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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] re:working kids/Robin

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  • From: "Robin Follette" <marketfarmers AT thymeforewe.com>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] re:working kids/Robin
  • Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 12:06:18 -0400

Hi Dear Robin!
If you've time, i'd love to hear more about what your daughter does,
as mine have inferred that they wish to help me more for their own
income.


Toni,

It's been so long since you asked me this that I'll leave your letter in its entirety at the end of mine so that people can read it. Taylor will be 12 next month. She is not 11, she's "almost 12." She goes to a small four-room K-8 public school so she's gone all day during the school year. She plays basketball, floor hockey and softball so she's a busy kid. She doesn't work many hours until school gets out in June. The number of hours she works (not counting the time we are at farmers market) depends on what's going on and the weather. Money is a big motivation for Taylor. She likes money a lot and she's learned to work for what she wants. She decided last summer that she needed a kayak. She earned the money and bought it herself. We bought her life jacket and paddle.

She works in the greenhouse by filling and seeding trays, transplanting up to six packs, turn the fans on and off at appropriate times and waters if I'm not home and it has to be done. She likes going over her elbows in potting mix when it has to be mixed with water. She tried a shovel, then a trowel, and who knows what else when I wasn't in there, but decided her hands/arms work best. As long as she's efficient (taking her age into consideration of course) I don't care how she does most things. Everything she does is less I have to do or hire out to someone else.

In the garden: transplants into the garden, weeds, mulches, harvests. We usually don't water but she can when it's needed. She knows which insects are beneficial and which ones get squished. Two weekends ago she forked dirty/wet hay and straw into the Hauler with me. After we planted rhubarb she helped fork the hay and straw out of the Hauler (three wheeled AVT with a dump body) and around the plants. She drives stakes and puts up twine to mark newly seeded rows. She can stake tomatoes and weave peas. She doesn't like to use the Earthway seeder but does plant seeds I don't use the seeder for. She doesn't like to turn a compost pile but she'll build one.

On market and farmstand days she gets 10% of what we gross as payment for working with me. She loves to wait on customers. Taylor gets paid $5/hr for things that are not her regular chores. She's worth it. She's 11 and I'm 41. Eventually she'll be faster than me and thanks to a sore knee that will happen sooner than later. If I need a vegetable from the garden for supper or we're harvesting for things I'm putting up for the family (canning, freezing, dehydrating) she does not get paid...she gets fed. She's paid for garden and greenhouse work she does for me but not for the work she does for the flowers and herbs she grows to sell.

Taylor doesn't work at all some days but several hours other days. She usually picks and chooses. She knows I need her to help harvest on Mondays so she doesn't usually plan anything. There are days when she's at the other end of the garden one minute and when I turn around she's disappeared because a friend stopped by. She doesn't work on a rigid schedule. When she asks if I need something to drink I know she's going back to the house for a break. She takes a break whenever she needs one.

One of the most important ways Taylor helps our family business is by cooking. She wants to be a chef and has decided she will buy from local farmers whenever possible. Many of the things we grow in our two acres of vegetables are here because she chose them. She goes through all the seed catalogs looking for things she sees on Food Network. She makes a grilled sandwich with cheddar cheese and homemade pesto bread that will bring me in from the garden no matter how busy I am. When I'm tired, hot, filthy and wanting nothing more than to sit with a cold drink on the swing she'll happily make supper for us. She got her creative cooking from my husband. I'm afraid I'm not very exciting in the kitchen.

Don't over look things that can be done in the house. Our oldest daughter is 20 and doesn't live at home anymore. Kristin loved her horses and would pick something from the garden for a meal but she wasn't interested in gardening or farming. She took care of her horses every day and did what she had to do for chores because it was expected of her but nothing more. I could have offered her $20 an hour to work in the garden and she'd have declined. She worked in town at the store and did odd jobs in our tiny community - anything to avoid working in the garden. She misses the garden now that she's buying food in the city. I gladly paid her to clean the house beyond her normal household chores so that I could spend more time working. I'd honestly rather muck stalls than clean the house.

I hope that helps!

Robin Follette
Thyme For Ewe Farm www.thymeforewe.com
Editor, Farm & Garden www.farm-garden.com
A Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Living Resource


We live in a remote, mountainous (harsher economy) farming area
- the girls are unable to be gainfully employed unless neighbors hire
them for various odd jobs. I again have waaaay more planted and planned
for one woman to tend - and am wondering if this is the season i wind up
marketing in our very small community. I was gardening teacher in my
past life at a Waldorf Methods school in Sacramento. Our kids in the 4th
and 5th grades worked VERY hard and enthusiastically at gardening,
composting, hauling, mulching, tool maintenance, and a myriad of other
tasks - at least for 1-2 hour stretches. They did seed starting and
vermicoposting in classrooms for our little gardens, orchard, and
vineyard, BLESS their hearts. These were mostly inner city kids who
were not all that grounded and knowing where their food even came from.
They had some kinda energy for the work. The boys loved to haul
anything.
I have planned and started far more than i need and could accomplish
marketing with their help - 1 girl and 1 parent in two counties on
Saturdays. What might a fair wages be for an energetic and helpful 17
yr. old and a less willing, but ethical 14 yr. darling?! These girls
help me with an immense amount of domestic chores including canning,
processing, cooking, harvest, and housework........but i have never
pressed them into "regular" service in MY gardening joys/obsession. They
do not receive allowance , but do their share for the family. The older
girl, Rose-17, works for me as caterings come up and has for 6 yrs. She
would like to bake for market as a side job and already has a small fudge
and truffle biz rolling. As we home school our high school, they get
their school work done in 4-6 hrs each day.
I want to be fair - they are fine daughters!

Thanks for any hints toward them doing this new job and pay scale. What
would i do if there were next to no customers.......share the loss like
we adults would?!

Thanks for all you do, Robin - and all active on the list~
Toni
Clifty Gardens
upper RedRiver Gorge, KY
********************************************************************

My 11 year old doesn't work as quickly as I do but she
works hard, accomplishes a lot, makes a lot of money over the summer, and

does it with a lot of enthusiasm.

Robin Follette





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