staking tomatoes, she was chanting in her head: "You can do this, you can do this, you can do this."

The trio and their fellow workers live together in a converted barn on the farm and cook together in a cabin-kitchen. They get to know other workers from neighboring farms and swap stories. It's a tightknit community, although Stanley, Jabbar and Hirschhorn's background of corporate jobs sets them somewhat apart.

"I feel I don't have a lot in common with them. Nobody I know is even considering going into the jobs they were in. Seemingly to me, they have a much more extravagant lifestyle," says co-worker David Giusti, a 23-year-old graduate of Oberlin College with a curly ponytail and beard bleached blond by the sun. This is his third summer at Wheatland, and he has spent time studying sustainable agriculture in Vermont in between. Next year, he plans to rent land from the Plancks and farm for himself.

Stanley says that some customers raised an eyebrow when she wore her engagement ring to the farmers market. Women would see the glittering diamond and say, "You're a farmer?"

Jabbar, Stanley and Hirschhorn spend their off-the-clock hours refining their business plan to get their own farm started -- investigating land prices, considering financing options. The hundreds of thousands in equity Stanley has in her Georgetown condo will help, but they're realistic about the risk involved. In the middle of the summer, they imagine buying at the end of the year, but by late August, renting is sounding better.