THE FARMER'S SACRIFICE: Rachel Schattman of Bella Farm

Despite ever-expanding local and organic sections in grocery stores, bustling farmers markets, and long waiting lists at farm-to-table restaurants, the work that goes on behind the scenes—small-scale growing itself—proves tasking and barely profitable for a young vegetable farmer.

Rachel Shattman’s earliest memory of gardening is, as she puts it, “Stinky worms in coffee cans.” Her parents, both early education teachers, kept a garden at her childhood home in Fairfax, Vermont, and Rachel was tasked with collecting horn worms from the tomato plants. Her mother thought it best to kill the worms by roasting them in coffee tins under the sun, a method that smelled terrible and quickly turned Rachel off from garden ventures all together.

Not until high school did she re-warm to the idea of working outside. As a young artist, Rachel chose to spend her last three years of high school at the Putney School in Brattleboro, Vermont, where students specialized in art and agriculture studies. She was required to volunteer on the school’s farm as part of her residency and, like her friends, grew to enjoy being in the barn, milking the cows, and even gardening—though no coffee tins this time. The summer she turned 16, Rachel began interning on Hudak Farm in Swanton, Vermont, where she helped harvest fruits and vegetables. The owners, Richard and Marie, served as mentors to her and inspired her to think about farming for her own future. “When you’re 16, you consider the jobs of the people who you look up to,” Rachel says. “You put it on the menu of things that you are interested in.”

Rachel’s love for art and attraction to agriculture continued to blossom at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, where she studied printmaking and Environmental Studies. After graduation, she attempted to pursue art professionally but quickly discovered that making a meaningful impact through painting was illusive. “There is art in the world that is both provoking and really important for society and helps describe social change and is bigger than the person making it, but I wasn’t making that kind of art and didn’t really know how to get there,” says Rachel. “I felt like I wanted to do something with more of a tangible impact that was less about me and more about my community.”

In search of more satisfying experiences, Rachel spent six months travelling the world. She explored Italy, worked for an education non-profit in India, studied contemporary art in Ireland, served as a beekeeper in France, and dabbled again in art in Georgia and Missouri. Yet throughout her travels, she never strayed far from farming; she made sure to volunteer on organic farms wherever she visited and soon realized that cultivating land just might be the meaningful exercise she craved. In 2006, she moved to Burlington, Vermont to pursue farming more seriously.

Upon her return to her home state, Rachel earned a Masters in Natural Resources from the University of Vermont (UVM), taught a Vermont Food Systems class at UVM, and worked to promote and develop local food markets through the university’s Extension Local Foods initiative. In 2009, she applied to UVM’s Intervale Farms Program, a farm business incubator that allowed her to rent land in Burlington for a reduced rate and begin growing there until she could find her own property.

The property she fell in love with was any vegetable farmer’s dream: a sloping 20 acres in Monkton, Vermont, with rich soil, good drainage, and a big, wonderfully weathered dairy barn. Although Rachel could not afford it herself, her mom offered to use some of her retirement savings to finance the farm for a return. Rachel spent many weekends cleaning out the dairy barn and building a small homestead on the property, finally moving in with her fiancé, Pat, in January 2012. After brainstorming long lists of goddess-inspired names from Demeter to Arethusa, she settled on Bella Farm; it was short and sweet, with an Italian flare that would match the organic pesto she hoped to make and sell.

Rachel currently cultivates four acres of the farm, splitting them between organic basil for her pesto; cover crops; and organic vegetables--mostly leafy greens like arugula, spinach, kale, and Swiss chard. She is quick to admit that she made a commitment to organic growing before she truly understood what it demanded of farmers. Today, she maintains organic growing practices to differentiate her produce and pesto on shelves, but believes that organic farmers are not necessarily better stewards than conventional farmers who spray their crops intentionally and conservatively. “I used to think that organic meant no pesticides and no fertilizers and somehow you would have magically beautiful produce,” Rachel says. “The more technical knowledge I gain as a grower, the more I realize there are benefits of pesticides and fertilizer, that they are necessary if you are going to survive as a business, but that you as a grower can choose to be judicious and sparing with them.”

Rachel employs two former students from her Vermont Food Systems class as summer interns, and her mother and Pat also volunteer to help pot, plant, and pack the van with vegetables for farmers’ markets. Their help is particularly valuable to Rachel because between her studies and teaching commitments, she has never worked on the farm full-time. Right now, she is completing her PhD in Climate Change and Agriculture at UVM. In addition to the CSA she began last year, Rachel sells her produce and pesto at the Burlington Farmers’ Market and City Market. She also supplies produce to the Wake Robin Senior Living Community in Shelburne, and to various local restaurants like the Basin Harbor Club and the popular crêperie The Skinny Pancake.

In many ways, farming has proved just as meaningful as Rachel hoped. “The work I was making as an artist was a little conceptual and dark and it was never anything that people really understood or wanted to live with,” she says. “Growing produce for people…there’s a real desire for that, to have it be nourishing, so that’s really powerful. To have my work be a source of connection rather than division.” The complexity of farming has also proved enriching. Rachel is constantly learning more about the ecological aspects of growing, the business strategy and financials of running a farm, the mechanics and building skills required of a farmer, and the social impact of selling locally.

Despite its richness, however, farming has also pushed Rachel to her limit. This summer was the first in three years she did not pull her back working on the farm, and it was also the first summer she broke even. She was so busy harvesting that she couldn’t even afford time to cook the beautiful food she grew. Looking forward, she wonders if raising a family and saving for retirement is realistic as a farmer. “The more farmers I talk to, the more I realize that even the most successful ones, who have the biggest lines at the farmers market and CSAs and work the hardest and are the coolest…they don’t got a lot of cushion,” says Rachel. “It’s just a question of do you love it enough to be financially insecure? I don’t know the answer to that yet.”

Whether her future holds farming or not, Rachel considers Bella Farm a beautiful experiment that has taught her more about herself and the world than she ever expected. It has also given her the opportunity to connect with fellow Vermonters who share her passion for food and land. She gushes, “I feel like I have a ton of peers who I’m on the same page with…When I’m here [in Vermont] I feel healthy and like my brain is working and my heart is happy.” Although Rachel’s worldly travels pushed her outside her comfort zone and helped her grow in many ways, bending over her fields of basil and kale, close to home, has ultimately proved the most enriching.

The following recipe calls for Rachel’s leafy greens and is very forgiving; the dressing pairs well with any combination of lettuce you prefer. With flax and hemp seeds, this salad can stand alone as a protein-rich meal or be served in smaller portions as a side or starter.

BABY GREENS SALAD

5 oz baby greens like kale, arugula, and spinach (about 4 handfuls)

6 tbsp pomegranate seeds

½ tbsp flax seeds

2 tbsp hemp seeds

2 tbsp toasted pine nuts

Crumbled goat cheese and chopped scallions to garnish

Dressing

¼ cup olive oil

1 tsp maple syrup

2 tsp balsamic vinegar

2 tsp red wine vinegar

1 tsp Dijon mustard

¼ tsp garlic powder

¼ tsp onion powder

Whisk dressing ingredients together and set aside. Toss lettuce with pomegranate seeds, flax, hemp, and toasted pine nuts. Add dressing and toss again. Garnish with crumbled goat cheese and green onion.

Makes 4 small salads or 2 large salads.