Back to the Land

Local Farm Volunteers Get in Touch with Their Roots

originally published July 16, 2008

According to the USDA, organic agriculture is growing at an annual rate of 20 percent, though organic farms still account for just one percent of all American farms. Here in Athens, there are roughly six farms that provide the community with organic fruits and vegetables. Two of these farms, Roots and Full Moon, which are both located in nearby Winterville, have opened their doors to an enthusiastic public eager to spend its free time in the hot Georgia sun. In mid-April, as part of my conversion to the revived Voluntary Simplicity movement, I joined this small, dedicated volunteer army, splitting my time between Roots and Full Moon two days a week, working in the fields alongside other aspiring campesinos.

Each of the volunteers I spoke with for this article offered slightly different reasons for their time in the fields. For some, the decision was a pragmatic one. Cheran Bodry came to Athens in 1992 to attend UGA and never left. After several years in the restaurant business, she earned a graduate degree and now works as a mental health counselor at a local non-profit. Like many young professionals in Athens, Bodry has to balance her desire for organic foods with her financial obligations, like student loans and car payments. By coming out to Full Moon on Tuesday mornings to help with the harvest, she buys her weekly supply of fruits and vegetables from the farm at a significant discount. As is the case with many other volunteers, she is also delighted at the opportunity to leave the office and get some exercise.

For Catarina Passidomo, a PhD candidate in UGA’s anthropology department, volunteering at Roots is an extension of her research on local food systems. Along with a leadership role at the Athens-based Promoting Local Agriculture and Cultural Experiences (or P.L.A.C.E.), her time at Roots has enriched her understanding of how local communities are responding to problems of unsustainable food practices and energy shortages.

“What’s happening in Athens is happening all over the world,” Passidomo says, as she picks blackberries one steamy Friday morning. “People are reconnecting with the land and gaining an understanding of those who work the land and produce the food.”

Meanwhile, Roger Stahl, who teaches rhetoric at UGA, and his wife Kate Morrissey, a musician, live just a short bike ride away from Roots and wandered over to the farm largely out of curiosity. “I really wanted to know what makes this place tick,” Stahl says.

Of course, there’s also a strong social component to volunteering, something I observed in my first week when I was invited to two backyard parties. “I could always go out and work alone in my garden," Stahl says, "but out here, there’s always somebody interesting to work alongside with.”

For the full-time professional farmers, volunteers are indispensable assets. “We’ve gotten a lot of help when we needed it,” Roots farm manager Kevin Yates says as he sprays a cocktail of bat guano, fish emulsion and seaweed extract. And Stacey Sharer, who coordinates the volunteer program at Roots, agrees. “Even with two dedicated, full-time farmers, there is always more work to be done," she says by email.  "When we have more hands in the field, we can think bigger, plant more, harvest quicker, tend to crops that just need a little more attention than the others and create structure for future crops.”

Michelle Hoekstra, who just finished her degree at UGA in May, watched her friends leave college and take teaching jobs or prepare for law school. But she has decided to do an unofficial internship at Full Moon through the fall, and for now, a future career as a community educator is on hold. “I really want to see how the farm changes through the different seasons,” she says, relaxing at a picnic table after finishing a Tuesday harvest.

The symbiotic relationship between farmers and volunteers doesn’t exist without some tension, however. Some other organic farms in Athens won’t work with volunteers because they don’t want to take the time to instruct a volunteer on a particular chore, nor do they have the patience to just grin and bear it after an inevitable screw up. “They think there’s too much hand holding,” Yates speculates.

According to Yates, none of the tasks performed by the volunteers in the fields can be considered unskilled. “Our goal is to train them so that they can do things without our supervision,” he says.

There’s also the problem of turnover. Though there are familiar faces each time I go to the farms, I almost always meet someone new, such as a dietetics intern from Arkansas who tells me she would have done almost anything to get out of the classroom, even if it meant just a few hours weeding and then a tour with other interns.

But uniting the professional farmers and their acolytes is an intoxicating sense that organic farming is a key step to making the world a better place. Once again, the nostalgia for the late 1960s is evident. “Organic farming means making political choices, making a political statement,” says Jason Mann, who runs Full Moon. “It is a form of resistance, a subversive act. You’re doing something beautiful and taking control of your life.”

Or perhaps getting our hands dirty satisfies an even deeper need to reconnect with what we’ve been doing for tens of thousands of years, as anthropologists remind us. In 1900, 40 percent of Americans worked in agriculture, according to the USDA. By 2000, that number had dropped to less than two percent. Nevertheless, the good fight continues. “There’s a farmer in all of us,” says Mann.

David Vaina