Stephanie
PORTLAND, OREGON
What are you currently doing? (where have you been working, etc)
I currently work at a non-profit in Portland - forest and community program manager at Eco-Trust. I work primarily with tribes in indigenous communities across our region, wash, oregon, northern california. The reason I got into the work that I’m doing right now - our traditional plants and cultural resources are tied to desert, forest, mountains and sea. I’ve had a deep connection with forests - how do we manage forests to promote traditional pants and resources. Tribes that do have forestry programs and land have to hire outside of their tribe, non indigenous people too to staff their programs. Center community voices and values and support the more clearer and authentic desires and goals and values of the community of the forest management places.
How long have you been farming?
I think honestly my whole life. Even when I was little my mom and I had gardens in my backyard. I grew up going back to the reservation, I grew up in LA - we had an urban garden. I grew up going back to the rez and going and gathering traditional plants in our ancestral territories, taking part in ceremony. Powerful. Deep connection to food - that is one of the easiest, not easy - easy way to connect quickly with my culture so I’ve always loved food. Whether that is supporting kinship or communities, or getting time getting to know my mom and grandma better. That’s when I became interested in plants and food.
From there I started going to school in my bachleors’ degree- english degree, but really into plants and food so i took all of the botany classes at my college. Worked at my college’s organic farm - they had a big ag program. I started working on the farm because I love farming (as I had known it) and food and I thought it was really important to buy local and support small businesses, and you have that connection with that food. That’s why I started working at the organic farm - I took it as a full class - 12 hours / week for a full term (10 weeks) - we had different rotations each week. Some weeks we were prepping csa boxes, other times at farmers’ market, other times at biodynamic only a garden area. Some days we would just be weeding. For me why I got into it, took that class, had recently gotten back from patagonia - 3 months backpacking in northern patagonia learning about traditional plants.
That transition back was really hard - going from seeing the same people every day and just going through some of your toughest mental and physical challenges at the end of the day you come together and make food no matter how tired or angry at each other. Coming back, my classroom had been the forest had been the andean steppe for the last 3 months in a rain forest, coming back, my classroom was in a city with four walls.
Sought opportunities to reconnect back to plants and back to food and something more grounded, why I also took the organic farming class - healing process, pivotal for me. I had met a few different people while farming - community volunteers - it was so centered on healing. The topics, my energy, while we were weeding, harvest, working, gathering seeds. People came to the farm for healing, that for me - that experience was grounded in this healing practice but also showed me an actual career. Here is what you need to do to set up a small org family farm, or csa, business side of things. I kind of more stayed in the community healing space of farming.
Now in my current role - work with a lot of traditional plants - learning content specifically for tribes, working with cultural directors for lesson plans in school activities, take that into classrooms. Organizing field trips for the community to gather traditional plants or plant medicines, even if you do live on a reservation there may be a lot of trauma and fear going out into the forest - disconnect that exists between community and the land. Reconnecting people with the land. More traditionally we do work with community garden - i’ve seen a lot of great work coming out of tribal community gardens, making kits for kids to take home for their kids, rosehip tea, cedar steams.
Started volunteering at a local farm while I was in grad school so I could get a CSA box each week - more centered on community and healing. Csa boxes to support the entire community. Movie nights on the farm.
Never made farming as a career.
What are some issues for farmers working on someone else's farm - issues that you've witnessed or experienced?
College employed an instructor or seniors/4th/5th years as management positions. Student- run positions. Most of people in field with me were volunteers.
One of the things that I encounter/hear a lot - she’s in an incubator program. Big farm owns a lot of land, a lot of smaller farms lease out the land. Hers is a 5 year term.
Cost of land - in portland for instance, we saw land for sale, asking us to fundraise for us to buy this land $800,000 for not that much land.
Lack of communication - especially working with indigenous farmers - what they deem a traditional plant may be deemed as a weed by the main farmer. If you’re growing minor’s lettuce, keep growing this and including it in my boxes, what happens - not communication with landlord who also works to maintain their farm - they will come through and do a weed check - if you don’t keep your area neat, you pay a fine. They don’t call it a fine, but it’s a fine. Disconnect in knowledge of what is a traditional plant and not.
Concept of fining a BIPOC whose land was stolen and trying to grow food for their community.
I would just say that for me - me really wanting to connect with the land and food was within a different context than majority of farmers - different definition of success and goals and why you got into farming. Most people who own farms or own land are white. Being a brown woman coming into this space and working in these fields - the internal conflict too - growing up in CA “salad bowl” you see all the immigrant farmers - people in the agriculture field, sense of guilt or conflict that I’m choosing to do this. Especially when it comes to the system that the farm sits in - economic capitalist system, exploiting cheap labor to gain profit - didn’t feel good. My experience is different than people staffed on farm versus people volunteering on the farm.
Weird interacial dynamic. A lot of little - it’s a school - going to school to learn how to farm, a lot of privilege that comes with that and not great cultural characteristics, land ownership, racism that comes with.
Big diff between industrial ag farm school and organic farm school.
I grew up in LA - we had an urban garden. I grew up going back to the rez and going and gathering traditional plants in our ancestral territories, taking part in ceremony. Powerful. Deep connection to food - that is one of the easiest, not easy - easy way to connect quickly with my culture so I’ve always loved food. Whether that is supporting kinship or communities, or getting time getting to know my mom and grandma better. That’s when I became interested in plants and food.
Can you tell me the qualities of a dream farm not leading to ownership - that you would want to work on?
Going back to communication, my experience is also - I’m aware indigenous people are not a monolith, we don’t have a single narrative- I would say that communication is key. Why I would go to a farm and not want to leave, it would be because I would feel seen and heard as a staff member. I can show up as my full self to work in all of the aspects of work. Compassion and forgiveness. It would also be - integration of community based work - create opportunities for community to support in CSA days, education, investing in the staff, community and care and ties to your food.
In growth - I would want to learn about the different plants and how to grow them, how to harvest them, how to harvest seeds, where is this food indigenous to? How can we support our indigenous food system through our work. For me so much of farming was a healing practice, would like to see integration and space for spirituality and healing at a farm. There are ways to do this that are profitable, a lot of that comes with investors and funders. People buy in
What is your take on the difference (if any) between a farmer and a "farm worker"/"farm employee" besides proprietorship?
When I think of farmer- someone who owns land, or an individual.
When I think of farm worker - first thing to come to mind are people who are being exploited for their labor. I think of people who immigrated here or are currently living here at the poverty level - because of the system that they live within. When I think of farmers, I think of land ownerships, I think of single person.
Farm worker = collective group of people.
There is a great book → stories of farm workers - in the salinas valley → fresh fruit, broken bodies.
What kind of support would be helpful for people working on farms not their own?
Health insurance. I think of basic needs. Somebody to help you navigate legal documents because farmers have to do it all by themselves.
Social support system - emergency relief fund, navigating those legal documents.
With my work we partner with worker safety organizations and that’s been really helpful to support the farm workers, able to subsidize for that day if workers have to take a day off.
Creating brave/safe spaces to talk about microaggressions or conflicts arising. Top down resistance to that.
What is your opinion/take on the farmer lunch? (do you take lunch, do you skip lunch, do you enjoy taking lunch with your crew - for community building, is there pressure to be social....)
I probably should have mentioned this - I didn’t think of it as work
This summer -- I was a farm chef on my friend’s farm.
On fridays i would go with my dutch oven, coleman camp stove. All indigenous women. I would cook whatever was there, salads, mostly plant based.
My friend had rabbits - rabbit meat sometimes.
It was fun and such a creative outlet.
It was organic, whose dating this new person or something weird that happened.
My work allowed me to do it. Over the summer, my work allowed us (when the uprising started) we were allowed to code 2 hours/week for social justice work. I made the argument that being in community with other indigenous women connecting to the land was a form of social justice. I didn’t do this until mid july - able to charge my time ½ day on Friday.