Hey everybody,

As my days here at Quails-R-Us whiz by, I’m startled to realize that I have very little time left here on the farm.  After months of working so closely with the owners, living with them, taking meals with them, hearing firsthand their struggles and future plans, I’ve found that somewhere along the line I stopped thinking of this summer as a temporary arrangement and more as the beginning of a long-term partnership. During this summer I have been treated as a partner in the business, a position I’m honored to have held.  Often I was asked my opinion on some managerial decision that would impact the farm well after I was gone, and I always gave my answer as if this really were my farm.  Without realizing it, I started considering the success of this farm as integral to my future as it is to that of the owners.  The farm’s struggles became my struggles, and I devoted as much time and effort to fixing them as I would any hardship in my own life.  Any victory the farm had – getting into a new market, having a favorable article written about us in the local newspaper, securing a new CSA member – had me as delighted as if I would be benefiting from that victory myself.

One of the many newspaper pieces mentioning us this summer

Every minute I spent working alongside the owners was less for me and my education and more for the continued success of the farm.  Somewhere between my arrival on the farm and now, I became invested, and the continued improvement of the economic and environmental sustainability of the business became my sole goal.  I’ve been giving 110% every day to make sure this farm survives. Now I find it difficult to remind myself that this is just a temporary job, and in just a few short weeks I’ll be far away from the beautiful sunlit meadows I’ve come to love.  I’ve had an absolutely wonderful summer, filled with hard work and many memories, and I’m still a bit confused as to where all my time went.  It’s a bit of a shock to remember that no, I won’t be here in November to make sure all the customers ordering their Thanksgiving turkeys are satisfied.  And no, I won’t be here next lambing season to help birth and eartag new additions to the flock. It’s so strange, after weeks of thinking of this farm as my farm, as my future, and doing so much for its long term success, that I’ll be leaving it behind to continue my life.  Maybe I’ll return someday to continue to help manage it, and maybe not.  The thought makes me a little melancholy.

I hardly feel that all my hard work is for nothing, though.  I’ve learned so much from this experience, lessons you could never get from a textbook or a lecture.  While I hardly romanticized farming before this job, I definitely was not fully aware of how much it takes out of you. I regularly have been working seventy hours a week, falling into bed exhausted at the end of the day, with barely the energy left to eat, much less do all the hiking and adventuring I thought I was going to do this summer. And still I have had more downtime than my bosses, who regularly wake up at 4am to start the day’s chores while I’m still snoozing, and who work longer into the night every night on paperwork and number-crunching.  I knew before that a farmer wears many hats: soil scientist, veterinarian, carpenter, marketing specialist, mechanic.  Now I know that farmers often also must know the less hands-on fields: web design, the ins and outs of workers comp, how to navigate market politics, and a lot about licensing, permits, and taxes.  Many of the farmers I developed friendships with this summer cited a love of the land and of nature as the reason they kept with farming, despite all its hardships. And yet often we all are so busy farming, rushing from one chore to the next, that taking the time to consider and appreciate the natural landscape we work in gets put on the back burner.  All farmers, it seems, are on the brink of survival.  You’ll never get rich in farming.  There always will be another crisis to attend to – an outbreak of footrot, a broken tractor, a very vocal unsatisfied customer, a bill that’s overdue to be paid.  But, if you do it right, you will have a good sense of satisfaction with your life.  You’ll be working hard to put food on the tables of your customers.  You’ll have rewarding relationships with your community, fellow farmers and consumers alike. You’ll spend time with animals, spend time with growing things, spend time in nature every day.  You’ll go to bed knowing you made a difference.  And, to me, that will be what makes it worth it.

More soon.

Lauren

One of our permanent signs

My last month in Pennsylvania marked a transition from working on the farm to working with customers at the farmer’s markets.  I had been attending markets already once or twice a week, but they were small, and I usually had help. That changed though when the Scranton Co-op Market started in mid-July. This three day a week market runs for nine hours at a time, and has been open since 1939.    It’s a very established market and getting in was quite a feat.  I was given basically full control of how to manage this market, since I was to be the one working it, a task I did not take lightly.  And by the end of that month, I had learned a lot of dealing with customers.

The basic schedule of any farmer’s market is that you arrive a few hours before it opens to the public.  You set up your tent and your tables, unload your product, make signs, put out promotional materials, and wait for the sales to start.  QRS packs their product in large coolers, so customers don’t get a chance to casually view the inventory we have to sell, unlike a vegetable stand or a craft stand.  This is why making the sign is so important.  For most of the season, our signs were customized for each market on a white-board with dry erase markers.  We used various colors and boldness levels to emphasize certain products over others.  I learned how to organize information on a sign very well, as well as where to place the sign to get the attention of passersby.  Later in the season, the farm purchased permanent signs that listed all of our inventory, even if we didn’t have every product at that particular market.  For this reason, I kept using white-board signs in addition to the permanent signs.   Smaller signs are also good for advertising sales or specialty products.  When we had barn kittens that needed to be adopted out, we used smaller signs to communicate this to our customers.  You can get a lot of information across in few words if you’re practiced enough.

A sample of my signmaking

At any market, you’re going to be asked a lot of questions.  Some are out of valid curiosity: What does free range mean? Do brown eggs taste differently, or are they healthier, than white eggs? How do you use chicken feet? What do quail eggs taste like? Some are out of a desire to know the food better: Do you use antibiotics? How much time do your sheep spend outside? How fresh are these eggs? Do you feed your pigs GMO corn?  Then you have the strange questions:  Do you have live chickens in those coolers? Do you have to cut a chicken to get half a chicken? Do you sell rabbit eggs? And, my personal favorite, are you selling coffins for children? I suppose our white coolers may look a little bit sinister, but no farmer’s market I know of has coffin vendors.  A good market worker needs to be able to answer all these questions, to know the business and the philosophy inside and out to satisfy  curiosity and make the sale. I genuinely loved engaging with our customers.  When people came back saying how excellent our product was, I took it as a personal victory.  I enjoyed answering questions, taking orders for the future, showing off the product, and adding up the total, and I enjoyed watching the various people go about their business shopping for their meals.  Farmer’s markets are a delight.

One thing I wasn’t expecting was the amount of politics that goes on behind the scenes.  I suppose like any group, the vendors of a market have disputes and tensions.  Some are resolved cordially, usually through a market manager or a vote, some not so cordially, and some are never resolved, but just simmer just under the surface, making enjoying the market a very difficult prospect.  All vendors are there for the same reason: to make money while helping the consumer eat fresh, local, and sustainable food. It’s a shame that such petty disagreements can destroy the sense of community in a market so easily.

On the whole, I had a fantastic time working at the markets.  It was probably my favorite part of my internship.  My market became a part of me, and it was really hard to leave it in the hands of someone else, even if they were my bosses. I met many great people, customers and fellow vendors alike, and I really hope I can work in a farmer’s market again someday in some manner, making people happy and advancing the movement.