July122009
The Facts About the Farm
First, a dry introduction to set the stage: I arrived on the farm five days ago. It’s located on a hill outside a tiny town an hour northeast of Knoxville. The farm encompasses about sixty acres, but only one and half acres of that is devoted to garden produce—beans, kale, corn, squash, carrots, onions, garlic, basil—and then another six is pasture for the cows, pigs, sheep and chickens. The rest of the property is woods. The farm is owned and run by a couple in their mid-thirties who live there with their four-year-old son and a beagle. They sell most of their produce through a C.S.A., and some at a weekly farmer’s market, where they also sell meat, eggs, and baked goods that the farmer’s wife makes. At the moment I’m the only intern, and the farmer and I do pretty much all the field work.
Second, something like a schedule: Since I got here I’ve seen just about a complete week’s worth of work. On Tuesdays we collect and box the items for the C.S.A. members, then drive them to a church in Knoxville where members pick them up. Wednesdays and Thursdays we plant, harvest, mulch, or till, or do any repairs that are needed. Then on Fridays we get ready for the Saturday market: another batch of C.S.A. shares are collected, sorted and boxed, and pick out the meat and baked items we’ll sell. Then everything’s loaded into the trailer with a bunch of ice. Normally we start work at 7:30 in the morning, but on Saturdays we leave the farm by 7 in order to have a good hour to set up our stand before the Knoxville farmer’s market opens at 9. We finish work by 2 or 3 every day.
