Greetings from Against the Grain and welcome to the fourteenth week of the CSA! Just like past weeks, the customization period begins once this notification lands in your inbox (which should be around noon on Friday) and will end at 11:59pm on Sunday, August 30th. Just as a reminder, if you'd like to change pick up locations for the share that is currently open for customization, please email Harvie support to request that change. Always feel free to double check with Holly to make sure the change was made. It is so important to the farm that CSA members have flexibility in their pick up location.
We go continue with our apprenticeship profiles this week by highlighting Ben Nommay (pictured above with Corva), once again, brought to you by M Muller...
This week we had the special privilege of celebrating a once in a lifetime event: our farm manager Ben Nommay celebrated his golden birthday, turning 27 on the 27th of the month. Happy Birthday, Ben! Ben sat down with me recently and told me the story of his coming to farming, and to ATG Farm in particular.
As a child Ben spent time every summer on his grandfather’s corn and soybean farm in central Indiana. As he grew, he saw his grandfather—whom he considers his idol—thriving within an occupation that afforded him the scope of physical activity while also engaging his creative spirit. In his grandfather’s case, creative activity took the form of an engineer’s mind and an artist’s hands. Besides fixing tractors in the machine shop, Ben could watch him creating furniture in his woodworking shop. Farming, then, was a calling that could engage the whole being of a person. So when Ben came of age, he decided to see if it was for him.
Ben spent a year looking at farming, practicing it, considering it. As a wwoofer (Willing worker on organic farms) he was able to work on and observe a variety of farms in a variety of places, from homesteads to market operations, and the farmers who worked them. That experience set him up to dive deeper. “I wanted to see a farm go through all its seasons,” he says, rather than getting mere glimpses of crops in different stages of growth. He was also looking for more--a community. He interviewed with several farms and received offers, but he settled on ATG. Why? In part, he was impressed with the transparency of the process. While other farms sold themselves in their write-ups, ATG was the only farm that provided contact information of past workers that he could call and hear for himself what they had experienced working here. On April 11 (he remembers the date) he found community and a farm here on ATG. “I didn’t feel a stranger here,” he says of that experience. He appreciated Holly’s and Andy’s motivation, goals and attitudes towards life. So he spent two years here, working hard all the while. Then in May 2019, after two years of hard work, “I was tired, and ready for something different.”
Another wander year then ensued, this time without a focus on farming. He traveled the country with his partner, seeing what there was to see. It was a time of reflection and personal growth, a time of travel for its own sake. Then this too came to an end and it was time to earn some money. He ended up in the mountains of western North Carolina doing carpentry work, and even received an offer of employment. At the same time, he says, “My heart knew I wouldn’t wake up exuberant for work.” So he also began seeking a position as farm manager. Fortunately, a conversation with Andy led him to a realization. “You’re not a carpenter, you’re a farmer,” Andy told him. So ATG made an offer that respected Ben’s need for better economic security, and he arrived on farm this spring.
We appreciate Ben for his hard work and open-heartedness, for his skills working the fields and his helpfulness to the crew, and we hope he will stay with us as long as he can. As for the future, he would like a farm of his own, of course. But like many young farmers, the call of community and family, of land stewardship rather than land ownership, and a commitment to doing good work in the world are guiding his actions—much as he has watched them guide his grandfather’s for all these many years.
