Friends Who Farm
Lexington Community Farm
52 Lowell St, Lexington, MA 02420
Lexfarm.org
@lexingtoncommunityfarm
Long Table Farm
3232 Co. Rd. 234, Durango, CO, 81301
longtabledurango.com
@longtabledurango
Lucca Zeray
When you think about it, food is pretty important. If you were like me during this pandemic, with preparing meals being one of the only constants, one of the few senses of relief, you have also drawn this fairly obvious conclusion–why yes, food is important.
The past few months have been a rollercoaster that no one was tall enough to ride. You’ve likely had a few “escapist” thoughts like myself. How nice it would be to just leave it all behind. To go back to nature and tend to the land, to have a simple life, until you realize you don’t know a thing about farming, or what it takes. How the hell are you supposed to survive on that single head of lettuce you grew the summer before last. Growing food is hard, while romanticizing this lifestyle is very, very easy.
No one has ever said being a farmer is easy work. It involves grueling hours, is physically demanding, yields slim pay and is more or less thankless. As opposed to dropping out of society myself and jumping into a world I know very little about, I reached out to two friends from high school who had very similar upbringings to my own. Rather than fantasizing about this lifestyle, it is now a passion and reality for them both.
Emmy Smela and Kate Sopko grew up in New York City and attended The Beacon Liberal Arts High school where we all met. High school in New York City isn’t like high school in most places; it varies drastically from school to school. Some specialize in mathematics and engineering, some on the performing arts, while others are completely self-driven, based on internships. The Beacon School had a curriculum that more closely resembled that of a college than a high school. Beacon was different, it focused heavily on existential theory, history of urban planning, and progressive politics. More than anything, it taught us to be aware of our surroundings. One of the more popular classes was food science, with Michael Pollen’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a book about food politics, and The American Farm, acting as more or less the framework for the course. The program covered the proper way to make coffee, how to cook an egg 3 ways, and the politics surrounding the food and agricultural industries. Kate said it best– “Beacon radicalized us”. From teaching Robert Moses’s divisive use of urban planning, to how the CIA used american painting in an effort to steer the Cold War. These classes instilled something in all of us; we didn’t want to make a living, we wanted purpose. Beacon had a mandatory internship semester where some students would WWOOF (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms), some would spend summers working on urban farms such as the Red Hook Community Farm, while others did neither (me).
Kate and Emmy have fairly similar stories. They grew up in the five boroughs, went to Beacon, and later went to liberal arts colleges in the northeast; Kate going to Bard College, and Emmy going to Clark University. They both ended up working full time on farms.
Kate met her soon-to-be business partner, Morgan, while at Bard. They have since created Long Table Farm, a single-acre operation in Durango, Colorado. Long Table Farm is not just impressive for the size of their yield compared to the size of their land, it is also impressive for the fact that they are operating in the harsh climate of southern Colorado, where it is not uncommon to see snow mid-October. Kate said they have a relatively short growing season, but it makes for some creative farming. They grow things they want to eat, but more importantly produce that isn’t grown by other local farms.
Almost every small farm will tell you how hard it is to compete at farmers markets. Before Emmy was the field manager at Lexington Community Farm, she managed a farmers market, and understands many of the difficulties of being a vendor. Prices vary, but for the most part it is simply based on what the farmers can sell their produce for, and what competing farms are selling their produce for. Pricing is not the only struggle, the logistics of getting things out of the ground, onto the trucks, and then to market is a struggle in and of itself. “Anything you don’t sell becomes compost. Maybe not onions.” Needless to say, Emmy is much more content operating under the farmstand/ CSA model at her current farm.
Both Emmy and Kate seem to have figured out what gives them purpose. From spring to fall they are up at six and work manual labor until sundown. Kate said she “wanted to do something on an individual level.” I, for one, understand the desire to do something that I feel has a greater good; to live in a world not as dictated by capitalism and consumerism.
Emmy says now more than ever people are feeling the need to go back to nature. A movement is happening, homes outside the city are selling at higher rates than ever. covid has sparked the imaginations of those who sit and click. People with desk jobs stuck in their homes are now asking themselves “why do I live in Manhattan? I could have so much space. Wait, I could have a garden? I could have a yard?” I personally hope those who participated in this mass exodus do get a small garden, or start to use their hands for more than clicking. Growing food seems massively fulfilling at any scale, but I really hope the bigger takeaway is that those who were once city-dwellers begin to appreciate and see the importance of their local farms more than ever.
Emmy and Kate both said almost word for word, “come summer I am tired all the time,” but they are far from upset about it. Romanticism aside, they are both happy. Kate and Emmy shared the same enthusiasm for farming, the work it requires, and the purpose it creates. I understand the decision to go in this direction. Sitting and clicking sounds awful to me personally, and I would take sunburns over screen time any day. It also doesn’t hurt that at the end of the day they are producing the only thing we as humans really need: food.
