joy and toil
an interview with Magda on the farming life, living seasonally, and inequalities in landwork
My friend Magda is a farmer.
One of her childhood friends became my friend in sixth form, and so we met as students in Edinburgh through a chain of mutual friendships. My memories are vague and non-sequential but I do remember first meeting in a group and eating at a cheap Japanese restaurant. I thought her red tights were cool but I knew I wanted to be her friend when in conversation somebody mentioned two girls who were somehow close and tense with each other all the time in a way they didn’t fully understand, to which Magda casually replied: ‘Because women’s relationships are just so mysterious.’
Magda is now co-manager of Slow Farm in Michigan, US, named after the slow food movement. It is a certified organic farm of 187 acres, approximately 14 of which are in cultivation, the rest being restored native prairie, woods and wetland. Her route to farming was indirect and I wanted to interview her for her insights into landwork, sustainability and living seasonally.
Although she was raised in Gospel Oak, north London, looking back, Magda notes that the groundwork for her love of the land must have been laid early on. She was in the Scouts, which gave her the opportunity for outdoor sports and camps and subsidised trips. ‘I think I was really really privileged in growing up with access to nature,’ she says, walking across Hampstead Heath to school everyday and ‘climbing trees my whole childhood’:
My extended family lived in the countryside or the suburbs so I could visit them. But it always felt like a separate entity, the countryside, until I was doing something in it.
After studying biochemistry, Magda began working for a vegetarian food restaurant that used a lot of local, seasonal produce. Exposure to ‘good good food’ (and the need to be on her feet all day) helped to recalibrate her relationship with it, away from restrictive habits. Then she got a job at a start-up (audible sigh): ‘I went to a talk about water and someone there was growing coral reefs and I sent them this eight-page document on how they were doing their Instagram and stuff badly. And then they hired me.’ Magda had already bought a one-way ticket to the US (she has American citizenship), worried about ‘climate apocalypse’, realising she wanted ‘to learn how to be on farms and look after animals and grow vegetables’. So she travelled and worked remotely. Then the pandemic hit:
I moved home, kept up that job, still, got Covid, got really ill, and then the thing that nursed me back to health was growing vegetables in my parents’ garden. Not successfully. Things culminated in November 2020 when my grandma died, my boss was a creep one time too many. I was like, ‘Shit, why am I doing this? Why am I on a computer when the only time I feel good is when I’m outside?
Magda typed ‘seed-saving apprenticeship’ into Google and applied for the first position in the US that came up. And she hasn’t looked back, working in Virginia, Colorado, and now Michigan. She and her partner — who she met after he’d also quit his job mid-pandemic to learn how to be a farmer — are hoping to work in the UK soon, scouring newsletters for tenant farming and crofting opportunities.
Farming was very much not a thing I had considered until I was doing it. It had been backburnered or suggested or thought about, but not really seriously. And then I just did it. I kinda knew I would be capable of it but it was good to test whether I was. And I was. And I love it. And I literally can’t imagine doing anything else ever again.
Q: Is it hard for someone without a landworking or farming background to enter the industry?
Getting into the industry, getting experience, it is super competitive in the UK and relatively less competitive in the US. In the UK, apparently there are about 300 applicants for 2-3 spaces as a farm apprentice. And farm apprentices do not earn a lot. Sometimes there’s room, board and a stipend.
So for the first two years of us learning how to farm, my partner and I both got somewhere to live and $800 a month. That was it. And we got, like, food. But if you don't have the money to support yourself — I lived off very little for a while and I had some savings, which is why I could do two years of $800 and so did he — but if you don't have the money to do that, then you're pretty fucked. Also, the farm next to us when we were in Colorado didn't even pay their apprentices. They gave them food and a trailer to live in, but no money whatsoever, no stipend.
So apprentices, people who want to get into farming, people who want to learn, get exploited at every turn. And it's super competitive to even offer yourself up to get exploited, to get the experience that you really need, because the people who can afford to buy land don't have the experience to actually grow stuff. And the people that can't afford to buy land also then disadvantage themselves by having years of being impoverished by learning how to work the land. But then they actually have really useful skills, but can't afford it. So it's just this weird, vicious cycle.
But there are farms out there who pay. Well, the farmer [I’m working for] pays living wage, which for farmers is pretty amazing. I would also like to say that I'm saying this from a position of privilege. Because in the US, getting minimum wage on a farm is like an organic — what's the word? How do I say it?
There are migrant workers from South America being exploited right now, earning way less than we do. So I still can't complain about how much my apprenticeship paid me or, like, I feel like I can't, but I also — they should pay more. They should pay everyone more, and they should stop exploiting migrant workers the same way that the UK should stop exploiting Polish workers. And now barely giving them — they give them awful visas. They can get like, a six month visa. You can't apply for any other visa, and you don't have to pay the minimum wage. And it's just a way to exploit people from a different country who have less protection. And so the people in-country or with the nationality are slightly more protected and they're treated like shit. And the people from outside the country are treated even worse.
There has been a study out — it was like, within the last week — and they followed vans of people who were incarcerated and where they were taken to do work. Because lots of people in the US are in for-profit prisons (where money is made off each incarcerated person). And a lot of those people were sent to farm. That's modern slavery, especially considering that incarcerated people in the US are a larger proportion of People of Colour. It is literally just modern, allowed slavery, and it’s absolutely disgusting. So there are people who have it a lot worse and people [who] still don't have it good.
A lot of people are wanting land. In the US, it is easier to get little parcels of land. In the UK, land seems to be owned in much bigger parcels by, like, corporations who can afford to buy it or by people who own huge swathes of land. It’s very network-based. Since we’ve been in America for three years, and it will be four years when we try to move to the UK, it’s going to be pretty hard. We could try to move to an area and then be all, “ooh does anyone have three acres?” But that seems wildly risky. There’s a farm we interviewed with last year (and were going to work for but we couldn’t get a visa sorted). They have been renting an acre in Dorset. On their website they say they’re looking for 4 to 20 acres, and they’ve been looking for years. So that’s kinda the situation at the moment.
When I was volunteering at a veg box over Christmas I said, ‘Oh we just want 3 to 5 acres’ and someone else said, ‘You and me both, girlie, that’s what everyone wants.’ We all just want a little bit of land. You can make a living for two to six people off three acres. It’s hard but you can do it. We don’t need massive tracts of land. We just need this land to be divided back up and given to people. I’d like to point out I’m a white middle-class lady who grew up in north London where I have connections. I don’t actually have a lot of connections to land, but my mum, who worked for the NHS, has friends who — some of them own land, and they know people who own land. So I have a lot more connections than someone who doesn’t have the advantages I have.
There are amazing organisations like LION (Land in Our Names), trying to get POC farmers onto land. And yeah, people who are less resourced structurally need a lot more help. Generally, we’ll probably be fine. But there are a lot of people who won’t be fine trying to find land. They need a lot of support.
Q: You mention it's possible to live off 3 to 5 acres? What would that look like hypothetically? Would you sell to supermarkets? Would you need to supplement your income?
Okay, so living off three to five acres is possible. In the UK, they call it market gardening. In the US, it's just, like, small farms — but basically that's what we're growing on intensively at the moment. We've got other acres of strawberries and asparagus and winter squash. But mostly what we grow on is three acres of defined beds that don't change. And we have six people in full time employment making $15 an hour minimum. So you can do it, you can support people off it. But it isn't easy. It's a lot of work and we are quite intense.
Hypothetically, you would probably need some greenhouses to survive. Greenhouses are season extension, and they help in colder climates to grow things that wouldn't grow if it was too cold, like tomatoes and aubergines and peppers and stuff. Season extension is making your springs and autumns warmer so that then you can grow things for longer. So we're growing stuff in our little greenhouses — they're actually plastic tunnels.
So we wouldn't sell to supermarkets, at least we don't here. We sell to restaurants; we sell to farm shops. So these places — we give them lots of vegetables on consignment , and then whatever they sell, they take 30% and we take 70%.
We also do large wholesale orders. So that's 300 heads of lettuce or 400 bunches of spring onions. And these go to large scale 'veg boxes'. There are two or three of those in our local area — one run by a hospital, one run by the farm shop — and then we have our own 100-person veg box. We also call them CSAs, which is a Community Supported Agriculture share. Doing a CSA allows you to know how many things you have to grow each week. So we know in the middle of summer, we have to have 100 of eight or nine vegetables each week. But we also know that we're going to get $30 times 100 every single week because these people have already paid upfront for [the share].
But there are also, like, side hustles, as you would say, to supplement your income. The place where real money is in is value-added products. That's things like hot sauce, crisps, ferments etc. Things where you can store it for a longer time. So one of the problems with us selling on consignment — selling vegetables — is that vegetables rot eventually if they don't get sold, whereas a hot sauce is not going to rot. It's going to sit on the shelf for a lot longer. And so it might not sell immediately, but you're almost guaranteed the money from that sale. So value-added, long-term storage products, are where you can really make bank. One farms we worked on the year before last was in Virginia (Broadfork Farm) and had a bakery attached: a sourdough, wood-fired bakery. And so they supplemented their income with bread.
The farm before that in Colorado (Seedpeace) is what I really want to do. And they did seed. That's another way to supplement your income. And it's also, like, a dying skill that we need to revive. Or it's not dying, but it's actively being destroyed by Bayer (formerly Monsanto) and other large corporations. Growing vegetables to seed and then selling that seed on, either to consumers directly or to seed catalogues, is another way to make some money. But it's not the easiest, quickest way of making money. Especially if you want to actually grow good seed or make new varieties. But it is an essential thing to do to stabilise our food system.
So, yeah, growing seeds, making chutneys, jams, all sorts of stuff — that stuff definitely supports your income in a much stronger way.
And then realistically, a lot of farmers have second jobs. Like, I have a second job in the winter. Lots of people do it who do it as a couple. One person works and earns enough to support both of them, and then the other one works the farm.
Q: Do you have a perspective on how farming is often construed in the media as existing in tension with sustainability e.g. rewilding, farm animals etc.?
Um, I think this is a tricky one. I think farmers in the media both get a bad rap and too good a rap. This year I accidentally went to the wrong farming conference. One farming conference was called the Oxford Farming Conference, and the other one — the good one — was called the Oxford Real Farming Conference. So I spent a whole day at the Oxford Farming Conference, which is a Tory hellscape.
There was a whole presentation on how you should sell Halal meat. And the presenter had to just try to convince people that Muslim people deserve meat and it’s a good market. And it wasn't just like, why would you not consider selling Halal meat? There was so much effort going into just convincing people to do the bare minimum. There was a lot of stuff about farmers [who] were pissed off that they'd have to do more, like taking notes on what they do. And I know from experience that midseason you're exhausted and you don't want to take notes on what you do. But there has to be some way to check that you're actually doing what you saying you're doing. And so I got an insight into how a vast majority of farmers in the UK are represented.
And then I went to the Real Farming Conference, and it was a breath of fresh air. Like, I nearly cried. People were talking about soil regeneration, crofting, carbon-negative farming and the specific problems that Black Farmers face. All sorts of actual stuff that wasn't just like, I don't know, maybe we should employ more women. So, like everything in society, farming has its problems.
I think there is a lot of tension involved in farming, and I think that there's this false dichotomy where farming can't be eco-friendly —or you can't rewild and farm — or if you rewild, then the animals on the farm will die. And we have to drastically change how we farm as a world if we're going to survive climate change.
I don't think that means we have to rewild everything. We're just going to have to focus a lot less on animal agriculture. But I don't think we need to completely discount or push away animal agriculture because more and more evidence is coming out that animals, when used in tandem with everything else as part of a holistic system, are really, really good. We just shouldn't eat them in the quantities that we eat them. We should eat a lot less meat, better meat, and have it as part of the integrated farming system.
There's a reliance on chemical intervention. So, like, nitrogen fertilizer came out of World War Two because they needed a way to use up all the nitrogen that they got really good at making (for bombs). And then they were like, ‘Oh, we can use this for soil’, but that's not the only thing that soil needs. And the eco movement will get nowhere if we don't farm correctly. Like, our topsoil is dying. All our [distinct breeds of] farm animals and whole ecosystems are going extinct.
All this diversity within plant seeds is dying off for monocultured corn made by big companies that has random other genetic information in it. And as a biochemist, I'm not anti-GMO. I'm like, ‘You're making a weak plant’. It is not going to survive if it doesn't have genetic diversity. So there're all these elements that have to be overhauled if we're going to survive climate collapse.
And there are all these things that, by countering them, by stopping using synthetic fertilizers, by starting to bring animals back in holistically [we can improve things]. Like rotational grazing, reintegrating that — eating less meat so there are fewer animals raised — and then scaling down monocultures. Because we can do things in multicultures. Like, the Milpa in South American growing is called ‘three sisters’: Corn, beans, squash. And then it has an undercrop as well, sometimes strawberries. It's a whole ecosystem in one field. And we can do that with various other crops. We don't just have to do that with corn.
And so, yeah, farming and the climate movement or the eco movement should be hand in hand. Pitting them against each other means that we can't solve the problems that we are going to face more and more.
Could you describe a typical week in your farming life?
Midseason, late July, we usually work from Wednesday to Sunday. So on Wednesday we have a harvest day. We get all our orders from shops on that day and also sometimes from other people's CSAs. So sometimes we're harvesting, like, 300 or something. So we harvest everything that we need for that. And then any time we have left at the end of the day, because sometimes it can take all day to harvest, we grow a lot of different crops. And about that time, that's tomatoes, sometimes aubergine, peppers, lots and lots of squash.
We have to harvest squash every Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, and sometimes come in on Monday to harvest squash, like courgette and summer squash. And then we have all our greens and roots and stuff, and lettuce. So we harvest all that on Wednesday.
On Thursday, we usually have a big weeding day or a maintenance day. So we'll put a lot of effort into making sure there aren't weeds, which we do by hand. We also do our plant-feeding on that day. So there's a lot of in-depth science that goes into making sure plants are getting what they need. And then to do it organically, you have to be really careful. So we use a lot of alfalfa meal, which is like food for rabbits that's grown organically and turned into pellets. And we use that as a nitrogen release. We feed them fish-food. Sometimes we feed them, like, food made from fish and kelp blended. Sometimes we feed them inoculations of local microorganisms.
Sometimes we have to spray things like copper or diatomaceous earth on various plants. Diatomaceous earth is just like clay, basically. So, like, diatomaceous earth would go on cucumbers and sometimes squash. This is because the bugs that eat those can't lay eggs in the ground if the diatomaceous earth is around [the base of] the plant, and if they eat too much of the diatomaceous earth it cuts up their insides. Then we'll also do, like, any bug things we have to do. Sometimes the tomato hornworms are absolute bastards by that time of year. So we have to go around and get rid of them.
And then on Friday, we have another harvest day. That's for our CSA and farmstand. Every week in the middle of summer, it's about 100 people that are in the veg box. So we have to harvest 100 of each crop that we have in it. We have seven or eight crops in it. Sometimes, it's a herb as well. So usually we go for one of each type. That's like Solanaceae [nightshades e.g. aubergine, tomatoes], Alliums [onions], and Curcubita [cucumbers, courgette, other squash]. What are the other ones? Roots. [These are less families and more styles of plant, for variety.] And greens, like lettuce, kale etc. So we have a lot. We have to make sure all our shares that go out to people have a good variety within them. That harvest usually takes all day on Saturday.
If strawberries are in season, we open up the other side of the road, which has seven acres of strawberries. And then we open up our farmstand, which we harvested for on Friday. And we give out all our shares to the people who turn up to pick them up. And we pack them on Saturday morning so they're really fresh. And then that's two people on the farmstand and the strawberries. And then the rest of the people — we usually have volunteers.
A couple of us will wrangle different groups of volunteers; they'll plant, or weed, or do a big harvest, or they'll prep beds. Prepping beds is where you pull everything out that's finished growing (old plants etc.), and then you add amendments to the soil. Our permanent beds are no-till, but sometimes we'll use a Tilther, which churns the top three inches of the soil (A Tilther looks like some knives on a drill). I can send you a picture because that is not a good description —
And throughout the week, we're watering everything at various times when it needs it. We're making sure that the plants are healthy. We're checking on all of them. We're starting new seedlings. We're corresponding with people who buy the CSAs and the people we sell to. Posting on Instagram, just a lot of stuff.
And then on Sunday, we have the farmstand and the strawberries open again. And we probably try to do, like, another big harvest to whoever else is needing it, because in the middle of the season, we're harvesting three out of the five days, and then anything else that we can get ready for the week coming. But in the spring, we spend a lot of time starting seeds, and in the autumn, we spend a lot of time cleaning up and then putting tarps over all of our beds. So we have, like, permanent raised beds, which means the beds don't change each year. And then in between each of them in the paths is wood chips. So a lot of time we spend shovelling wood chips and compost.
And then in the winter, we put a tarp over the top with the black side up, and there's a white side on the bottom, and the black side will allow sunlight to hit it and it will get warmer. This is also called occultation, and it kills weeds and it warms up the soil ahead of time. So in the spring, when we take the tarp off, the soil is a few degrees warmer than it would be if it didn't have the tarp on. So that's a week in the middle of summer. It's tiring. It's amazing. It's worth it if you can volunteer on your local farm; like, go see what they're up to.
Q: What is it like to live and work seasonally?
I’m no expert and I’m absolutely still learning how to live and work seasonally. After my first year of farming, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so seasonal. I’m going to be so chill in the winter’. And capitalism is still here. You can’t be as chill as you think you’re going to be in the winter. Sometimes you have to get a job in a wine bar or wherever else. You can’t slow down as much as you might want to.
With that said, it’s wonderful and freeing to feel yourself move through the year. So in spring, in about a month from now, we’ll be really starting to kick it up a notch. We’ll be moving stuff every day. Moving big tarps off, digging up the soil, aerating it. Starting lots of seedlings and moving really heavy blocks around all the time. We weight the tarps down with bricks, so I just get built in the first couple of months and my back always hurts.
Then in the summer, there’s this abundance, and there’s just food everywhere, and you’re tired in such a delicious-good-body-feeling way. You’re tired but you’re like, ‘I wanna stay out because the sun’s out’. And I want to preserve some of this harvest for next year. You think about it in a way that ‘Oh I have enough energy to do both things [work and play]' because you’re getting enough vitamin D and as long as you eat enough — you have to remember to eat a lot!
And then in autumn, you’re a different type of tired, like, I-gotta-wind-down soon tired but it’s still so good — it still feels so right. You’re putting the crops to bed, basically. There are some things that will overwinter, like garlic and onions and stuff but mostly you’re clearing everything up. You’re banking the soil, you’re doing celebrations for the harvest. You’re getting together with people and talking about what you did and what you’d do differently. You’re not reflecting fully yet but you get to step back and realise what you’ve achieved. Your body’s begging you to slow down by that point. But you’ve got to keep pushing through.
And then, coming back to winter, you’re finally tired and slow and sluggish. You get to sit and think about the next year and order seeds and hopefully rest and do different styles of work. I got to do a lot more writing this year in the winter and that was really amazing. I can’t do any writing in the summer; that is just not possible. So we can try on different things and get very into other activities that you’ve neglected during the summer.
And then it’s spring again and you get to build your energy as the earth’s energy builds around you. The little bulbs of daffodils start poking green out into the world, and you’re doing that too. I love it. I love living and working seasonally. It puts a lot of stuff into perspective.
It’s hard work. But it is — someone I learnt some astrology from once said that farming feels like the only work she’d ever done that didn’t feel like you were lying to God — and I love that. I think that’s the vibe. I think it feels very connected to what’s going on and you feel way more attuned to your body and the rhythms of the world.
And even if you can’t do it by actually farming every day, I think tuning into the seasons really helps with your mental health and your physical health, and giving you self some slack, especially in winter.
Q: How does farming feed your creativity?
I think I've always been a little bit Capricorn: a little diligent in my work, even for things that I didn't need to be. And now when I'm farming, I do need to be. So it suits my overworking.
But I think when it comes to creativity — the same way that people say that science isn't creative, I think that's kind of a fallacy, because farming is creative in the way that — I love Tetris and the Tetris of fitting plants into places where you're like, ‘Oh, we have two beds, and we have to plant this much stuff, and we have to plant this in this week's time’. And so moving things around spatially and temporally in your head on the go — and then doing quick maths for how many seeds you need to start for a whole bed of cabbage with a safety factor in case 30% of them die. All that stuff that you have to think about is really fun.
And then also I think there's, like, within farming, the creativity of trying to get your message out to people. Sometimes I get really exhausted and hateful of social media and how it's now essential to do business. But sometimes I'm also like, ‘This is amazing’. You get to connect with people within your community or miles and miles away, and you wouldn't be able to connect to them without this beautiful tool. And I flip-flop between those drastically, especially midseason. [Then] I just don't want to even think about Instagram. So there are a lot of things where creativity can come into farming also.
New ways to do stuff, new ways to teach people, new ways to get people involved. I want to do some weed walks this year where we show people what weeds are edible [in the spring/summer/autumn]. Basically, try to convince people to eat our weeds, because I already eat our weeds, so [I want to] get other people to do it too.
And then when it comes to creativity outside of farming, I think that leads back into the seasonality of everything. Like midseason, midsummer, I am not the most creative. Like, I'll maybe write, like, a poem, and I'll think, ‘Wow, that was quite a lot. I'm exhausted.’ But then in the winter, when you have time to do cerebral things, then you have a lot more time for creativity. And because your body needs to rest, your mind gets to do stuff. And it's quite cyclical how it works, which is good.
I mean, it's hard, if you have a really good idea midsummer, to then work on it. There isn't the time to do that and also to do everything else, or at least it doesn't feel like that for me. I can only concentrate on a couple of things at the same time. But I love the work that I'm doing. And when I'm not doing the work, I love the other stuff that I'm doing. And they feed into each other well but they cannot coexist at the same time. Or not well. So, yeah, I think it feeds in, but in a way where you have to know what your capabilities are.
The interview was recorded via voice-notes and edited for length and clarity. Pictures provided by Magda.
Magda’s recommendations
To read: Farming While Black by Leah Penniman, Who Really Feeds the World by Vandana Shiva, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
To listen: Seeds and Their People, No-till Growers, Poor Proles Almanac
Magda has a newsletter and weekly podcast Scrap Kitchen, guided by three pillars: nourishment (good food), connection (community) and knowledge (anti-gatekeeping). You can also find her on Instagram.
Her zine Be a Weed is published by FEM press, a rumination on how community gardening can be an anti-capitalist blueprint.