Market Farming

["Kevin Ancell" <kancell AT goodearthgardens.com>]

In New England, Farms are Increasingly Run by Women

CHESTER, Vt.-When Lisa Kaiman began pursuing her dream of opening a small
dairy farm, she didn't get much encouragement.

Still, the Princeton, N.J., native who first milked cows as an aspiring
veterinarian was determined to make it work. She spent some eight years
working on other people's farms, studying what she liked and didn't like.
She bought an old farmhouse that had no running water or electricity and
started remodeling.

In 1999, she officially opened her solo operation, Jersey Girls Dairy, a
farm in Chester dedicated to providing her registered Jerseys with a
comfortable life.

"I can't even tell you how many people told me it can't be done, you can't
do it," said Kaiman, 35, who now milks two dozen Jerseys. "Which actually is
really good because I'm stubborn as a mule, and the best way to get me to do
something is tell me I can't do it."

Kaiman is one of a growing group of New England women who have been changing
a traditional stereotype. Six states in the region are among the top 15 in
percentage of female-run farms, according to the most recent U.S. Department
of Agriculture survey, completed five years ago.

No. 1 was New Hampshire, with 17.60 percent; No. 4, Massachusetts, 16.61;
No. 5, Rhode Island, 15.65; No. 7, Connecticut, 15; No. 11, Maine, 14.10;
No. 14, Vermont, 13.42.

In the decade ending in 1997, as the proportion of female-run farms
nationally rose 37 percent, Maine saw a 57 percent increase and New
Hampshire 39 percent.

Getting started in agriculture may be easier for women in New England
because the region's farms already tend to be smaller, according to Vivianne
Holmes with the Women's Agricultural Network in Lisbon Falls, Maine, which
provides workshops and other support services to farmers.

"Our regular traditional farms are small here in New England, and so if
women tend to want to stay small, want to stay out of debt, want to be able
to handle the whole process themselves ... it's less burdensome, it's less
frightening to get into it than it would out West where you're talking
thousands of acres," said Holmes, who has her own farm with small livestock,
pigs and chickens.

Experts believe the figures underestimate the role women are playing because
they don't account for farms that women run jointly with their husbands.

"Women really are silent partners in a lot of farms where they don't get a
lot of credit," said Mary Peabody, director of the Women's Agricultural
Network in Berlin, Vt.

They're now stepping out of supporting roles in increasing numbers, Peabody
said.

"Women have money now that they haven't had in past generations that they're
able to invest in their business," she explained. "They have access to
education; more and more young women every year are going through and
getting college educations in animal sciences, and plant and soil sciences."

Jennifer Mayo, 53, started Arbutus Hill Farm in Meredith, N.H., about eight
years ago. She'd earned a master's degree in environmental resource
management and knew she wanted to live and work off the land.

"If you're a female farmer, I think you have to accept the fact that it is
not the norm," said Mayo, whose 50-acre farm now sells pork, lamb and
organic vegetables. "A lot of the farming community is very traditional, and
if you're a woman without a mate, I think it's even harder."

Mayo later started the Beginner Farmers of New Hampshire, a group with
three-quarters female membership, to help other new farmers network with one
another.

"I think it's a process, and you just have to be patient and just keep
reassuring people that you really are serious, and you have some very
specific goals and you keep plugging away and you don't let anyone
discourage you," she said.

Some farmers like Martha Izzi entered into agriculture after long careers in
other sectors. Izzi, 63, a former federal employee, began keeping animals on
her Shrewsbury, Vt., farm in 1986 and initially commuted up every weekend
from Boston.

Izzi has taken to farming in a serious way. She now lives there full-time
and raises sheep, goats and chickens, alongside her husband, a
horticulturist.

"We both have found our callings in some ways," Izzi said.

Another factor contributing to the rise in female-run farms is simple
demographics.

"As the average age of farmers increases, just by virtue of the fact that
women live longer than men, women will inherit a substantial amount of
farmland that they're responsible for being the decision makers for,"
Peabody said.

Operators like Rosina Wallace of Waterbury, Vt., are running the farms on
which they were raised.

Wallace first worked as a teacher before returning in 1980 to the farm her
family has run for five generations. Fifteen years later, she became its
primary operator after her father's death.

Still, Wallace, 55, doesn't consider herself to be much of a phenomenon.
After all, her paternal grandmother took over the family farm she now runs
after her grandfather died. And that grandmother was raising seven children.

"If you go back to the history all across the country, whenever the men have
had to do something else, the women have risen to the occasion," she said.

Female operators can face challenges that differ from those of men.

"Women are very averse to taking on debt, and starting a business is a very
risky proposition," Peabody said. "And I think women sometimes tend to
undercapitalize their businesses, and tend to try to stay at a very sort of
home-based business level. That becomes challenging in terms of the
competition that they're facing."

Wallace hires a mechanic to repair her equipment, and relies on help with
baling hay and other tasks she says her father once did himself.

But most of the obstacles are the very ones confronting many small farm
operations. For example, with a downturn in milk prices, Kaiman has had to
sell animals to buy winter feed this year.

"You're not going to meet too many farmers right now that don't need another
source of income," said Kaiman, who supplements her farm income by doing
accounting work for small businesses.

Still, even with the economic uncertainties of farming, Wallace says she
wouldn't trade her problems for anyone else's.

"I'm just where I want to be and I just love being here," Wallace said.

If she had to, her education would allow her to work elsewhere, but that
thought is hard to consider.

"I wouldn't be here, watching the change from morning to night, and from day
to day and from season to season," she says. "And I wouldn't be a part of
that, absorbing it and hearing it and smelling it. To me, that's just what's
so neat about what I do."

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On the Net:

Vermont Women's Agricultural Network: http://www.uvm.edu/wagn

Maine Women's Agricultural Network: http://www.umaine.edu/umext/wagn/

Beginner Farmers of New Hampshire: http://www.beginnerfarmers.org

"Vermont Farm Women": http://www.vermontfarmwomen.com