Good shoes are a must. Beneath my Doc Martens, the floor is already strewn with fat and meat scraps and bone fragments as the cutters heft chunks of what was very recently a living cow, deftly scraping every edible bit from the bones. The butcher pushes a massive carcass into the cutting room from the cooler, hanging from a hook on a rail. It looks like a red and yellow wall of flesh, but the cutters work it like sculptors, carving away to reveal the recognizable food within. 

This is a dying art—and an art of dying. I grab a cart filled with freshly cut steaks and roasts— wrapping and weighing, labeling and stacking. Two days a week, gunshots from the kill floor punctuate the mechanical noise of the place.

This is what it’s like to work at a meat-processing plant. 

In August of 2023, I began my time at a small-scale, family-owned, USDA-inspected plant in rural Virginia, where I worked until February 2024. I was in the middle of a season at an organic vegetable farm, realizing I preferred working with animals rather than plants (having had prior livestock farm experience). I wanted to stay involved in local food production, and meat processing was the only piece of the puzzle I hadn’t seen yet. Besides, I’ve always been fascinated by the craft of butchery and, as a hunter, I knew I’d gain valuable skills. So, I jumped into the fire.

Today, it’s kill day, and the slaughter crew is on the front lines of the transition from animal to food. Where I worked, they slaughtered two days a week. Pork and beef must be kept separate and are killed on different days and stored apart. The crew stuns, kills, bleeds, guts, and skins them all before breakfast.

Here’s how it works: Livestock are unloaded into the pens, and provided with water and shelter. Legally, they must be slaughtered within 24 hours of drop-off. When their time comes, they walk one at a time onto the kill floor, where they are restrained in a box-like device. This standardized equipment is designed to minimize livestock stress, and similar to the squeeze chutes used for handling back on the farm. Then, under federal law, they are rendered insensible to pain. At this particular plant, the preferred stunning method was a rifle round to the brain, but electrocution, gas, and various bolt guns are also permitted, depending on the animal and facility. Afterward, the animal is dressed; if it’s pork, it’s cooled and cut immediately.

The “suck truck” (a truck with a huge trailer and hoses) then collects usable byproducts such as hooves, hides, and viscera to be hauled to a rendering plant—one of around 300 in the country—and made into a plethora of industrial products used for anything from shampoo to dog food. It’s considered a form of biological recycling. 

Although the plants try to use as much of the animal as possible, there are restrictions. Trimmed meat and fat become burger and sausage. Organs go into pon hoss (similar to scrapple), bones are cut for soup and dog chews. Anything that can’t be consumed or rendered must be discarded.  

But beef must be aged for a week or more to help develop its flavor, mellow its texture, and reduce its moisture content. When it’s ready, the butcher brings it out to the cutting room and then the process starts again: breaking, boning, wrapping, and freezing—stored until it’s picked up by the retail or custom slaughter (private use) client.

It’s a dynamic and dirty job, but someone has to do it. One of the more than half a million workers helping to get the billions of pounds of meat on America’s tables is Britny Polk of Mount Jackson, Virginia. She’s been at the plant for six years, learning from her mother, who worked there for two decades. In addition to wrapping hundreds of pounds of meat a day, Polk manages cut sheets—instructions on how customers want their meat butchered and packaged —and much more. 

“As I’m wrapping, I get pulled away a lot to help wait on customers, answer the phones, doing bills, scheduling hogs, beef, and lambs,” she said in an email. Depending on the day, she also makes sausage and hamburger patties using a modified cookie dough machine, orders supplies, and makes sure people show up to drop off their live animal and, later, pick up their meat.

The need for these services is only growing, yet there is a constant labor shortage. “We have a really hard time finding workers and for workers to stay,” Polk said. There are unique workplace hazards here; using sharp implements and machinery comes with an elevated risk of injury. Live animals may behave erratically and even a deceased animal can kick. On busy days, the time flies, but it’s still hours of standing on a hard floor, and around constant sensory stimulation.

Heavy lifting, slippery surfaces, sub-zero temperatures, and exposure to bestial bodily fluids are all part of a typical workday. Every season can be stressful because people often celebrate with meats: spring lamb, summer grilling staples, and holiday roasts. But it can also be fun, and time flies on busy days. I worked in an environment where people were supportive and shared a sense of humor. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have participated in a part of our food system that’s too often intentionally overlooked.

It was awesome watching the butchers breaking carcasses into primals and fabricating mouthwatering cuts. My coworkers were rock stars of the food prep world, cutting it to order right there behind the counter. I miss cracking jokes while listening to music, lamenting bizarre cutting requests (New York strips ground into burger?), or wishing someone would breed a cow with more than one heart, tongue, and tail so we could keep up with demand for offal. 

I saw some truly exemplary meat: exquisitely marbled steaks, thick chops from healthy hogs—aesthetics and culinary qualities reflecting the mindful husbandry of the livestock. But that’s not always the case, as farming practices vary. Meat from stressed animals can exhibit off coloration or blood spots, and underfed animals are woefully lean or even atrophied. “There is a lot that goes into producing a good animal,” Polk said. “If you’re not feeding them appropriately, when they need it, your beef will either be way too fatty or it won’t have enough fat on it. A lot of factors go into having a nice-looking cow to process. ”

Regardless of who raises the animals and how, it’s the meat processor’s job to turn them all into food. I sincerely hope that more consumers will try to understand that there is a human cost behind their meat. “A farmer brings this live animal in and we go through every step from killing to wrapping to ensure people have food. It would be great for everyone to know how we get that product to people,” adds Polk.

There are no windows in slaughterhouses, but I aim to shed light on this crucial and underappreciated profession in the spirit of transparency, acceptance, and progress. The meat industry is here to stay and awareness is what it needs to survive.

“I think everyone should educate themselves on the process of how a living animal becomes a steak that is ready to eat. People should care because this is how you get your food,” Polk said. 

For those interested in the fascinating fields of meat science and butchery, learn hands-on. Do a season on a farm or with a deer processor. Consider a meat-cutting apprenticeship. It takes an open mind, a team player attitude, and a stomach as strong as your back, but also a love and respect for the people, places, and animals that feed us. My experience at the meat plant is summed up well by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote: “You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.” If you purchase meat, you are part of this system, and blissful ignorance and denial are a disservice to every being within it. It’s time for consumers to recognize their role, take accountability, and help wherever they can.

The post Inside a Slaughterhouse: The Human Cost of Your Meat appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Two years before the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was researching a book idea about rewilding—a subculture of the better-known land conservation movement where people pursue a preindustrial or even preagricultural, hunter-gatherer existence. My interviews included survivalists living on a tropical island, primitive skills enthusiasts creating forest schools and subsistence homesteaders. 

I’ve lived in cities my entire adult life, so it doesn’t take a psychologist to unpack my personal attraction to the idea of backpedaling from the increasing overwhelm of life in the twenty-first century: the incessant infiltration of technology and media; social isolation and loneliness; disconnection from nature, especially its troubling impact on our kids; escalating global conflict; and accelerating natural disasters validating our fears that the endgame of climate change is not only inevitable but happening now. 

Still, as time went on, I became a little weary of the doomsday pre-occupation. More importantly, I was unsure of its helpfulness. Everyone can feel the tumult of these times, but very few of us, myself included, have the wherewithal or the chutzpah to toss aside everything they’ve ever known and hunt and forage from a cabin in the woods. 

Some of the solutions being touted in the world of rewilding were inspiring, but I wished for a doable purpose in the here and now; preferably one where I would feel more alive and useful than I did rhapsodizing in front of a computer.

I also had a concurrent realization: In my longing to reclaim the ways of the past, it was traditional food culture that most lit my fire. And so, six months into COVID lockdown in Los Angeles, my husband and I decided, “enough with the daydreaming,” and sold everything we owned and moved with our two young daughters to Central Oregon, where I serendipitously stumbled into the area’s local food movement and subsequently enrolled in a groundbreaking farmer training program. The immersive internship was centered around regenerative agriculture—a new (but actually ancestral) and holistic approach to growing food that restores soil and biodiversity and sequesters carbon in the ground.

I’ve covered the ills of our industrialized food system for more than a decade, so regenerative farming was a field I was closely following. High-profile books and documentaries were pointing to its promise while sounding the alarm on the finiteness of intensive agriculture—warning of vanishing groundwater and the world’s dwindling supply of usable topsoil. Yet, until I encountered the training program in Oregon, it never occurred to me to actually take matters into my own hands and consider small, sustainable farming as a viable career path.

A week into my first farm job, I realized it was the most joyful and fulfilling work I had ever experienced. After two months of being outside all day, nearly every day, I felt the best—both physically and mentally—that I ever had in my life. But the real transformation occurred as I began to meet and learn about the new and driven farmers, graziers and food activists emerging all over the country. They hadn’t grown up in farming families; they came from backgrounds vastly underrepresented in agriculture; and many of them were far younger than I was, not to mention decades younger than the average American farmer. I was awestruck by their intention and ingenuity. They hadn’t turned to this way of life as some back-to-the-land fantasy. They had chosen sustainable agriculture as a tactile way to affect environmental activism and food justice; for cultural reclamation; to reconnect to nature, food and community; to live aligned with their values; to do “something that means something.”

And during the environmental and societal reckoning of the pandemic—not to mention the collapse of the industrial food supply chain—the work of these regenerative farmers became more meaningful than ever before. They filled the void amid empty supermarket shelves and miles-long food lines and fed millions of Americans not just food but the most delicious food many of us had ever tasted. They witnessed hundreds of thousands of people needlessly dying of COVID due to diet-related disparities and pushed ahead for funding and food sovereignty. So I started to wonder: How could we scale a “greatest generation” of sustainable small farmers?

What would this country look like transformed by a vast network of resilient local food systems that restore the environment and ensure healthy, fresh food is accessible to all?

These two questions launched me on the journey to write this book. But it was only later that I learned of their urgency. In the coming decade, 400 million acres of American farmland—nearly half of all farmland in the United States—will become available as the older generation of American farmers retires or dies. Meanwhile, the groundswell of new growers eager to steward that land are up against seemingly every obstacle: access to affordable land, access to capital, a livable income and the billionaires and corporations now grabbing farmland at a staggering pace. 

And yet, there’s hope: Big Ag may be the norm in the United States, but small growers globally produce around a third of the world’s food on farms of five acres or less.

Mapping research shows up to 90 percent of Americans could be fed entirely with food raised within 100 miles of where they live. Project Regeneration highlights regenerative agriculture and other nature-based farming methods as critical strategies in the plan to reverse global warming. And the human power exists: The number of new, beginning and young farmers has been increasing for the past 10 years, a trend unparalleled in the last century. 

I came to farming as an outsider, and that’s exactly the point. Two hundred years ago, nearly all of us lived and worked on the land that fed us (although not all of our own free will). Even a hundred years ago, one-third of us did. Today, that number stands at one percent. Yet, right now, so many of us are yearning for something we can’t name, an intangible we don’t even realize has been lost. It’s our connection to our food, that most fundamental of human needs, and it is that which ties us to everything else.

These are the stories of a new, diverse generation of agrarians unfolding an alternate vision of the future, if only more of us would join the call.

The post How Can We Mobilize New Farmers? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

At nine years old, I started a rabbitry. Raising my trio of Dutch rabbits to take to the fair, I fell in love with the breed and raising them. Before long, I expanded to include Polish rabbits, Dorset advantage sheep and Welsh Harlequin and Call ducks. I eventually added horses and hogs to my growing small business, raising animals for sale in my community. I named my business Diamond B Show Stock, a nod to my family farm, Diamond B farms. The family business started in the 1970s and is still running strong today. I’m proud to be the next link in the chain for my family’s agricultural business, and I hope to keep it going for the generations that come after me. And I got here with the help of 4-H. 

I grew up in a farm family and, as a result, I’m entirely hooked on agriculture. There’s something special about watching a newborn lamb’s first steps, seeing it grow and ultimately feeling the satisfaction after its sale on a humid August county fair day, knowing that I’ve given it a life full of long evening walks, gentle hands, tasty treats and security. Those moments reassure me that agriculture will always be a part of my life; now, as I work through my plethora of 4-H projects, I’m in college studying to be a veterinarian and eventually working to protect and improve the lives of livestock. 

But not every kid has the opportunities I’ve had. Our industry is suffering from an inability to summon enough youth passion to join its ranks. I attended the National 4-H Conference in Washington, D.C. this April, where US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack explained it best: The average age of a farmer is close to 60 years old. To protect the future of America’s food, youth must become involved in agriculture, and organizations such as 4-H are the solution. 

More than just agriculture

Established in 1912, 4-H (collectively, head, heart, hands and health) was originally conceived to introduce youth to agricultural work through after-school programs. More than 100 years later, it’s grown to encompass so much more. Each regional 4-H club hosts a variety of programs, with a focus on hands-on learning. You can raise animals, like I do, but you can also learn about all sorts of things, such as photography, public speaking, sewing or technology.

McKenzie Diamond, a recent high school grad from New York, is looking at college. A few years ago, she saw agriculture as just a hobby, not what she thought she could pursue as a career. But that changed last year. 

Along with her other 4-H projects in nutrition, art and community service, she raised goats with her mother. After one of the goats needed to have her leg amputated, Diamond and her family met with vets from Cornell University to discuss their best course of action. It was this meeting where she realized that her hobby could become her career. “My mom grew up in a very agricultural family, and I think that it implanted on me at a young age that [agricultural] lifestyle and goals in life. Truthfully, I don’t think I would be who I am without ag in my life.” Now, Diamond intends to major in either agricultural education or agribusiness. 

Fighting for the future

As lawmakers open their ears to youth voices, 4-H members have been put on the front lines in advocating for farming practices. Wyatt Morrow, a 4-H alumni and college freshman from Ohio, was selected for Citizenship Washington Focus, a nationwide 4-H opportunity recruiting teens to share their thoughts with legislators on Capitol Hill. 

Morrow got to speak to the office of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance in 2023 on behalf of 4-H. Upon his return home and starting his first year at Wilmington College, he was trusted with a position by the college, one of only three freshmen in the group, to again travel to D.C., this time to advocate for the passage of the Farm Bill. Morrow called the lobbying “one of the most eye-opening experiences I’ve ever had. It showed me that advocating for issues you and others are passionate about can really make a difference in shaping our country.” 

Through 4-H, he not only was given a life-altering opportunity to gain hands-on experience working with legislators, but he was able to use it to foster growth in the industry. 

But it can be difficult to get kids involved in agriculture, especially urban kids or people who don’t grow up in farm families. “Kids are involved in so many different activities that demand their time. Oftentimes, coaches and teachers are not allowing them to have the time off from school or extracurricular activities that they need to fully engage in 4-H since it’s not a school-sponsored activity,” says Kathy Bruynis, an Ohio State University Extension 4-H educator. 

Fortunately, one thing 4-H does have going for it is choices. With more than 200 projects available in the state of Ohio alone, such as livestock, gardening, robotics, nutrition, financial management, welding and more, there are topics for nearly every kid. Additionally, keeping with 4-H’s traditional creative spirit, 4-H professionals and volunteers are working hard to come up with new ways to recruit members. Jamie Stacy, an Ohio 4-H advisor and Junior Fair Board director, hosts bowling or swimming parties and always brings snacks. “Offering some type of food is usually a pretty good way to pull kids in when they get free food and fun,” says Stacy. 

Becoming royalty

Fair or 4-H royalty serve as another valuable tool for recruiting new 4-H members. I was chosen as my county’s queen nearly a year ago after completing a lengthy application and interview process. On the first day of our county fair, I was presented with my crown and sash and given the job of representing 4-H not only to others in agriculture but the general public as well. After a week of helping out at shows, sales and other fair events, I was tasked with visiting other local fairs and festivals. When the fair season wrapped up, I made it a priority to involve myself in the community in other ways. I passed out candy at a Trunk-or-Treat, taking time to socialize with each child and talk to them about why 4-H really mattered to me. I read a book at my local library and eagerly answered the questions fired at me from kids and parents alike. I hugged a veteran as he accepted a quilt made by a 4-H-er at my fair’s annual quilts for veterans and first responders event, and I later connected with Wreaths for Veterans to place wreaths at a nearby cemetery at Christmas. One of my favorite experiences was taking a few baby rabbits and a baby goat with a 4-H friend to a nursing home and seeing the reactions of the residents.

All of these experiences helped 4-H project a positive image onto the local community. Prior to my visits, many of the people I met didn’t even know what 4-H was, but I left them knowing more and feeling good about it. Keeping 4-H present in the community is essential to its survival.

The post Young People Need to Find Farming. 4-H is the Answer appeared first on Modern Farmer.

It was dark, with a sliver of a moon lending a Cheshire Cat, Alice in Wonderland eeriness to the inherent novelty of my planned morning of activities. I pulled past the “No Trespassing” signs and found the trailer, cheerfully lit up against the dark meadow quietly swaying in the breeze behind it. 

I shook hands with the waiting stranger and grabbed one of the headlamps and a set of protective earmuffs (exposure to the sound of gunshots over time can damage your eardrums) on offer, and followed her—yes, her—into the woods, where we’d huddle in a blind for hours, waiting to see if any turkeys would show. 

Cheryl Frank Sullivan, a research assistant professor of entomology at the University of Vermont, grew up around hunting in Upstate New York, but she was never interested in it. “I studied environmental science in college, and I didn’t see until a little later how hunting could fit into that,” says Sullivan. Many folks may change their minds about a stance they took when they were younger. But hunting is a topic that inherently brings up strong emotions. And crucially, it hasn’t always been portrayed as friendly or open to women looking to join up. 

As I found out on that cold spring morning, that’s changing. 

The hunt

Sullivan led me toward the blind she had set up, telling her story. (I don’t have a license to hunt, so I could only legally observe her hunting.) Like many other female hunters, the route she took to get where she is today was meandering but meaningful. 

“For me, hunting has become a way of living and a way of being in the world and the woods,” said Sullivan as we sat in comfortable camp chairs inside a snug tent with windows we could zip and unzip as needed to see what was going on, disguise ourselves and—if all went well—Sullivan could target and shoot a gobbler.

Sullivan set up realistic (to me) looking hen turkey decoys in a patch of meadow in front of our ground hide. Hunters can also set up blinds in trees, but those are best utilized for deer hunts, or they can just completely camouflage themselves and set up next to a tree on the ground or move quietly from place to place, she says.

“Turkeys have eagle eyes, so wearing camo and staying very still is important, and they have incredible hearing, which is why I’m whispering,” said Sullivan. 

In a bid to draw the birds, Sullivan brought out a slate call, scratching the striker against the slate to imitate a turkey’s distinct vocalizations. Sullivan, who seemed familiar with all of the state’s hunting regulations, was only able to target gobblers or male turkeys.

“May is nesting season, so you can’t hunt hens,” said Sullivan. “We can also hunt from a half an hour before sunrise to noon.”

Following the rules, which vary state to state and are generally handled by a wildlife management agency, is important to Sullivan and all of the hunters she knows.

Women have always hunted 

An army of female hunters may seem modern, but recent studies show it’s anything but. 

For millennia, the notion that men hunted and women gathered dominated the academic study of early human life. The popular imagination followed, and for many years, the idea that society would function better if men and women would do what comes “naturally” to them—in other words, stop trying to wedge your way into boardrooms and onto battlefields, ladies—seemed like common sense in many circles. 

But science and new discoveries have overturned that paradigm. New research out of the University of Washington and Seattle Pacific University shows that, around 200,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens began their slow trudge toward space travel and excessive screen time, women were responsible for hunting, right alongside the men. 

The findings published in PLOS One found that, in 79 percent of societies across the world for which scientists were able to find direct evidence, women were hunting with purpose and their own tools. Girls were actively encouraged to learn how to join the hunt. 

Sullivan’s approach to hunting—as a way to respect and care for the land and the intricate ecosystem and food chain that it supports—reflects a consistent shift in the culture of hunting, says Mandy Harling, director of education and outreach programs at the National Wild Turkey Federation [NWTF], a foundation dedicated to wild turkey conservation throughout North America.

When the organization was founded in 1973, hunting heritage was foundational to NWTF’s mission. Since 2012, when it launched a refreshed preservation push, the NWTF has conserved or enhanced more than four million acres of wild land for turkeys and hunters, and it has opened public access to hunting on 600,000-plus acres of land. 

Conservation and hunting, while at first glance perhaps unlikely bedfellows, share many of the same goals, says Harling. 

“Clean water is essential for all living things on earth, and where there is clean water, there are turkeys,” says Harling. “We work with partners to create healthier forests and watersheds. And when we manage a forest for wild turkey habitat, we also improve the land for all wildlife and the humans who live around it.”

Getting women interested in and invested in hunting is also part of the NWTF’s long-term strategy.

“We formally began organizing women in outdoor programs in 1998,” says Harling. “We have found that the conservation aspect is an important aspect of the culture of hunting that attracts women.”

While only 10 percent to 15 percent of hunters in the US are currently women, that number is on the rise, with the number of women applying for hunting permits almost equaling that of men and more organizations set up to train women hunters. Some states such as Maine have programs specifically for women organized by the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. There are also nonprofits such as Doe Camp Nation and companies such as Artemis and Wild Sheep which offer retreats and training programs for would-be women hunters. 

Maya Holschuh, a 25-year-old Wilmington, VT resident who started hunting at 21, says the practice has been empowering and transformative. 

“I feel like it’s a much more ethical way to consume meat. I know how the animal died, I know it lived a great life in the wild and I know it wasn’t raised in captivity and pumped full of hormones,” says Holschuh. 

On my first foray into the hunting world, there were no kills. The experience left me with the same feeling I get after the first day of skiing every year: I connected with the natural world on a deep level that I somehow forget I know how to plumb on other nature excursions. I was OK with my performance, but I could do better next time. I know what I’d change. It left me sated but wanting more. 

I love eating meat. But I want to eat less beef because I know that continuing to support cattle farming with my burger habit is more destructive to the ecosystem and surrounding community than, say, shooting one deer or a handful of turkeys and eating their meat for an entire season. I opt for organic, grassfed everythin, and have developed a taste for wild meat thanks to my generous hunting friends who are always willing to share their hauls.

Hunting seems like the next step in my CSA-joining, farmer’s market-shopping food journey. Will I run out and get a hunting license? I haven’t yet. But I’m intrigued by the idea of joining my sisters in arms. 

Sullivan has introduced countless women to hunting and fishing, and she has instructed groups on weekend retreats through associations such as Vermont Outdoors Woman and Vermont Outdoor Guide Association. 

“If you want to learn to hunt, reaching out to an organization that guides women is a great place to start,” says Sullivan. “You’ll get guidance on technique but also learn what kind of licenses and gear you’ll need. Plus, you’ll be creating a network of other female hunters who are eager to learn.”

The post Women Are Reclaiming Their Hunting Heritage appeared first on Modern Farmer.

My whimsical project began when I was given an old pressure cooker, which I converted into a still with the addition of a meat thermometer and copper refrigerator line. I then collected a massive quantity of Hoary mountain mint, a tall, sprightly plant that grows along the roadsides near my Southern Appalachian home. This took a whole morning, notwithstanding the time spent talking with a neighbor who passed by; when I explained what I was doing with the prodigious quantity of plant matter I had collected, he regaled me with tales of moonshiners who had run their stills in the mountains. 

Unlike distilling liquor, distilling essential oil for personal use is legal. But like the moonshiners before me, I, too, was trying to capture lighting in a bottle. At the end of the hot summer’s day, my work had yielded a small jar of mint-infused water known as a hydrosol and just a few drops of essential oil. The scent was so refreshing that the process seemed worth it. 

I didn’t start out a perfume-ophile. I’d been put off of commercial offerings because the smell of Axe body spray and Victoria’s Secret perfume had floated down the halls of my high school more strongly than teenage hormones. But the purchase of a bottle of essential oil led to some incense sticks and, eventually, I found myself in the health and beauty aisle of my local co-op sniffing aromatherapy blends and solid perfumes. 

Finally, I ventured into professional perfumes. This selection provided complexity, depth and subtlety that the commercial offerings of my youth lacked. But, as I shopped, I encountered a quandary familiar to eaters: “How do I choose sustainably and ethically produced products?”

In essence, the debate about sustainability in perfume boils down to this: It takes a massive amount of material to produce essential oils, and the most prized materials are often threatened plants and animal products. On the flip side, synthetic chemical ingredients are often untested, derived from petroleum byproducts and can contain phthalates and PFAs, which many folks eschew due to health concerns. Companies are not required to provide ingredient labels, so making informed choices is especially difficult. 

To shed some light on this topic, I spoke with Dr. Anjanette DeCarlo, who serves as chief sustainability scientist at the Aromatic Plant Research Center, where she conducts field research and ecological supply chain analysis on aromatic species. Much of her work has centered around the chronically overharvested Frankincense tree, which grows in the Middle East, Africa and India. When ingredients are harvested from developing countries, environmental and labor abuses can be myriad. “There is a dominator mindset that is very neocolonial,” DeCarlo says  of the companies that work as middlemen to buy raw product from villagers. This story is not unique to aromatics. “You could substitute the word ‘Frankincense’ with ‘chocolate,’” she says, and the injustices would be the same. 

Part of the problem is overuse. “MLMs [multi-level marketing companies] like YoungLiving have mainstreamed essential oils,” says DeCarlo. The internet was also a major catalyst for the explosion of interest in perfume, according to Saskia Wilson-Brown, founder and executive director of the Institute for Art and Olfaction, a non-profit that serves to facilitate open access to scent and perfumery projects. The rise of celebrity branding and the fast-fashion mentality that has bled over into the perfume industry has also served to increase consumption. “There used to be the concept of the signature scent,” says Wilson-Brown, but now it’s been replaced with the concept of a “scent for every occasion,” which drives sales. 

While it’s tempting to think that overharvest and labor concerns can be avoided by using synthetic versions, it’s not that simple. Take musk, for example. This sensual and earthy fragrance used to be obtained from animals, chiefly the musk deer, which, as a result of overhunting, is now endangered. Today, it has been largely replaced by synthetic analogs. According to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, an advocacy group aimed at making beauty products safe, these common chemicals may disrupt hormone systems and may be reproductive, development and organ system toxicants. The group notes that they are “highly bioaccumulative” and have been detected in drinking water, soil, breast milk, body fat and the cord blood of newborn babies. 

Greenwashing and misrepresentative labeling are also a problem. According to DeCarlo, “Sometimes, a company will have one part of their supply chain certified but apply those certification labels to all of their products.” Essential oil fraud is common, with synthetics being passed off as naturals. 

But before I started to despair that all essential oils and perfumes were off the table, these experts informed me that there are some great resources for those seeking sustainable scents. The Coalition of Sustainable Perfumery maintains an Endangered & Threatened Fragrant Species Red List for aromatic plants. The International Fragrance association, IFRA, provides info about safety and sustainability reports on its website. 

Additionally, there are some companies focusing on sustainable fragrance. Canadian company BoreASENS produces essential oils from cast-off branches left by foresters and uses a circular distillation system that allows for less carbon-intensive production. Camino Verde produces essential oils from rosewood and moena alcanfór. The oils are part of a regenerative agroforestry system in the Amazon made up of native trees, with the goal of regenerating forests and improving livelihoods for the company’s indigenous partners. A larger national company, Lush, is another leader in the sustainability space. 

Using less, buying from small indie perfumers and as local as possible, asking companies questions about supply chains and their practices, doing your own research and being willing to pay a higher price for consciously made products are  all practices that can have an impact. Luckily, “some of the most interesting and beautiful perfumes come from small indie perfumers,” says Wilson-Brown. As the market for these handmade perfumes grows, there are opportunities for farmers who grow medicinal herbs, vegetables or even hemp to diversify by providing aromatic materials directly to perfumers or small suppliers. 

While these suggestions are helpful, finding ethical products is still a challenge. My personal strategy has been to explore the scents all around me. Growing sage to dry and bundle, placing boughs of cedar on the woodstove or just stopping to crush a handful of Queen Anne’s lace seedheads and inhaling deeply are sustainable ways to treat your senses. These moments help me celebrate the tapestry of the seasons as they play across the hills of my home. I find the ephemeral nature of the flora here enchanting—change is constant, and one plant germinates while another dies back. Just as we pickle garden bounty, make wine and lovely preserves to enjoy in the winter, we can use scent as a celebration of nature; a spray of my green walnut fragrance is so visceral and evocative, it’s like summer running a finger down my spine. 

While “take time to smell the roses” is a well-worn platitude, the aromas around us can surprise, intoxicate, uplift and nurture us, if only we take the time to notice them. Whether you are a perfume buyer or a fresh-cut grass-smeller, the extra bit of attention you give to sourcing your scents will make them all the sweeter.

The post In Search of Sustainable Fragrance appeared first on Modern Farmer.

We had grand plans to install a curated pollinator garden in the front and a vegetable garden with a managed meadow in the back. Since I started my career in the environmental sector, I have preached to anyone who looked in my direction about planting native plants. I boasted about how indigenous flowers would aid pollinators that suffer from habitat loss, store greenhouse gasses and create a buffer against drought and heavy rains. I knew that the US’s 40 million acres of lawns contribute to greenhouse gas emissions through consistent mowing and drink up to nine billion gallons of water daily. If I kept the non-native lawn, not only would I be going against my convictions, I would have to step down from my soapbox and admit to being a fraud. 

However, practicing is different from preaching. When we started the quest to revitalize our property, we did not know the extent that our soil was compacted and how climate change was affecting our new town. 

When I was younger, I helped my mother with her vegetable garden. I found joy in the feeling of dirt in the creases of my hands and the flavors of homegrown produce that embedded in my memories. We had to fight clay each year, but we still produced a hefty bounty. I wanted to continue the tradition at my first house, and I had no worries when I noticed clay on my new property. However, my childhood garden bordered a wildflower-speckled knoll and the upstate New York wilderness. Now, I am in a suburb dominated by mowed lawns with low plant diversity.

While my husband and I were prepping a plot of land for growing vegetables, it was rare to find roots that spanned more than two inches deep. We would pull up mats of sod to reveal clay that lacked deep-running shoots from nearby plants. The solid mass proved impenetrable to the new growth and my trowel—now bent at an obtuse angle from my efforts. The plants that did penetrate seemed to be struggling due to the lack of drainage and air pathways. 

Livestock, heavy machinery and hikers along mountain paths create compaction, not just lawns. However, lawns consist of just a few grass species whose roots mainly hit the same shallow soil level. With greater plant diversity and organic matter, networks of microbes can create ample water and airflow at different depths in the process. 

With our budget, the simplest way to grow native plants was to allow a managed regrowth in the backyard. We decided that the trick to successful naturalization without getting in trouble with a town council was to cut back non-native grass stems and remove harmful plant species such as round bittersweet. The outcome was a meadow of purple petals of self-heal, buttery flecks of common yellow wood sorrel and ivory dapples of chickweed. The medley in this section promotes a healthy food web and draws in pollinators that will assist the vegetable garden. Plants are only as good as the microbes supporting them, though.

To build sustainable soil structure with plenty of bacteria, fungi and protozoa, we made compost by processing kitchen scraps in a tumbler. The design makes it easy to add fodder and we got the added satisfaction of hearing materials tossing like a giant rain stick. When the compost is mature, we mix it with dirt when planting. It will take a couple of years to see a difference in the compaction. Our corn, cauliflower and cucumbers failed to reach their full potential in this first year of treatment. The efforts have already been worth it, though. By composting our food waste, my husband and I have made our trash less rancid and decreased our greenhouse gas emissions—a responsibility we do not take lightly in the wake of a hot winter. 

This February, our small town reached a high of 77 degrees Fahrenheit. The average high temperature for that month was 62 degrees Fahrenheit. Typically, it’s 45. Temperatures continued to stay high through the rest of the winter and spring. The warm climate activated late-spring flowers to bloom earlier than they should have. The misalignment of blooming and awakening wildlife means less pollination and less food for animals throughout the food chain. By late April, the inside of our greenhouse was regularly reaching nearly 100 degrees. 

The sustained temperatures persuaded me that mid-April would be a safe time to put the plants into the ground. Then, the last week of April and the first week of May saw a slow-moving low-pressure system and below-freezing temperatures at night. My small town’s 2,014-foot elevation made it low enough for temperatures to rebound from the frost during the day, reaching the 50s. The mountain towns to the northeast, such as Snowshoe, experienced record-breaking snowfall, accumulating 15 inches of snow. My colleague’s children had snow days three weeks before summer vacation. Then, as if the cold spell was a fluke, temperatures rose to 80 degrees within the week.

The acute freeze turned the leaves on the peppers and the tomatoes dark brown and soft. A few still had one green leaf left. I managed to rescue these by propping them out of the soil and putting them back into the greenhouse in pots. However, these plants remained stunted and never grew more than a foot high. The native, non-crop species in the yard looked a little worse for wear for a day or so but were mostly left unscathed from the frost. While compacted soil is simple to overcome, climate change is not.

We are beginning to see how the battle between soil and plant durability against severe weather is taking place. Our yard is in the early stages of becoming more sustainable and resilient. We are assisting a network of life that is rebuilding soil structure and plant hardiness. As the property heals, it has a fighting chance against climate change. I am lucky I am an annual vegetable grower, so I do not rely on chilly winters like orchard growers do. I am instead part of the 41 percent of households who savor each fruit produced from the labor of our backyard gardens—knowing that the bounty of next year’s crop is still uncertain.

Jessica is a freelance writer and a youth environmental advocate for the state of West Virginia. When Jessica is not writing, birding, or hiking with her husband at New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, she is creating graphic art of America’s cryptid creatures.

The post We Bought a Home with a Sterile Suburban Yard. Our Journey To Bring Life Back is Just Beginning appeared first on Modern Farmer.

This especially applied if farmers weren’t wealthy beforehand, weren’t running their business like a hobby or didn’t have substantial side income. Nevertheless, these farms were honorably scraped together from nothing, their growers much like passionate artists in the field; their art: beautiful, healthy local food. But although they worked as hard and long as the founders of successful companies, making the same personal sacrifices, these farmers couldn’t seem to even earn a decent living off farm income alone. Still, they were driven—by something, if not for money.

My biggest takeaway from those years? “When I start my own farm, I will need to have off-farm income to live a balanced, happy life.” When I started Jupiter Ridge Farm in 2017, I did—and still do, like many traditional family farms. But why is it like this? Why is running a small-scale farm more like an expensive hobby? And what does this mean for the future of our food?

Ben Saunders started Wabi Sabi Farm near Des Moines, Iowa in 2013, drawing enough customers to live off diverse vegetable farm income for about 10 years. He said some communities can support local food farmers this way; that’s not the case with Iowa now.

“Single person, no student loans… I could live on very little,” says Saunders. Of his farm’s name, he says, “Wabi Sabi is a belief system recognizing the imperfect beauty in nature… the natural cycles of growth and decay.” Although principally operating as a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), Saunders also worked with food pantries. “I didn’t care about having straight rows… I wanted to produce food for people.”

In early 2023, however, he closed his doors forever. Unpredictable weather and the changing local food scene plagued him. CSA memberships dropped as door-to-door meal prep companies boomed. Farmers markets became less about farmers and more like craft shows packed with food trucks. His personal life suffered; long hours meant little time for family, friends, relationships. “I had to get out,” he says. 

He didn’t fully walk away from farming, in a sense. He now works full-time for a commercial greenhouse, still driven to grow—just for somebody else. Would his farm still be in operation if the business were more sustainable? “I had a feeling it could have been, yes.”

Increasingly, small farm businesses are becoming less profitable, data suggests, and must be run more like hobby farms. Some small farms are even classified as hobby farms by default (10 acres or less in some areas), may lose agricultural tax or property benefits and not be legally considered a farm, despite producing food for their local communities. Per the 2021 Ag Census, data also showed that, from 2011 to 2021, small farmers were increasingly likely to operate as high-risk businesses.

Although long a reality of farming life, more and more small farms are turning into businesses that need side income to survive. Even midsize and large family farms operators tend to have a more lucrative off-farm job or a spouse with side income. While many family farms may say this is just part of the lifestyle, it represents the diminishing value we assign to farm labor and the difficult math of small-scale farming.

Nevertheless, full-time farm life is attractive and paints an idyllic picture. The rewards are great: a connection with nature, eating healthy, an appealing countryside lifestyle. But lurking in the background can be endless worry, stress and financial strife when the farm is the farmer’s sole income stream. Some farmers I’ve spoken to amass debt they couldn’t pay back to stay open. Major repairs were unaffordable. There was no personal time— each step off farm could trigger massive anxiety. Summer vacation? Impossible. Personal lives and relationships? In jeopardy, or nonexistent.

What’s clear though is that some farmers, even when not making ends meet, can’t stop. Growing food for your local community can be an itch that needs scratching. I can attest to this, and so can Jordan Scheibel, who started his small diverse vegetable business Middle Way Farm in central Iowa back in 2013. He, too, announced he was closing in 2023— but not forever.

“Despite the burnout, despite the lack of profitability… it’s quite personal,” he says of taking a year’s hiatus to reopen in 2024. Lack of family time and financial struggles were present, but these weren’t at the heart of the problem. 

In 2020, Middle Way Farm scaled up rapidly to meet the pandemic local food boom. His passion for growing tapped this urgency to meet demand— but threatened his farming endurance capacity altogether, and thus the business’s long-term future. “I was well aware, on some level, of all of these problems the whole time,” he adds. “I was working too much, and I didn’t think it was ever going to improve… Really, for me, until I decided to step back, [the impulse to farm] was what was pushing me.”

A 2017 Guardian article described an ‘agrarian imperative theory’ whereby farmers have a strong urge to supply essentials for human life, such as food, and to hold on to their land at all costs. “When farmers can’t fulfill this instinctual purpose, they feel despair,” the article reads. “Thus, within the theory lies an important paradox: The drive that makes a farmer successful is the same that exacerbates failure”— economic failure. And it’s not the fault of the farmer. Our food economy is built on farm life amnesia: The lifestyle is romanticized, but the real labor (and those willing to do it) is hidden from view. The farming lifestyle is admired, marketed, monetized—while local food farmers, especially small-scale operators, and agricultural labor are pushed deeper into the shadows.

Small and family farm numbers are dropping, and even the most dedicated growers are run ragged by the economic reality. From 2012 to 2017, the US lost almost 54,000 small family farms. All this is ironic: Urbanites may be longing for “farm life” since the pandemic, but consumers largely don’t go out of their way to support farmers directly—whether due to the high prices some small farmers must set, issues of convenience or other factors—and thus support this lifestyle they admire. Buying direct from full-time small local farmers helps whenever possible, whether at farmers markets or through CSA memberships. If you run a food-related business or institution such as a restaurant, grocer or university kitchen, sourcing directly from farmers can be especially impactful.

Scheibel also mentions pressure from similar yet bigger, more profit-focused farms, to scale up. Only, these farms closed before his. “They were profitable,” says Scheibel. “But they were never satisfied…They felt they were putting in the amount of work where they deserved to earn a lot more than that. Because most people who put in that amount of work would be CEOs.” 

Wealthy, business-minded people are getting drawn to agriculture–Bill Gates, Thomas Peterrfy, Dan Barber, to name a few; an interest to become the farmer, rather than support the farmer, is on the rise. This could be good, although the prospect of small, local food farming getting “gentrified” into hobby farms (by the people who can afford it) looms in my head. But I do know that farming demands something beyond business acumen to be successful. 

Long-term, sustainable, small-scale farm businesses don’t survive if there isn’t passion there, that drive and “farmer’s impulse” no money could make up for. “Being able to paint on a landscape… and every year you get to re-make that… it’s extremely satisfying,” says Scheibel. “But, yeah… that’s an impulse. That’s separate from running the business.” And that’s not to say wealthy would-be farmers can’t hear the farm call, get the itch.

Maybe we’re evolved to be farmers; maybe it’s in our DNA. But if you feel called to enter the local food marketplace, be prepared to collaborate— not compete—with farmers from all backgrounds to improve the local food market and survivability rates of others like you. Because we are an endangered species. And we can’t afford to shove each other out of what tiny natural habitat we have left.

“[Farming] has to exist,” says Scheibel. “Because it’s needed. It’s absolutely necessary. But to actually do it on a scale… where you feel connected and integrated into what you’re doing… is not ‘profitable.’ And that’s where we’re at.”

The post Small-Scale Farming Shouldn’t Just Be a Hobby. So Why Is It So Hard to Make a Living?  appeared first on Modern Farmer.

My partner, John, and I were traveling in the early days of a long-planned speaking tour as the concern and confusion regarding the crisis reached its first fevered pitch. Tour events disappeared in front of us wholesale. But my first thought upon hearing about the California lockdown orders was not “How do we get home?” or “How do we keep from getting sick?” or “How do I stem the ebbing of my work and income?” As gardeners, our first thought was “We need to order seeds.” 

We were not, apparently, the only gardeners to have this instinctive thought. When I got online the day after the lockdown orders, before being able to get on a flight home, “Out of Stock” and “Back-ordered” popped up on our computer screens over and over again from our favorite organic seed sellers: Redwood Seeds, Peaceful Valley Seed, Territorial Seed, Fedco Seeds, Hudson Valley Seed, Seed Savers Exchange, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Kitazawa Seed, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. As a gardener, to feel a sense of scarcity in the seed supply was an alarm bell ringing—and ringing loudly in my mammalian brain, triggering survival anxieties and a determined instinct to engage with my own survival. Our collective survival. 

As gardeners, our first thought was “We need to order seeds.” 

Seed is important: Botanists know this, ecologists know this, farmers and horticulturists know this and most gardeners have a pretty good basic understanding. 

But, if many of our (human) species are overwhelmingly “plant blind,” even more of us are stunningly seed stupid—many of us are not sure exactly how they work, how they’ve evolved, how they are being handled at legislative, commercial or, perhaps most importantly, cultural levels, and why this matters. 

In the midst of climate crisis, a precipitous rate of biodiversity loss in our world, a global pandemic, attendant financial chaos, global social-justice reckoning and now the most globally reverberating war in the last 50-plus years, we as humans, and in the United States as an industrialized society, are being offered an intense short course in what we need most in this world, what is in fact essential to our lives: Community, family, health, dignity, clean water, clean air, access to some open space and sufficient food are all unquestionably on this list of essentials. Foundational to clean water, clean air, and sufficient food are … plants. 

Foundational to the vast majority of plants on our planet are their seeds: the smallest form of, the very essence of, these plants. 

In this bizarre moment of colliding urgencies for life as we have known it, we are collectively being offered an opportunity to remember and really understand the essential importance and power of seed in our world: for food, for medicine, for utility, for the vast interconnected web we include in the concept of biodiversity and planetary health, for beauty and for culture, whatever that might mean to us. 

This recognition of the importance of seed on micro and macro levels did not just happen in March of 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic in full form, with increasing climate extremes of the last several years or with the Russian invasion of Ukraine disrupting geopolitical stability and global food security and health. On the contrary, the stewards of the “seed world,” that dedicated sector of our independent plant-engaged world, have been sounding the alarm and preparing the soil for a likewise global seed-literacy and seed-protection revolution of sorts for many years. 

The seed world is rich with scientists, spiritualists, growers, activists and protestors who have been keeping seed alive, accessible, shared and safe. These seed stewards have been preparing for the battle ahead as seed (its integrity, its diversity and our open access to it) has become increasingly threatened. These seed keepers have been declaring loudly to all who would listen why we should join in the work to know and care for seeds ourselves as one of the most proactive steps we can take to rebuilding our human food systems, our social systems and the global ecosystems of biodiversity on which we all depend. 

Since the 1980s, when the first GMO seed patent was issued, and the 1990s, when reporting began in earnest about seed supply strategically (and stealthily) being consolidated into the holdings of large agribusiness-chemical corporations, the smaller seed sowers, growers, banks and knowers have been recording and responding. Their strategic, heartfelt, ground-level actions—documenting, saving, sharing and protecting seed—protect us all.

Excerpted with permission from What We Sow: On the Personal, Ecological, and Cultural Significance of Seeds (Timber Press, 2023)

The post Why Seeds Matter appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Wasps are an incredibly diverse species, spanning from yellowjackets to velvet ants (despite the name, they are wasps), which provide countless ecological services—including protection for agriculture via pest prevention and pollination. As wasps are predators, they hunt prey, such as flies, caterpillars and spiders. Wasps, both the ones that live and work together (social wasps) and the ones that live and work on their own (solitary wasps) are constantly working in ways that benefit the environment and humanity as a whole, maintaining an important ecological balance.

Solitary wasps, as they specialize on one specific organism, are being introduced to farms as a method of biological pest control and to great success. Some states have begun to integrate wasps into their farming procedures and recommendations. In Oregon, for example, a parasitic wasp that preys upon a highly damaging fruit fly has been released by Oregon State University to assist with control of the pest, protecting one of Oregon’s most profitable crops, blueberries, which brings in approximately $183 million per year.

Wasps … are constantly working in ways that benefit the environment and humanity as a whole, maintaining an important ecological balance.

Parasitic wasps, a division of solitary wasps, have specific insects they parasitize, including notorious pests such as tomato worms and aphids. The wasps lay their eggs inside the host, often paralyzing them with venom and viruses. Their eggs will grow and eventually hatch out of the host, killing it. Social wasps such as hornets, paper wasps and yellowjackets also provide pest control on a large scale. In the United Kingdom, social wasps were estimated to capture 14 million kilograms (30,864,717 pounds) of prey. Wasps of all species and sizes play a vital and often unrecognized role in the ecosystem.

About 75 percent of the crops we grow depend to some extent on pollination. And wasps, like bees, are pollinators. While their most commonly recognized pollination role lies in commercial fig production and orchid pollination, many other wasp species are also pollinators. Pollen wasps, which feed only on nectar and pollen, are key pollinators in their range around the world. Social wasps are generalist pollinators, bringing pollen with them as they fly from flower to flower. In certain cases, both yellowjackets and paper wasps have been found to outperform honey bees in pollen transfers. Other solitary wasps, such as the European beewolf and hairy flower wasp, have more hair than a typical wasp, transferring a lot of pollen between various plants. 

And yet, despite all this, they aren’t exactly popular creatures, and sometimes advocating for them seems like yelling into a void. (Well, a void that likes to yell back.) Most are confused as to why a hated insect could be loved, especially by a teen, and a girl at that. When this happens, I like to go back to the beginning. 

You see, my epic love story—the one we all have, the one that fundamentally changes our lives, the one that shifts how we see the world—began out of spite. In my love story, there’s no boy meets girl or girl meets girl. Instead, I met a wasp.

In the summer of 2021, I was 15 years old and had secured a paid internship at the University of Minnesota’s bee lab. We’d meet via Zoom, discuss pollinators and learn about the natural world around us. I saw the word “paid” and was immediately on board. It seemed like an easy way to spend a summer and, best of all, I was going to make some money out of it. 

Once a week, we got together and learned about pollinators and the threats they face to their health. We spent evenings learning about different types of grass and soil, roadside pollination and the dependence of humans on the often unnoticed work of insects. Throughout the summer, wasps had been mentioned sporadically, as they are important pollinators but not nearly as well known as bees. Like clockwork, every time wasps were brought up, several of the boys in my group would describe their hatred of wasps, calling them “the devil’s spawn,” “nature’s mistake” and so on. Perhaps I had heard myself described similarly one too many times because I was filled with peevish determination to prove those boys wrong—to find something within wasps that was beneficial, that would make people care. 

The only problem was that I didn’t know anything about wasps. I’d seen a couple of them but from a safe distance. I began to furiously devote myself to learning everything I could about wasps. I read Wikipedia articles, research papers, kids’ books, biology textbooks, books on the classifications of Hymenoptera—anything and everything I could get my hands on, which turned out to be not much. Insects are a group with poor publicity and public response, and within that, most of the research and funding is given to the prettier insects. Wasps, known for their warning colors and stings, don’t quite fit that bill.

The day I fell in love for the first time is the same day to which I credit my first kiss. Sitting on my porch in the sticky Minnesota summer, I was reading a children’s book about frightening insects. Absorbed in the illustrations of paper wasps, I at first did not notice the one that alighted upon my palm. She began to crawl across my hands and then up my arm and, gradually, as I, at first terrified, began to calm, she alighted on my face and began to explore, nibbling my lips with her mouth. It is hard to explain what I felt in those moments—certainly fear but also a keen sense of wonder. Here was this magnificent creature, vastly misunderstood and greatly feared, and yet she had been gentle with me. How could I look at her and not love her? 

When I first began talking to people about wasps, I found myself frequently alone. I was standing on my soapbox and trying to convince people that what they thought they knew was wrong. It didn’t help that I was a woman, and thus, every time I spoke, I was challenged. Online, where I tried my best to keep my comments polite and informative, I was called names, and once, memorably, I was told I’d be “lit on fire, along with all the wasp nests.” I was dismayed. You see, I had (perhaps naively) believed that when I showed up (so excited!) ready to teach and learn along with others, I would be welcomed with open arms. And for a long time, I didn’t find that. Yet, my love for wasps persisted. 

Throughout the years since, where I have found hatred thrown in my face, I have also experienced the kindness of strangers. I have taught children how to hold wasps and bees alike, in some small way showing them the power of questioning what you are taught. None of them have been stung. I have met older women who watched me leaning into bushes, often holding a net and asking me what in the world I was doing. 

I have learned to look for people who, like me, have been pushed to the side for their oddities and those who have been boxed into categories simply because of how they were born. 

Wasps have taught me to open my heart, and I am a better person for it.

Born and raised in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Anna (@annalouise014) spends her days poking various insects and doing her math homework. She is also the designated spider relocator of her family.

The post In Defense of Wasps  appeared first on Modern Farmer.

I never set out to be a farmer. At 27, I was living with my co-parent and one-year-old child on 10 acres of land in rural Oregon. I had dreams of a little homestead operation to feed my family—a garden and maybe a few chickens for eggs. However, when I began my medical gender transition, everything I knew about family completely changed. 

I grew up in a small conservative town about two hours from where I live now. My parents divorced when I was six years old, and I spent a lot of that time at my cousins’ farm where we ran wild through pasture and forest, daring each other to touch hotwire and finding portals in the branches of yew trees. I told my cousins in the privacy of those woods that sometimes I dreamt about being a boy, and when we played Oregon Trail with their Radio Flyer red wagon, I could be whatever I wanted. 

After the divorce, I traveled from house to house with my mom and her various boyfriends. For a couple of years, my mom was married to a man named Tim who lived on 40 acres of farmland. I made friends with the neighbor kids, and they asked if I was interested in joining their 4H club. Together, we raised sheep, pigs and chickens. We gave our animals silly names like Lightbulb and Tofurkey, and we desperately copied the way other kids at the county fair displayed the feathers and feet of their chickens to judges. 

While I loved the communal aspect of 4H and was even OK with raising animals for meat, it became increasingly hard to mask my queerness among the small-town conservative parents and children I interacted with through the club. Eventually, I told everyone in my life that I was queer and was immediately shut out from the community; my closest friend’s mom was concerned that I would “turn” her daughters gay. 

I spent the majority of my late teens and early twenties living in cars and cheap studio apartments, chasing dirtbag dreams in the mountains and eating gas station burritos as a luxurious meal. Eventually, those dreams led to me being pregnant and living in a barn on a family friend’s land. We paid $500 in rent and helped maintain the property. I started a small garden that didn’t grow much more than tomatoes and snow peas. It felt like a step toward something bigger than myself, but I wasn’t sure how to contextualize it. I knew that there was no other way I was willing to raise a child than on land with forest nearby to roam, an aspect of my own childhood that I cherish immensely. 

My co-parent started helping the neighbor maintain her property as well, and when that neighbor decided to move back to the city, she referred us to her landlord and we were able to rent a three-bedroom farmhouse on 10 acres for $1,500 a month. As someone who had grown up in poverty, it felt like being handed an incomprehensible gift. 

Two months after we moved in, I started my medical gender transition. Once I was living my life fully out as a trans masculine person, everything I valued started to shift. I started living in my own body. It made me love and care for my kid more than ever before, and my co-parent and I realized we needed to rethink the dynamics of our family. For us, this meant that they would move out to live and work in the city and I would stay on the farm. 

I was able to find roommates to move in to help with rent, both of whom are trans and queer. I started expanding my own relationships through polyamory and realized the importance for me of dating other trans people. 

As I started to see this community coming together out in the country, I realized that it could be possible to provide food for other trans people. I had spent so much of my life diminishing my own goals, thinking that I was always dreaming big and could never really execute those ideas. When I had my own space to daydream about what I could create, I started thinking through the steps to getting there and soon realized I had the capacity and support to dive in. 

The initial goal was to create a small-scale, biodynamic farm that focused on utilizing animals in the garden. As I started to learn more, I found that raising rabbits for meat was a highly economical and easy way to produce meat on a small scale. I bought chickens and ducks from a queer friend who runs a small chick business for eggs, and before I realized it, I had a full operation on my hands. My friends and I came up with a name—Phototaxis Farming Project—that encapsulated the trans and moth-like experience of aiming beyond the light. We started a GoFundMe to help with initial farm costs, and I was amazed how many people were excited to see this project happening. 

Since then, my goal has evolved and gotten even more specific. I want to feed other trans people, especially those who (like many of us) have faced food insecurity their entire lives. Trans people are three times as likely to go hungry than cis people, and that statistic only increases for trans people of color. With government food subsidy programs such as WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) and Food Stamps, there are restrictions on what kind of food benefits can be used for—often limited to mass-produced generic brands that are more packed with filler ingredients than actual, nutritious food. 

Many farmers markets have programs where you can exchange food stamps for tokens to use with selected vendors, but even farmers markets are inaccessible to many people with disabilities (a significant intersection for trans people), families to take care of, weekend jobs and feeling unsafe in the predominantly white, wealthy spaces where farmers markets tend to be. My mission is to provide free and accessible food for the trans community. If this project continues to expand, I see a future where we can offer collective housing and work opportunities for trans people as well. 

Producing and preparing food can be central to building community, and it’s been the driver of our trans community. When we processed our first ducks, we shared the meal with queer and trans friends who were there to help with preparing the farm for spring. I made duck soup—most of us had never even eaten duck before—and we were all overjoyed with trying something new on the same land on which it was raised. 

A few weeks ago, we processed the first litter of meat rabbits. My partner Lamby and I were unsure how it would feel, after having processed the ducks together and still feeling the emotional toll of taking the life of an animal. I asked my friends who run a small rabbitry in Portland if they would be willing to come out and help us. The experience ended up being pure magic. To learn such a specific skill from other trans farmers and to be in the presence of people with the same goals of radicalizing farming felt like the work of our trans ancestors bringing us together. This week we are learning how to process the pelts from another trans farmer, and this weekend, we will be celebrating trans joy and sharing our first harvest with as many trans people as we can fit on the property. 

It’s hard out there to be trans, especially with the increase in trans violence and anti-trans legislation. We are actively having our bodily autonomy and sovereignty taken from us. But farming is inherently radical, and to be able to bring something so essential such as high-quality, fresh, loved and cared for food to this community feels like something I have to do. 

I never set out to be a farmer, but farming has opened the door to creating a community where I do belong. Yesterday, I walked through the farm with chickens following at my heels and fresh eggs in my hands. I ran and the chickens ran with me, I danced in the anticipation of the rain. The project, this land and this community I have had a part in building has brought me to a place of joy that I didn’t know could exist—and that’s just it: This passion project makes me want to exist. 

The post In Becoming a Farmer, I Found Community and Unearthed My Trans Joy  appeared first on Modern Farmer.