Michael’s Farm

My first “formal” farming apprenticeship was ten years ago, 1998. I went to work for Andy Scott at Hidden Villa in Los Altos Hills, California, and spent a year absorbing stories, asking questions, and working hard. It was one of the best years of my life.

A few years later I was at the Ecological Farming Conference, talking with Andy and Jim Nelson from Camp Joy Gardens, a small farm I’ve always really admired. One of us, I don’t remember who, started talking about how great it would be to apprentice on someone else’s farm for a season, just to step back and do the physical work and not worry about all of the details of planning and selling and so on. Everyone agreed, it would be great. I just remember standing there with two farmers who had both been farming for practically as long as I’d been living, both so accomplished and both still engaged in learning more.

It was probably that same year that I met Michael Ableman. He was hosting a monthly discussion series on agricultural topics at Fairview Gardens and I was farming about an hour North. I had been really inspired by his book, From the Good Earth, when a friend at Hidden Villa showed it to me, and subsequently his book On Good Land about his experiences at Fairview.

We’ve run into each other a handful of times since that summer, always with an invitation to come up and visit. Finally this spring I made the time to go visit for a month, help out around the farm, and exchange farming ideas with another farmer who has been at this a couple of decades longer than myself. The result was one of the best months of my life, a chance to temporarily shed all the accumulated layers of responsibility that have built up over the years since my first apprenticeship, and to just focus on learning from someone else’s farm

It ended up being incredibly cold and wet most of the month. There was snow when I arrived in at the beginning of April, and then it snowed and melted, and snowed again. I didn’t mind though, I just enjoyed getting the opportunity to be an apprentice again, to watch and learn from an incredibly accomplished farmer.

In the month I was there we planted an orchard, fixed tillers and tractors, put together new equipment, skidded logs, seeded, covered and uncovered, mapped fields, put down a plan for the whole season on paper, and then changed it all again. We baked bread, ate lots of spinach and carrots, watched Benjamin race down the road on his bike, again and again. We counted and recounted, even when there wasn’t any reason to count. We moved rocks, lots of rocks, we dug holes and filled holes, Such a diversity of work in one month. Such is farming.

So here’s a big thank you to Michael, Anne, Jeanne Marie, Benjamin and Aaron and to all the farmers who have come before me, and after me, and that have been so generous with their time and knowledge. There is such an amazing community of farmers out there and it is truly one of the best parts of farming, that and the scenery.