Through CAFF, Maeve discovered she loves more than just the farming itself—she loves the business side too. Growing up around restaurants had given her some perspective, but seeing farming through the lens of entrepreneurship opened her mind.
When Ashley was 14, her family moved from a large city in Missouri to a rural town in Vermont. Ashley had no previous experience with farms or agriculture, but at the end of the school year in Vermont, she felt the land calling to her. She contacted farms listed in the yellow pages until she found a dairy farm that invited her to intern for the summer. She fell in love with farm life, and from then on, she knew some day she would own land and be a farmer.
The decision to apply for CAFF Farm School was a slow realization that she’d like to learn farming. Living in apartments as an adult, she never had the space for a garden. But she had acquired plenty of experience with the local food system by working as a server at restaurants like The Farmer’s Table and at Ozark Natural Foods. While there, the employees toured local farms. She visited the beautiful Dripping Springs Garden, and the lifestyle was very appealing. It’s a bucolic farm growing flowers, herbs, vegetables, and fruit. Nicole says, “It made me seriously consider farming as a career. And farmers are the nicest people I’ve ever met.“ She decided to pursue it, but wasn’t sure where to start. A co-worker was applying to the CAFF Farm School and invited her to the Farmers For Tomorrow fundraiser. There she learned more about the program and the need for farmers. She decided
Keira remembers the day when she realized farm life was definitely for her. Her farm crew had been working in sweltering heat, harvesting all day to pack CSA boxes and get them out. The last task was to trellis overgrown tomatoes. There wasn’t even a path through them. It was hot, and everyone was run down and tired. They decided to put on music and then started competing over who could trellis tomatoes the fastest. Next, it began to rain, and they were all getting drenched. “It was a moment when the situation was tough, but we made the best of it,” says Keira. “That‘s when I realized that a bad day farming is better than a good day anywhere else I had worked at. It was the day I decided farming was for me.”
Being half Korean greatly impacted Julia’s decision to farm and her motivations. Growing up in Atlanta, she experienced her mom’s strong Korean immigrant community as a support system and cultural conduit. The community would come together for fellowship around food. Julia and her brother were immersed in this experience as children, families coming together around a transplanted culture and its cuisine. She visited a couple of regenerative farms in California and felt a deep draw towards them. These experiences brought her to the CAFF Farm School.
“We always had to self-censor and be careful what we say publicly. I’m happy to have speech and spiritual freedom here in the United States.” In her birth country, she was an English teacher. She married a colleague, an English teacher, and a United States citizen. They returned stateside about 16 years ago. She cites the pandemic as her final motivation to farm.
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