Summer harvest days are most stressful. Endless rows of untamed leafy greens, an assortment of multi-colored summer flowers and the hum of bees swarming the crops sometimes make the days seem longer for farmer Willow Hein, also known as the Soil Sister.
Hein and her business partner, Maisie, started a women-owned agriculture business in 2010 called the Soil Sisters Farm. When founded, they raised flowers, vegetables and a population of bees; now the soil sisters are solely a flower farm in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California— but even harvesting flowers takes long hours and hard work.
Hein’s day usually starts at dawn for a full day of harvesting acres of flowers before the heat becomes unbearable. The harvest list she writes the night before shows the tasks she needs to complete before ending the day.
"Fifty mixed flower bouquets,” Hein said. “That’ll need 200 Zinnias and 200 Dahlias.”
She grabs the buckets and begins to harvest. She isn’t finished until all the flowers are picked, all the buckets are filled, and all the flowers are cut, assorted, arranged, wrapped, stored and personally delivered.
“I'm usually not done until four or five” she said.
“I'm usually not done until four or five”
Hein commits long days to maintain her farm and run her own flower business the ‘soil sister’ way.
Women are making their way to the forefront of farming. They are moving away from the traditional role of the farmers’ wives and claiming the role of the farmer.
According to the most recent data from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), there were 2.1 million farmers in 2012— 288,264 were women-run farms. Women farmers increased nearly 300 percent since 1978, when the Census of Agriculture started recording the number of women farmers.
“Typically, in [national farmers] meetings or conferences 80, 90, 95 percent of the participants are men,” Bryan Berkett, California avocado farmer in Ventura County and co-founder of Simpatica Farm, said. “Rarely do we see women either working in upper levels of management or participating in the field.”
Berkett suspects that the farmer gender gap is linked to a combination of factors: there is not enough encouragement for women farmers, there is an uncomfortable male “macho chauvinistic” farming culture and there is a concern that women will not be able to perform the physical labor.
“I think there is a fear amongst the men who are doing most of the hiring that the women aren’t tough enough, that they won’t fit in or that they’ll cause an uncomfortable changing culture,” Berkett said.
Willow and Maise, the soil sisters of Sierra Nevada. Photo Courtesy of Soil Sisters Farm
THE FARMING CULTURE: A SOIL SISTER'S FARMING EXPERIENCE
Before Hein became a soil sister, she experienced the “macho chauvinistic” farming culture when she worked on a couple’s farm and co-farmed with her romantic partner at the time.
“There is a stereotype of the man and wife farmers,” Hein said. “Being the farmer’s wife is a role so engrained in our consciences that to switch it up is hard for people.”
The patriarchal system associated with farming caused Hein to feel insecure and limited as a farmer. She believes that the general sexism taught in our culture that men are encouraged to take risks and women are to remain as a “perfect” supportive role, created a working environment that boosted male farmer success and restricted female farmers.
Hein wanted to become more confident as a farmer, and felt she could achieve that more easily by co-farming with another woman.
“Not that I couldn’t with a man,” she said, “but that it would be easier with a woman because there would be more of a level playing field between us. It seemed easier to communicate and we’d have more of a similar experience.”
It was for that reason that Hein and her business partner, Maisie Ganz, founded the Soil Sisters Farm in 2010 owning an acre of flowers. Not only did breaking the gender stereotypes encourage Hein to run her own farm, but also the desire to practice her own farming values.
“We wanted to value other things besides production and economics,” Hein said. “Those things are important, but we wanted to value other things like creativity and health.”
"We wanted to value other things like creativity and health.”
More women farmers pursue opportunities in agricultural growth that include diversified farming approaches and educational components that move the future of agriculture in a forward direction. Women in Agriculture groups such as the Center for Rural Affairs provide women farmers the opportunity to learn and practice sustainable farming in a changing climate. Typically, women are smaller farmers with fewer acres of land than men. In the _2012 Census of Agriculture, the average size of a U.S. farm was 434 acres (roughly equivalent to 434 football fields); the average size of farms owned by women was 217 acres. With less land and less production, more women farmers have the opportunity to practice sustainable and organic farming.
Kathleen Blakistone, the 'dirty girl' of Compton and owner of Moonwater Farm.
SUSTAINABLE FARMING: A 'DIRTY GIRL'S' FARMING VALUES
Kathleen Blakistone, the ‘Dirty Girl’ of Compton and co-farmer of Moonwater Farm, runs an organic urban microfarm held in her own backyard. Blakistone uses her farm to grow organic crops, raise livestock, and prepare and preserve healthy foods. She provides farm camps and classes to the youth of South L.A. to teach the importance and value of sustainable agriculture. Although she encourages both boys and girls to join her classes, she notices a vast majority of her participants are boys—she believes the lack of women representation comes from a fear of getting dirty.
“Be a dirty girl,” Blakistone said. “It has a bad connotation, but really take joy in being a dirty girl. I think when we're young we're so influenced by artists like Cardi B and Taylor Swift. These are iconic images for young women, and they're both very attractive, but the image has been that nails must be a couple inches long.”
"Be a dirty girl. It has a bad connotation, but really take joy in being a dirty girl.”
Blakistone spends hours-on-end to maintain the upkeep of her farm, and she says it’s not always pretty. “Farming is associated with hard work, dirt, bugs, sweat— in a stereotypical conversation, not girly things,” she said. “I tell people I've always got dirt under my fingernails, and I really don't mind.”
For Blakistone, it is important to motivate more women farmers because she says women have a connection to land that can be beneficial in agricultural growth and innovations. “I think they [women] are much more open to experimentation,” said Blakistone. “I think because women often have an intuitive nature hardwired because of babies, which makes them more innate.” She adds, “I think men have it too. I'm just saying that I think it's more innate without development in a woman.”
Blakistone and her husband both practice sustainable, organic farming, however, their work and responsibilities are divided—she manages more of the field work and he manages more of the infrastructure and woodwork. After Blakistone launched the farm, the couple teamed together to use farming as a way to address food justice issues.
Michelle Miller, the Iowa Farm Babe. Photo courtesy of Farm babe
FARMING TEAMWORK: A FARM BABE'S CONTRIBUTION
Michelle Miller, also known as the “Farm Babe” of Iowa, is another woman farmer who uses teamwork to manage her farm. Miller grew up on a farm in Wisconsin, but decided to move to West L.A. for college to live the big city girl life. She attended fashion school in L.A., then traveled to 63 countries before going back to her roots on the farmland in Iowa with her boyfriend that she met at a bar.
Miller and her boyfriend grow corn, soybeans, alfalfa, and raise goats, sheep and cattle. For Miller, agriculture isn’t just a man’s job, nor is it just a woman’s; for her, agriculture needs both a man and woman to maintain a farm.
“There's a great team energy, there's a great team effort,” Miller said. “I think the sales and marketing is huge and if a man's too busy to manage every aspect of it, the women can help do accounting, sales and marketing, diversification or they can work with soil science. They're all equally important when it comes to getting the job done.”
“There's a great team energy, there's a great team effort.”
While also helping in the field to raise the cattle and maintain the farmland, Miller goes on farm tours around the country to speak about common food myths, many of which include farming operations such as misinformation about GMOs and organic foods. She is an avid supporter in modern agriculture—a wide type of production practice that uses technologically advanced equipment and energy subsidies such as irrigation water and fertilizers—and practices modern agriculture on her own farm. Although Miller would prefer to leave the heavy equipment labor to her farm partner, she said women are still capable of using the equipment just like men.
“I know plenty of women who drive the combines and the tractors that do a lot of the same things as men.”
While farming does include heavy lifting, driving a tractor, using large equipment, spending hours in the dirt and soil, and long days harvesting, women farmers are changing the future of farming by showing they can be the farmer. Not only are women in the field, but they are also contributing to improving the farming industry from gender stereotypes to modern agriculture. Women farmers like the ‘Soil Sister,’ the ‘Dirty Girl’ and the ‘Farm Babe’ are pushing for farming industry improvement in all aspects.
“In general, we need to see different model farmers” Hein said. “That includes women as farmers, but also immigrants and people of color. The more different voices we can hear, the better.”
"The more different voices we can hear, the better.”
