So say local sustainable farms that are experiencing a surge in interest among young people wanting to toil in the fields. Apprenticeships, internships and other educational programs at Coastside farms are recording unprecedented numbers of applicants who want to learn the fundamentals of agriculture.
“Across the board we’re seeing more interest in sustainable agriculture,” said Nancy Vail, co-owner at Pie Ranch, the sustainable nonprofit farm in Pescadero. “With the environmental concerns and climate change, it’s all pointing in the directions of people asking, ‘How can I be of use in the world in a passionate way?’, ‘How can I connect with the land?’”
 Lars Howlett / Review Apprentices Dede Boies, left, and Sky DeMuro walk in the fields of Pie Ranch in Pescadero. The pair is leaving the ranch after two years of learning the ropes. Five new apprentices take their place in January. |
Other farms are also seeing their educational programs suddenly become very competitive. This year, a rigorous agriculture apprenticeship program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, received a record 187 applications from students vying for just 39 available spaces. Diane Nichols, apprentice coordinator for the UCSC program, believes that recent popular books, documentaries and other media on instability in the current food-production system have inspired many people to return to the land.
“Sustainable, organic farming is more part of people’s everyday knowledge,” Nichols said. “The world is catching up.”
Much like a college internship, a farming apprenticeship operates by recruiting students to learn by working at a professional farm. Apprentices are usually provided room and board and given a modest pay.
Emma Fowler, 21, one of the new apprentices at Pie Ranch, says she was drawn to the small farm as a way to learn some of the classic craft skills for an agrarian household and community.
“I want to have a farm that will teach the skills we are losing and connect us to each other and to the land,” she wrote via e-mail. “The time I spent on farms instilled in me a need for family, community, hard work and honest relationships.”
On Friday morning at Pie Ranch, the nonprofit’s three graduating apprentices were sowing the seeds, figuratively, for Fowler and her four fellow newcomers to the farm.
Gathering around the warmth of a wood-burning furnace in her yurt, Vail and her team of apprentices sat in a circle and collaborated on their crop plan for the coming year — the blueprint for what, where, when and how to plant for 2010. The crop plan sets the course and becomes the pivotal step that determines the success of the farm for the year.
Compiling the crop plan for the 14-acre farm is sort of a capstone task for the three apprentices. But the actually seeding, cultivating and harvesting will fall to the new apprentice class, who will start in January.
“It’s the basis of the whole crop operation,” said Sky DeMuro, a 31-year-old apprentice finishing off an extended two-year stay at Pie Ranch. “There’s all these moving parts and factors at a farm – weather, soil mixture, heat, watering … there’s a million things that can happen.”
Unlike other farms, a bad harvest or an unforeseen setback isn’t so disastrous at Pie Ranch. A unique nonprofit farm, Pie Ranch draws its revenue from a variety of sources, including barn dances, donations and community-supported agriculture programs. That unorthodox model allows the farm to take some riskier steps, such as letting its apprentices have more control in how the farm operates.
Nuzzled up in a warm scarf, DeMuro walked outside around the fields with her colleague, Dede Boies, a 32-year-old apprentice who sported a “Punk Rock” armband and pink sunglasses on her pink, sunburned face.
Over their tenure at the farm, DeMuro and Boies took charge on such projects as planting more apple trees and purchasing the farm’s new dairy cow, Adelaide, who soon gained her own Facebook Web page.
And DeMuro and Boies each have witnessed the popularity at Pie Ranch skyrocket. A volunteer farm day, an event in which anyone can come to help out harvest fruit and veggies, drew around a dozen people two years ago, but now it attracts about 100 people happy to work for free at a sustainable farm.
“Farming is cool now, and there’s something to be said about this becoming popular and mainstream,” Boies said.
DeMuro nodded in agreement and followed that point.
“Everything can be boiled down to food. We all eat it, and it’s really our common denominator,” she said.
But while they enjoyed living on a sustainable farm, both women agreed that the apprentice lifestyle wasn’t sustainable itself. Living on the farm’s modest stipend of $600 a month was suffocating, and both felt it was time to try something else.
The two aspire to one day own their own farm on the Coastside, but acquiring land and starting up a farm remains a daunting endeavor.
“This place has been wonderful. We got to handle so many different aspects of farming,” Boies said. “I hate that it comes down to money.”
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