The two women stand at the top of the ridge and look out over the muddy field. They look into the future -- and the future is lush and green.
Amy Newday and Diane Glenn may not be the first image to come to mind when one thinks of Michigan farmers, but that is, they will both admit with a grin, part of the allure. (According to a 2011 National Public Radio
interview with U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, women are the largest minority in agriculture, with about 300,000 nationwide operating their own farms.)
After a couple of years of careful planning, Amy and Diane started their small farm in Shelbyville, a rural area about 25 miles north of Kalamazoo, in 2011. They call it
Harvest of Joy Farm, LLC. "Started" is a relative term here. Both have been elbow deep in farm dirt since childhood, but the summer of 2011 was their first year of running a community supported agriculture farm, or a CSA.
"When you become a CSA member with us," says Amy, "you join a community of folks dedicated to the long-term success of our farm. CSA members pay a lump sum at the beginning of each growing season and then receive weekly shares of produce throughout the season."
Amy actually lives on the farm, next door to the family dairy farm on which she grew up, while Diane is a resident of Cooper Township, making the trek daily to help with the farm work. The two friends met years ago in a drum circle of women who gathered at the full moon to beat out ancient rhythms and connect with nature and each other.
"We started talking about gardening," Diane says. "My father ran four greenhouses in Kalamazoo, so I come from a family of growers and gardeners."
"And I’ve always wanted to be an organic farmer," Amy adds, "so we started talking about running an organic farm and selling our produce to the community."
When Amy went through a divorce, and Diane was laid off from a job she’d held for 29 years, misfortune seemed to point toward fortune. To Diane, it seemed the right time to plant the seed of all that gardening talk into the earth and make it grow.
"I warned Diane about how difficult it would be," Amy says.
Diane laughs. She didn’t listen. Amy gave in. Both dug in, and their first summer of crops was bountiful, their CSA with six shares successful.
But now it is winter, and the two women stand on the ridge surveying the muddy field. Dancing between them as they plan the extended acreage is Buddy, the garden guard dog who guards against nearby deer and other wildlife that, after all, may try for free shares.
The farmers don’t see the mud; they see next summer’s harvest. They see a successful first year turning into an even more successful second year, and plan on tripling their crops and shares.
"Winter is not a time of rest," Amy says. "It’s a time for reviewing the year before and planning the year ahead."
"It’s a time to do research," Diane adds, as the two head back to the farmhouse, Buddy running in circles around them.
On the kitchen table in the farmhouse where Amy lives, papers and spreadsheets and diagrams are spread out for meticulous review. On her laptop, a spreadsheet shows what crops were planted during their first season. Columns record times when seeds were planted to grow transplants in boxes, when the transplants were moved to the garden outside, when hoeing and weeding were done, how much and when the plants were watered, a calculation of how many hours went into each crop, what crops were brought to farmers markets and which ones and how much went into shares. In even more rows of columns every imaginable factor is recorded.
"After the season was over, we went to a conference to learn more about the business end of farming," Diane says. The conference, sponsored by Michigan State University, was called the
Great Lakes Fruit and Vegetable and Farmers Market Expo, and among the many lessons they brought home was that they needed to do a better job on recordkeeping.
"It’s not enough to just record things at the end of the day," Diane says. "We need to take a notebook or even a laptop into the field so that we don’t miss anything."
"We study our records and decide what to do differently next year," says Amy. "Which crops did best, were most disease-resistant, sold more, tasted better, that sort of thing. We put up a hoop house to cover some of the plants last summer. We plan to build a second one to extend our growing season, and cleaned out the old milk shed for more room to sort shares for our customers. And, we need to find ways of bringing balance to work and life."
Growing vegetables is not the only occupation for either woman. Diane teaches yoga classes in Kalamazoo, and Amy, also a poet, teaches at the writing center in Kalamazoo College. Balance may be the hardest trick to master.
"Not only do we plan to expand our crops," Amy says, "but we also want to expand education. We’re planning to bring college interns to the fields to learn how to farm. We want people to connect with the land, not just learn intellectually about farming but to feel like a part of it."
"To build an intentional community," Diane adds. "Maybe even teach yoga classes on the farm."
As one season ends and another begins, the two women have turned old crops back into the earth to recycle nutrients for future crops. A truckload of manure was brought onto the farm and worked into the soil. Compost and mulch were mixed in. Raised beds have been covered with straw and thick layers of leaves. Tools were organized and inventoried and lists made of what would be needed next year.
The two have walked the fields over and over again to visualize the gardens to come. They’ve discussed adding a coop for ducks so they can add duck eggs to the shares. And what about new brochures to pass out at the markets? An awning for their market table would work better than last summer’s big umbrella and, well, the planning never stops.
Seeds are sewn in the farmers’ minds in the long weeks of winter, long before the earth warms for planting.
Zinta Aistars is a freelance writer from Portage and editor of the literary ezine The Smoking Poet.
Photos by Erik Holladay
To learn more about Harvest of Joy Farm, go here. The 2012 season offers full and half shares, at $400 and $235 respectively. All farming practices are economically and ecologically sustainable, using only organic farming methods.
Amy Newday and Diane Glenn at Harvest of Joy Farm.