Part 3: Meet Cassie and Jake!
In Part 1 and Part 2 of this blog series, we learned that the average age of a farmer in the US is about 57 years old, and small family farms are disappearing at an alarming rate as big farms get bigger and take over the industry. And we learned that this trend is hurting farmers, local economies, the environment, and our local food future.
So the question becomes, how do we break down barriers to farming and support young people getting into this critical profession, specifically into organic farming that actively cares for the land and local communities?
We have to create a new narrative, one that demonstrates how dynamic, fulfilling, and viable this livelihood can be. We have to reach young people with these new stories and, if at all possible, give them an immersive experience into what farming could be in this modern era.
This is exactly what the KFH Farmer Apprentice program is all about, and at the heart of it all, is Cassie and Jake.
Cassie and Jake eager to get started on their own slice of Sweet Beet Farm.
With Environmental Science degrees under their belts, Cassie and Jake graduated from Colby-Sawyer College with a fascination for farming. This interest was initially sparked in college, where they encountered farming in several ways through a long standing partnership between the college and us here at the Kearsarge Food Hub (KFH).
Through field trips, classroom talks, volunteer opportunities, and summer internships at KFH, Cassie and Jake got a taste of farming and came to understand a little more about how local food moves through the community. When they graduated, they expressed wanting to dig even deeper into this field, and the seed of an idea for a Farmer Apprentice Program was planted.
This created the perfect opportunity for KFH to start doing something we’ve wanted to do since our inception - actually grow more farmers.
This is a dream that we share with our beloved community, including Dorothy and Andy Jeffrey who became part of the team that helped shepherd this new and exciting program into existence. Through collaborative efforts between KFH, The Jeffrey’s, Colby-Sawyer College, and Cassie and Jake themselves, the first ever Farmer Apprentice Program was born.
This program is uniquely designed to support potential new farmers with access to land, education, community, mentorship, technical assistance, business support, and access to markets, including our own Sweet Beet Market, in order to get real life experience and gain a true sense of what it means to be a modern farmer.
And one absolutely critical component of this program is that it is paid. Cassie and Jake are being compensated for a five month stint of running their operating their own slice of Sweet Beet Farm. They are also receiving up to 10 hours of direct mentorship each and every week from the KFH crew, including co-founder and Sweet Beet Farm manager Pierre Hahn, as well as CSC professor in Environmental Studies, Leon Malan.
This mentorship does not, however, sacrifice one of the primary goals of the program, which is to foster autonomy for the apprentices and nurture their leadership skills, such as decisiveness, creative problem solving, and strategic thinking.
Cassie and Jake will be the first to tell you from their experience that creative problem solving is the name of the game when it comes to farming, and they’ve been in the driver's seat of this experience from day one navigating through all sorts of interesting problems AND successes.
Putting new plastic on the high tunnel (background) and devising a new system for storing drip tape (foreground).
To support this program, we repurposed the old farm stand building and field, where the food hub first got started with Sweet Beet Farm Stand, into an educational center and learning farm. This ½ acre plot of land, which includes a field, a 30’ x 70’ high tunnel, and a 10’ x 20’ low tunnel, is the perfect size, with several diverse growing settings, to test out farming as a livelihood.
Cassie and Jake cleaned up the field, gathered and organized the equipment, dove into business and crop planning, and started planting seeds. They’ve been keeping journals to document the process, and it certainly has not all been smooth sailing. The problems they face on the farm are some of the richest sources for learning.
One major issue has been pests, squash beetles and cucumber beetles to be exact. To address the issue, Cassie and Jake started handpicking beetles and eggs and spraying with organic, low impact neem oil. When that didn’t quite do the trick, they were forced to spray pyganic, which is still an organic method, but just much more intense and can affect populations of the good bugs as well as the pests. Nevertheless, Cassie and Jake really had no choice if they were going to salvage their squash plants. Luckily, this method ultimately worked to help keep the pests at bay.
Squash beetle, ugh!
According to Jake, at the beginning of July they “lost about 10 plants to these pests, and it has taken a lot of work to manage their population.” He goes on to explain that “consistent handpicking of eggs and beetles have shown us one of the reasons why organic food is so expensive. The amount of effort it takes to avoid using chemicals is really beginning to strike home with me.”
This is an incredibly important theme when it comes to organic food production - incentivizing organic practices and properly compensating farmers for their hard work is absolutely essential, and yet this can make the price of that food inaccessible to many neighbors. Learning how to close the affordability gap while supporting farmers with fair prices is a central pursuit of ours here at the Kearsarge Food Hub (and if we flip the issue on its head, rather than calling organic food expensive, we might say that conventional practices cut corners and externalize costs to produce falsely cheap food...this topic is worthy of its own three part blog series!)
While on their farmer apprentice journey, Cassie and Jake have been active in helping Sweet Beet Farm become certified organic. As environmentalists, they’ve come to deeply understand how important regenerative farming practices are when it comes to building healthy soils to grow healthy foods, emulating nature as much as possible, properly stewarding resources, and working in harmony with the surrounding landscape. Being immersed in the organic farming process has given them a deep appreciation for how much thought, care, and energy goes into intentional and sustainable agriculture.
Cassie plants peppers in the high tunnel after much preparation of the soil, including soil testing and adding appropriate organic amendments like compost.
And at the same time, they’ve been introduced to key tools that make many jobs on the farm a whole lot easier. Jake muses, “Using the transplanting tools such as the Jang seeder and the paper pot transplanted has been incredible! These forms of technology are truly revolutionary for this field (no pun intended).”
Finding the right tools that save on time and labor, without sacrificing regenerative practices, is a big part of making a small organic farm viable. Another critical component is planning and strategy. From crop planning to budgeting to sending crops to market, there is a whole lot that goes on behind the scenes of a viable small scale market garden.
In fact, when asked what’s been the most helpful in terms of support from the food hub, Cassie and Jake both agree that getting a sense of the planning is a huge benefit to them, and it is something they might not have otherwise learned about if they would have gotten started on their own.
Jake notes that “If it wasn’t for soil tests, amendment spreadsheets, and garden planning, it would be incredibly difficult to farm efficiently.” Cassie explains that she “learned from France more about produce standards, wholesale prices, and how to fill out packing slips for deliveries.”
Cassie, Jake, and Professor Malan setting things up on the farm early in the season.
It’s not just about throwing plants in the ground and hanging out outside. And it’s not even about laboring tirelessly from sun up to sun down. Farming is a rich, challenging, and fulfilling career full of opportunities to grow and flourish, not only for the plants but for the humans at the helm.
As the first ever KFH Farmers Apprentices, Cassie and Jake will tell you that they haven’t “stopped learning since we began”. Here at the Kearsarge Food Hub, we are committed to cultivating, growing, and nourishing the next generation of farmers, so this feedback is music to our ears. We are learning so much, too.
You can help empower and equip the next generation of farmers by becoming a monthly donor to the Kearsarge Food Hub at any level. Sign on at the $10/month or higher level by August 1st and you could win a $100 gift card to Sweet Beet Market and the soon to open Café!
GROW WITH US! Become a monthly donor today (be sure to select the monthly option!) Your donation makes all the difference!
Farmer Apprentice Videos
Watch all our videos on the Farmer Apprentice YouTube playlist!
Read Part 1 of this blog series: We need more farmers!
Read Part 2 of this blog series: Learning as we grow Sweet Beet Farm