Thursday, October 4, 2012

Monty and Rose, two dark-brown Percheron draft horses, provide the muscle at Amethyst Farm on North East Street.

They do the work tractors used to do: preparing cut hay in the fields, hauling manure to fertilize crops, even plowing the farm’s driveway during the winter.

“I love being able to hear and not have the noise and pollution while I’m going in the field,” said Bernard Brennan, the co-owner of Amethyst Farm, which boards and trains horses. “Any time I’m taking the horses out I’m not burning fossil fuels.”

Brennan, 42, a former professor of evolutionary biology at Yale University, is one of a small but growing number of farmers who are returning to using horse power for at least a portion of their work.

Brennan and his wife, Patricia, bought Amethyst Farm about 18 months ago. The couple, who have two daughters, had been involved in Community Supported Agriculture enterprises in both the New Haven, Conn., area and in New York state, and wanted to pursue community agriculture full time and year round, said Brennan.

He quit his job at Yale, and Patricia Brennan was able to move her National Science Foundation-funded research in evolutionary biology to the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Amethyst Farm generally boards and trains between 15 and 20 horses at a time. Brennan thought it made sense to bring in draft horses to help with the farm work involved in the operation.

“My goal is to live more locally and more sustainably and get off the tractors,” he said. “This is moving in the right direction.”

Growing workforce

Monty, 12, and Rose, 15, came to him from Muddy Brook Farm in Amherst where their previous owner, Barry Roberts, used them for carriage rides.

Now Brennan has adopted two purebred English shires from Blue Star Equiculture, a draft horse rescue organization and farm in Palmer. Tiny Tom and Big Ben, 3-year-old geldings, are settled in their stalls and have begun a lengthy training period. “You want the stamina and ambition of a teenager, but the horse to be trained and calm enough to listen to you,” he said.

Tiny Tom and Big Ben are the first horses Brennan has trained. He is starting out by teaching them when to start and stop, using a lead line. “It’s a lot of repetition,” he said.

The next step will be to put harnesses around them and then bits in their mouths. Brennan said eventually he will be able to control the horses with only the bits.

After that he will have them pull tires, eventually advancing to heavier and more complex equipment.

Once Tiny Tom and Big Ben are ready to begin working the fields, Brennan said, he will pair them with his experienced horses so they learn not to startle. “It will take a few years to have a bomb-proof horse,” he said.

Needed a home

Brennan happened to be looking for draft horses when Tiny Tom and Big Ben became available. “There seems to be a lot of serendipity involved,” he said.

They were among six horses that came to Blue Star from Long Island following the death of their owner. Pamela Rickenbach, Blue Star’s executive director, said her organization takes draft horses which have been abused or whose owners can no longer care for them, and places them at farms where they will be able to work.

Though healthy and large, Tiny Tom and Big Ben were still in danger, Rickenbach said.

“These babies had only been halter-trained. They haven’t been trained to do anything else yet, and in this economy, a horse without a job is at risk, as these horses were,” she said.

Rickenbach said thousands of similar horses end up in slaughterhouses. “We can do far better for our horses,” she said.

She expects the geldings to fit in well at Amethyst Farm.

“Big Ben and Tommy are going to grow up in an environment where they can participate in the life of their farm and the life of the community,” she said.

Two other horses rescued from the same owner, Merlin and Foxy, will be used for carriage rides around Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pa. The remaining two are at a foster home awaiting permanent placement, Rickenbach said.

‘Romantic ideal’

Justin Morace, Blue Star’s co-founder, said having Tiny Tom and Big Ben at an Amherst farm is ideal, since it allows him to check on them and participate in their training.

Morace is also an instructor at the Stockbridge School of Agriculture’s Draft Horse Husbandry Program, which last year taught more than a dozen students how to use horse power.

Nell Finnigan, who graduated from UMass last year, now works at Blue Star, which is also a working farm. She uses the horses for plowing and harrowing, spreading manure and hauling the harvest. Finnigan said the draft-horse movement is burgeoning among young farmers, and added that she was “totally smitten” by the idea even before taking the class. “Draft-horse power is sort of a romantic ideal,” Finnigan said.

She said UMass is one of the few places where students can work with draft horses.

“It’s changed the course of my agricultural career,” she said.

Brennan said a farmer has more control when using horses as opposed to tractors. The animals have a larger range, he said, and are a “modular” source of power, meaning that they can be added or subtracted from the equipment depending on the rigors of the job.

His horses eat hay grown at Amethyst Farm, provide fertilizer and have less impact on the fields than tractors. “They don’t have compression on the soil,” he said.

With 120 acres, the farm has plenty of work for Monty and Rose, Brennan said. “My ideal is to work them morning and afternoon sessions,” he said.

So far the horses have been doing all the hay teddings, in which cut grass is fluffed up three to four times daily over a two- to three-day period, as well as basic maintenance like dragging the indoor riding rings and transporting material to fill potholes in the farm’s roads. They also haul manure for land leased by the Many Hands Farm Corps, a Community Supported Agriculture enterprise that brings in teenagers and college students to help work 4 acres at Amethyst Farm.

Brennan has learned about horse power from members of the Draft Animal Power Network, a regional association of farmers, and the Fair Winds Farm in Brattleboro, Vt., which has long used horses to power equipment. He has also read books by Lynn Miller, a small-farm owner who has written about haying with horses.

Brennan said he is looking for ways to keep Monty and Rose busy throughout the fall and winter. He is considering offering sleigh rides, and may also have the horses pull logs from the woods.

He also wants to let young people interested in agriculture see the horses in action. The Many Hands Farm Corps provides an ideal opportunity for that, he said.

Morace credits Brennan with demonstrating that a farm can uses horses instead of tractors.

“It’s about making students aware that this is not just a dream, but it’s actually possible to run a horse-powered farm,” Morace said.

September 24, 2012

RED HOOK, N.Y. — It was harvest time, and several farm hands were hunched over a bed of sweet potatoes under the midday sun, elbow deep in soil for $10 an hour. But they were not typical laborers.

Jeff Arnold, 28, who has learned how to expertly maneuver a tractor, graduated from Colorado State University. Abe Bobman, 24, who studied sociology at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, was clearing vines alongside Nate Krauss-Malett, 25, who went to Skidmore College.

Mr. Krauss-Malett said he became interested in farming after working in a restaurant and seeing how much food was wasted. Mr. Bobman had the same realization working in the produce section at a grocery store before college.

They had been in the fields here at Hearty Roots Community Farm in the Hudson Valley since 7 a.m. They all said they could not imagine doing any other job.

“Farming appeals to me, and probably to other people, because it’s simple and straightforward work outdoors with literal fruits from your labor,” Mr. Bobman said. “It doesn’t feel like you’re a part of an oppressive institution.”

For decades, the number of farmers has been shrinking as a share of the population, and agriculture has often been seen as a backbreaking profession with little prestige. But the last Agricultural Census in 2007 showed a 4 percent increase in the number of farms, the first increase since 1920, and some college graduates are joining in the return to the land.

Jordan Schmidt, a crew manager here at Hearty Roots, studied environmental science at Wesleyan. Ms. Schmidt, 27, did not have so much as a garden growing up, but in college, she said, she worked at a student-run farm and fell in love with agriculture. So she gave up on research science and moved onto a farm in Pennsylvania after graduating. This is her third season at Hearty Roots.

Hearty Roots, about 100 miles north of New York City, spans 70 acres with a clear view of the Catskill Mountains to the west. At the height of the harvest this year, the farm produced 8,000 pounds of vegetables a week — including peppers, beets and kale — and employed 10 workers. None of them came from farming backgrounds and most had heard about the job through word of mouth.

Ms. Schmidt recalled that her first time working on a farm, she loaded thousands of onions into a greenhouse to dry out, which was supposed to improve their flavor. But the roof was left uncovered, and when she returned the next day, many of the onions had been spoiled by the sun.

“They were caramelized,” she explained, lowering her eyes. Even with experience, she said, she still makes mistakes. Last year, she left a batch of sweet potatoes outside overnight, and they froze.

Still, she is experienced enough now to command a small group of farmers at Hearty Roots. It took some time, though, for her parents to come to terms with her profession.

“They’re like: ‘Can you make it like that? Can you make it and have kids?’ ” she said. But they have slowly come around, and now, Ms. Schmidt said, her mother is an organic food activist among her friends. (Her brother wants to be a writer.)

Hiring college students for the farm can have drawbacks.

“Most of the people here who work for me are here for one season and then move on to other farms, and so that’s actually the biggest challenge,” said Ben Shute, who owns Hearty Roots with his wife, Lindsey. “Every year it’s like training new people.”

But he said it was worth having such a staff.

“A lot of these people are like ambitious young people who want to farm for themselves,” Mr. Shute said, so they are motivated to learn quickly.

On the East End of Long Island, Sean Frazier, 23, and four others, all recent college graduates in their mid-20s, work on Quail Hill farm in Amagansett and have become close friends. Mr. Frazier, a Princeton graduate who until his senior year wanted to get a Ph.D. in physics, said his father wished that he was doing “something more intellectual, or something that’s harder.”

“He thinks I should be using my math skills,” Mr. Frazier said.

Like the workers in the Hudson Valley, the ones in Amagansett have had their share of misadventures. Mr. Frazier recalled that the first time he tried to collect eggs from under a chicken, he was pecked on his hands, surprisingly hard, and promptly switched (though briefly) to a feet-first technique.

Asked if he felt he was missing out on the city lifestyle, Mr. Frazier reflected for a moment. “I much more feel the opposite,” he said. “It would just really bother me to feel like I was inside all day and I was just missing out on everything that happened.”

The federal Agriculture Department said it did not have statistics on the number of college graduates who have become farmers in recent years, but Kathleen A. Merrigan, the deputy agriculture secretary, said in an interview that she believed the profession was becoming more attractive.

“I always joke that in the old days I used to go to a party and people would say, ‘What do you do for work,’ and I would say, ‘I work in agriculture,’ and I’d be left in the corner somewhere with my gin and tonic,” Ms. Merrigan said. “Now I say I work in agriculture and I’m the belle of the ball.”

In interviews at the two farms, the workers said that for them, farming was not a fad.

“I definitely want to end up living on my own farm — that’s definitely my life goal,” said Calvin Kyrkostas, Mr. Frazier’s co-worker, who graduated with a history degree from Oberlin College in Ohio.

Mr. Kyrkostas, 25, said he got into agriculture after working on a Missouri farm one summer in college. He said he became addicted to the feeling of accomplishment that came with seeing — and eating — the fruits of his labor after 15-hour workdays.

And then there was the tractor.

“I’m from Long Island, you know, I’m not a country boy, so it was cool to be able to hop on a John Deere,” he said. “It’s like every little boy’s dream to drive a tractor.”

“You don’t get into farming for the money,” he said. “You do it for the love of the game.”

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For my own thoughts on finding good work related to sustainable food and farming, see:

Finding Work

Published on GazetteNET (http://www.gazettenet.com)

When I read of the plan of Amherst College to follow Hampshire College in having a farm to grow veggies for the dining hall, and for the University of Massachusetts to activate its farm, I was fascinated.

When we arrived on the UMass campus 55 years ago, it was not far from the days of being Mass Aggie, a school which the college at the south end of town thought of as an institution of “hick” farmers. Amherst College would never have dreamed of imitating them. Now all are joined in extolling “agricultural fundamentalism,” the doctrine that says putting your hands in the soil to grow things is socially ideal.

In the mid-20th century, it tended to be forgotten that a graduate of Amherst College, William Clark, the first president of Massachusetts College of Agriculture in the 19th century, went to Hokkaido province in Japan and founded a college of agriculture in the city Sopporo.

By the 1970s, influenced by a number of faculty members of the College of Agriculture within UMass who had gone to work under the U.S. Agency for International Development in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq and India, a Center for International Agriculture was founded and contracts signed to work with several countries.

Here is the opportunity for the college students in our midst to learn about the interdependence of agricultural production in the world. Many in the farming bubble in the Valley suppose that it would be possible to eat only food produced in a 100-mile radius of Amherst, not realizing what goes into their lattes, chai teas and pizzas.

Backyard gardens are fine, but they cannot feed the world.

I am a native of Iowa, with relatives still farming there. My spouse grew up on a Rhode Island dairy farm with a vegetable stand and went on to teach resource economics at UMass. But we met in India and returned many times for him to teach in agriculture colleges. We personally experienced the shortage of food grains that led India to stop importing wheat from the United States in 1965 and to use the seeds and techniques developed by Norman Borlaug, winner of the Nobel Peace prize for his work in Mexico.

By the end of the 20th century, however, there was much criticism of India’s “Green Revolution” method with little recognition that during the period since 1965 the population India has to feed has grown from 300 million to one billion people.

I hope faculty members in economics, political science, history and sociology will join the food scientists and biologists in the colleges in discussing controversial ideas such as genetically-modified food, the Farm Bill in Congress, the relation of global warming to drought, food stamps, obesity versus starving children, community gardens, the United Nations Food and Agriculture organization, how to share river waters in the United States and how to have enough water for agriculture in the semi-arid tropics.

This is the kind of knowledge about how the world eats that a federally-established university and the other colleges in the Five College consortium are able to supply.

Georgana M. Foster, formerly of Leverett, lives in Amherst.