Interviewing team: Heidy, Tyler, Ralph, Molly, Mandy, Elena

Interviewer: We have some questions, and the first question is: what do you believe it means to live a good life? Or, what do you need to live a good life?

Farmer: Well, to have a good life, I think that first of all you need good health, and to have a good family.

Well, for me, I really love farming. I have always loved it, since I was young. I like that there are a lot of people around, and we can talk with each other. The community and the farm are a big part of my life. - Esperanza. Photo by Cultivating Community Youth Growers

Interviewer: And in the work that you do, how do you think your work is part of the good life?

Farmer: Well, I grew up in my country in the agricultural field with my family, but it wasn’t my work.

Interviewer: It was more difficult?

Farmer: Yes.

Interviewer: Today, we seem to see that the kids don’t like to cook, and don’t take part in the farming life. Do you think that true? Is it important for kids to learn how to farm?

Farmer: Well, it depends, because my daughter helps me on the farm, and at the markets, and it helps a lot.

Interviewer: Are there some skills or qualities that you have in this field that help in your life, like cooking, or taking caring of animals?

Farmer: Yes, absolutely, because cooking vegetables is really good for you. Plus, organic vegetables are a lot healthier, because we don’t use chemicals, so it’s better for you.

Interviewer: Are there farming techniques that you learned in your home country?

Farmer: I used to work with my father in the fields. In my home country, we grew a lot of corn. We would use carbon in the soil, and sometimes we would use stakes to help bring in the harvest.

Interviewer: The farming that you were doing in your home country, was it to survive?

Farmer: Yes. It was part of our survival. In my country we were working on the farm every day. There were eleven brothers in my family, so I had to help my dad with everything on the farm so that we could survive.

Interviewer: It was like that for my mom, too, in her family in El Salvador. She had eleven brothers and sisters, too.

Farmer: In Guatemala, it’s really hard to make money, so farming is what people go to as part of their way of making money.

Interviewer: Also, we have seen that farming is good exercise, it seems like a good way to take care of ourselves. Is it like that in Guatemala, or more a way to make money to survive?

Farmer: It was to make money also. In Guatemala, you harvest just once a year and no more. So really it was a lot of hard work throughout the whole year just to gather up one harvest of everything we grew.

Interviewer: Here, because we harvest more, it’s better?

Farmer: Yes, I think so. It depends on the place. Here it’s like everything is in all season in the CSA, so it’s definitely different.  Here we have the machines and everything to help us. I mean, for us it’s like hard labor, but it’s definitely a lot easier than in Guatemala.

Interviewer: What is special in your life about farming?

Farmer: Well, for me, I really love farming. I have always loved it, since I was young. I like that there are a lot of people around, and we can talk with each other.  The community and the farm are a big part of my life.

Interviewer: You’ve already told us that farming helped you to survive, but are there any specific examples where farming really helped you?

Farmer: Yes, it has helped me a lot. There in Guatemala, for us farming is our way of being able to survive and have a job and be stable with a family. It has really helped me with bad times and in my work.

Interviewer: What are some other differences between farming here and farming in Guatemala?

Farmer: In Guatemala where I farmed it was cold. Here it’s different—in the summer we have so many vegetables. There, we harvested the corn in March or April, over a very short time. Here, it’s more like every few days you harvest the corn, so there are more plentiful harvests.

Interviewer: What is the best part of farming in Maine? Or the worst parts?

Farmer: The one hard thing about farming in Maine is the snow. In the wintertime, with the snow, you can’t really farm anything. Then, in the summer, that’s when all the vegetables grow. That’s the big difference about farming in Maine.

Interviewer: What is a typical day like on your farm?

Farmer: I start farming at around ten in the morning, and work for about three or four hours, and then I go home with my family for a while. We come back when it’s cooler to work again.

Interviewer: One more question…when you farm, do you think about anything, I don’t know, maybe sing?

Farmer: No! (Laughs)

Interviewer: Really, no singing?

Farmer: No! No singing, but I dedicate myself to my work.

Interviewer: What’s the funniest thing that’s ever happened to you on your farm?

Farmer: The funniest thing is when the rats come out, and snakes, too. (Everyone laughs, makes disgusted noises)

[Through translator] One time she was breastfeeding her daughter, when they were younger, and her husband’s sister? Brother? Sister. She brought a fake snake, you know how they are always so squirmy and slimy and gross, and she put it on Esperanza right here (gestures to her chest). She said she could never breastfeed again. That was a funny thing that happened, and that’s why she doesn’t like snakes.

Interviewer: Is there a way to get rid of the pests?

Farmer: You can’t really do anything about the pests. They are just there, and you have to live with them.

Interviewer: What advice would you give to someone who wanted to farm, or to start to farm?

Farmer [through translator]: She really likes farming, and what her advice to anybody who wants to farm would be to go for it, if you have a passion for it. She doesn’t like staying at home. In the wintertime, when there’s nothing growing, she’ll go to the stores, because she doesn’t like staying home. It’s a big part of her life. She even feels sick when she’s inside at home.

Interviewer: Is there is a part of farming that you love?

Farmer [through translator]: She really likes the organization that started this, because anybody who wanted to be working with the land would be really nice, and be close to nature, which is nice, too. So she just felt interested when they told her about this program. She just said, “Yes,” you know, “I’ll try it,” because she had started in Guatemala.

Interviewer: I’m sort of wondering the differences between produce you have here and produce in Guatemala, and any difficulties you might have with different kinds of soil?

Farmer: They are the same, really.

Interviewer: Corn?

Farmer: Corn, yes, but they’re the same. The only difference is that there are some fruits that only grow in this area, like apples. There are maybe a couple plants that are different in Guatemala, like rice products that only grow there.

Interviewer: How many people are in your family?

Farmer: I have one daughter who lives with me, and two other daughters. Seven grandchildren.

Interviewer: Do you go back to Guatemala?

Farmer: I was living here fifteen years before I got my traveling papers to go back.

Interviewer: What was that like, to go back after all that time?

Farmer: I didn’t really recognize my family when I went back, so that was a really big deal. They were little, and then they grew up. I was working in agriculture until about twenty, and then I got married at twenty-one. After that I moved to the capital of Guatemala, to the city, and didn’t farm there. I didn’t work at all until I came to the farm in Maine.

Interviewer: What are your dreams beyond this field? What do you want to do?

Farmer: Well, for me, my only dreams would be to have more access to farming, to land, and to grow more different kinds of plants, more variety.

Interviewer: What do you grow here that you bring home to your family?

Farmer: (Laughs) All of it!

Interviewer: You like to cook?

Farmer: Yes! I like to cook the typical dishes of Guatemala with my vegetables.

Interviewer: Do you have any questions for us?

Farmer: No, I don’t have any questions, but I just want to thank you for coming to work on the farm, and you are welcome to come back anytime.

Interviewing team: Logan, Heidy, Susan, Nasar, Nick,

Interviewer: What is your name and where are you from?

Farmer (through a translator): Alioye Muhammad from Somalia.

No one can live without farming. It’s a battle for your own life. So if you didn’t farm what do you eat? Nothing - Alioye

Interviewer: What does it mean to live a good life?

Farmer: He is thinking because he is farming now, his future is to become an independent farmer, to have a large farm. To become [an] American independent farmer.

Interviewer: What skills do young people need to live a good life?

Farmer: We are old; it is hard to adapt or to understand better or to get more skills; but the young people—it’s easy for them to learn, to go to school to gain more knowledge. Everything is easy [for them] and they have the chance now to get that opportunity, but us, we don’t have that opportunity. Our opportunity is to do is only work.

Interviewer: Do you remember the first time you farmed?

Farmer: That’s uncomfortable. Seven years up until now [he has been] a farmer [here].

Interviewer: Can you tell us a story about farming?

Farmer: Difference in weather. Sometimes when we grow the farm all the year long, we get no vegetables because of drought in Africa. Also, here, last year we did not grow a lot of tomatoes because of rain… (Translator waits for farmer to continue)—

So, in Africa, he’s talking about when he was young, twenty years old or something like that, at the end of each season when we have all of our vegetables, we would bury the corn for storage to keep for a while, and we made a party. All the village, they come together, just playing or dancing or having fun, you know. That’s what we do, also jumping up in the trees, you know. The two villages they come together and they run, like the Olympics, who have more running, like wrestling, who have more strong [games/competitions]…so they do that stuff as celebration.

Interviewer: Do you dream of something else besides farming?

Farmer: Yes, because farming is hard. He dreams of starting a store, starting a business.

Interviewer: Can you tell me about different places that you have farmed?

Farmer: In Africa, lots [of places]. This is the only place in Maine.

The land is good in Africa. It’s different because the land here does not have enough nutrients, but the one in Africa is good and clean and you can produce a lot of vegetables. Also, it doesn’t need a lot of work, it doesn’t need a lot of compost and that stuff, you can plant it and just wait – and the weeding, also, is not hard, although we only use hands, you can weed by hand 100 acres and the vegetable is good tasting. They have a lot of pride in the vegetable.

Interviewer: What are the different vegetables?

Farmer: In Africa, Somalia, there are two types of farms – some grow vegetables and some grow corn. In the area he grew up, no vegetables. He grew corn. Different sections [of Somalia], they grow different vegetables. In the southern end, they grow some kinds, in the north, other kinds, in the east, other kinds.

When he came here, there were a lot of vegetables he never saw before. Also, some of the same vegetables, but different shapes. For example, zucchini: one plant can spread fifty yards and harvest up to 100 pounds, but here, one plant is ten pounds. In Somalia, we don’t have carrot or lettuce; they won’t grow there, it is too hot, too dry. They grow all the time [in Maine]. They grow, but they just grow specific crops; but [in Somalia], whenever we have the rain or the river, that time we can grow EVERYTHING: vegetables, corn, whatever we want.

Interviewer: What is the best part about farming in Maine?

Farmer: That it is good. Just grow the vegetable, sell it, and whatever is left over is for the home.

But the corn is bad. If you grow a lot of corn…when the corn is ready the weather will change, the cold will start, the snow will come; so we must store the corn. We would like to wait until the corn is hard to become like African corn [because] we don’t want to eat it the way it is now. We don’t want to use American corn because it is too soft, a lot of the corn. And our customers, especially the Somali customers, they like to wait on the corn, but it will not be good if they wait so long: the weather will change and the corn will be bad and the taste is not good at that time. So we have a hard time with the corn.

Interviewer: What do you think about when you farm?

Farmer: That he’s doing a good job, that he must clean his farm. He thinks, what is the next stage? Are you harvesting tomorrow? Are you going for farmers’ market? He is checking in with himself, to make sure he is ready to go to farmer’s market….

Interviewer: What is the first thing you think about when you are done farming for the day?

Farmer: Just sit down, end of day, go back home, take a shower, and eat food. Sleep! (Alioye says “sleep” in English, which causes everyone to laugh.)

Interviewer: Can you tell me any story about farming?

Farmer: This is his farm and the next one belongs to another farmer, so close together. So the other farmer, he comes and he’s trying to push [the boundary] … he pull out the stakes and he puts them here to make his land become bigger. And Alioye, he comes the next day and he sees where the stake is and he says, “This was here, you know, my stake, when we divided up the land, and I put it here and now you push it—no!” And they start fighting and they start complaining with each other.

Interviewer: What is one farming method or tool that you wish you could change and how would you change it?

Farmer: He does not own this farm, although he likes to be a farmer; his future is the method to change. To have his own farm, that’s his goal.

Interviewer: Is there something you would like to say to the young farmers?

Farmer: Yes. First, no one can live without farming. It’s a battle for your own life. So if you didn’t farm what do you eat? Nothing. So the young people have to learn how to farm. Because now we are old. After a couple years we may die and then who’s left over? The young people, you know, they stay in the world. They have to start growing food so they have to learn that system. Because they have to start producing food for the world.

Interviewer: Is that happening?

Farmer: He says, for example, “I am almost fifty years. My son is twenty. If I didn’t show him what I am doing, or my culture, and I didn’t teach him the way and I died, who’s going to teach that person? Who is going to lead the right way? Nobody. I have to show him, you know, to do what is good for him about this life. So it is the same. Farming is the same. We have to encourage ourselves, also encourage our kids to be a farmer. Some people have to go to school, gain more education; other people have to farm, we have to work a lot of different systems. And that is a good way to be.

Interviewing team: Moe, Nighty, Nasser, Julian

Farmer: Hello, my name is John Yanga.

We eat a lot of fresh and healthy vegetables. Most of the vegetables you buy from the markets usually are stored a long time before it comes to the customers, or the consumers. But here you get the produce right away from the farm. Fresh, nutritious, and delicious! - John Yanga

Interviewer: Hello John, you can just call me Moe, and this is Nighty and this is Julian. Today we are going to ask you a couple of questions, like, what do you think you need to live a good life?

Farmer: Hmm, I need a house in this country, if I buy a house. A piece of land and to have my own farm. And I will feel relaxed and feel happy. With my kids around, enjoying running up and down…

Interviewer: What skills do you think people need to live a good life?

Farmer: Well, one skill I am trying to teach my kids is how to read and write. It’s the first skill. If they know how to read and write they can open their way to any field and be fearless.

Interviewer: Was farming something you did for a job for daily survival or something you choose to do?

Farmer: It’s a part of my life. We grew up as farmers and I didn’t choose it as a business. I lived it so I try to do it as a business.

Interviewer: Do you dream of doing something else someday?

Farmer: I would like to have like a well-organized farm in the future, the near future. And my goal is to dedicate this farm toward helping our people in Sudan.

Interviewer: So you’re donating?

Farmer: No, not donating but with knowledge and research. And all the research that I am going to get from my farming here, I try to apply back home.

Interviewer: Has your farming helped or saved your life or your family?

Farmer: We eat a lot of fresh and healthy vegetables. Most of the vegetables you buy from the markets usually are stored a long time before it comes to the customers, or the consumers. But here you get the produce right away from the farm. Fresh, nutritious, and delicious!

Interviewer: Tell me about the different places you farm…what is the land like in each place?

Farmer: Ah, I did farm in Sudan in three different places. The place that I started to farm was in my village, when I was a young boy, like my kids right here. I used to help my dad and it was not a real farm because I used to help him. But when I started to farm it was in the western part of South Sudan, which is Zanda land. It’s really an equatorial type of area. Just like Florida, and Brazil; the same type of weather. A lot of woods and a lot of forests, and a lot of rain. And I farmed there for a long time. I farmed as a student in middle school. I used to make my friends happy because I have a lot of produce around. And when there is no food in school they used to come to me, and we shared what I grew.

Interviewer: Take me through a day of farming. It could be here in Maine or anywhere else you farmed at your life. When do you start your day at work?

Farmer: I usually enjoy when I come in the morning…I stay the whole day. I enjoy that day. If I come like two, three hours, that’s not enough. I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished a lot. So if I come early in the morning and I stay the whole day, I feel happy, like I’ve accomplished a lot. There is many things to do, like weeding, planting, and harvesting. We have washing vegetables.

Interviewer: So you enjoy it?

Farmer: Yeah.

Interviewer: What food do you grow for the winter?

Farmer: Ah, for the winter we don’t grow a lot because of traffic conditions in snow and being far from the farm. [John’s family lives in Portland, abut an hour south of Lisbon, where he farms at the Littlefield-Packard Farm.] We can grow up until November, stuff like green leeks, some lettuces, arugula, and we can harvest a lot of carrots, like you guys weeded with me today—thanks!

Farming is tough. Only people who are dedicated, who really love it, can do it. It is something you can say about life: people choose to tough things, people choose to do easy things, and farming is one of the toughest things that people do. And you struggle to get enough income. Sometimes you lose all of your crops; sometimes you have so much produce you don’t know what to do with it.

Interviewer: Do you farm to save money?

Farmer: No, I can’t farm to save money right now. But, if my plan goes well—and I really figure out how to plant well, then I can talk about saving money. But right now I’m spending money, to learn, to do things in the future here.

Interviewer: How has farming brought you good fortune?

Farmer: I’m doing well with garlic. I just sold two hundred pounds of garlic to Good Shepherd [Food-Bank, in Portland], which is good! It’s all I had harvested, so I didn’t have to look for a market for it, and sit there, and hope someone would come buy a few heads—waiting for customers.

A woman who works for this project [NASAP], a good friend, introduced me to Good Shepherd, thinking they would be interested in buying from me, and I was lucky. And they will be sharing my garlic with food banks and food pantries, to people who really need this food.

Farmer: Good Shepherd then invited me and a few other farmers in to discuss with them how we can grow good food for these pantries, and we all agreed to help. I offered 1,000 pounds of carrots for that. I planted them, but I found that I didn’t have enough time to weed them all so I lost most of the carrots. But right now I’m trying to grow more, because we still have more time to harvest them, and the best carrots will be harvested right around October. So you see the weeds you pulled for me today were very important! They will make room for better carrots to grow, to feed people through the winter months.

Interviewer: What is the strangest part about trying to farm in Maine?

Farmer: It is a very short season. Three months. Imagine you’ve been waiting and waiting and all of a sudden the farming is over! (He laughs.)

Interviewer: What is the best part of farming in Maine?

Farmer: I have to say, we have really good customers in Maine. When you’re at the farmer’s markets, you feel people really support farmers. Because farming in Maine is tough, people understand, and that’s why they support farmers here by all means. And the CSAs—it feels really good when you see people are ready to pay money in advance, and they will help you plant, too. They know that if you fail, they will only get a little bit, and when you succeed, they will get a lot.

Farmer: We don’t have this in our communities. People don’t understand it. In the Sudanese community, it is hard for people to pay for things before they are in front of them. Sudanese farmers who don’t have cars have to find a way to do this on their own. We come here, far from Portland, together. NASAP used to have a van that took us to farms closer to Portland, and when the lease was up, I bought it from them to bring us all here. We sent letters to all of the tribes, to the different Sudanese communities in Portland, asking them for $10 to help support us, but the people said no—“Ah, this is business, you should take care of it yourselves.” This was discouraging, but a few small groups have helped us, paying for gas and such. Maybe if I have my own farm with my kids this won’t be a problem anymore.

Interviewer: Is that a dream of yours, to have your own farm?

Farmer: In 2011, I will be done with saving enough money for buying a house and a small piece of land, with two acres, four acres. But I will continue to farm here. I’ll just plan to plant what is good here and what is good where I’m going to live. And I am planning to do wholesale. It’s easier. Probably next year I will not be working with Cultivating Community so I can give enough time for farming, and keeping my family all together. NASAP is doing well and it is becoming easier for us here. If I find a house in Freeport, or Cumberland, then I can continue to come here, farm here two days a week or so, and plant only stuff that needs to be planted, like okra, which doesn’t need a lot of care. It’s expensive, but they grow in three months and they do very well.

Farmer: I have a training compost pile that I started, with lots of worms. They love to be in this cardboard. [John shows us, and sifts through a four foot heap secured in chicken wire with his bare hands. There is rich, dark soil toward the bottom.] The worms get too hot, and sometimes the vegetables that go in here are too fresh. The worms are suffering from the heat—look at them! [We look, as he mentions that others throw waste into his compost.] This compost has been going since last year. If you put wet cardboard up to them they’ll all move to it, and this is the way you can move them around in the soil. It’s a lot of work. I just don’t have time to give them all my care.[John indicates a ripe new squash growing in the compost.] This is nature. Absolutely. This is nature.

Interviewer: What do you think about when you’re out there planting, or weeding carrots?

Farmer: I think, “This is a part of life. It’s a part of me!” I have to, because if I consider the expenses I’ll just give up! (He laughs.)

Interviewer: What is your favorite time of day to farm?

Farmer: Anytime! I can farm under the sun, the rain, anytime.

Interviewer: Do you have any special advice for young farmers?

Farmer: Support us. We just need support, like what you did today…we need help! As you know, farmers don’t make a lot of money, but when they are supported, when they are encouraged by volunteers, they feel good.

Interviewer: Did anybody ever give you any advice?

Farmer: When I was working in Naples, there was a farmer there who was surprised I wanted to own my own farm. His advice to me was, do not waste time. So I think about him all the time, but when I think about spending my time here, I don’t care, because this is my life, and these two sons of mine, they’re really happy out here. They’re really happy. They know how to do a lot of stuff, and they do it better than big grownups.

Interviewer: What kinds of things do you teach your sons?

Farmer: They just helped me clean the onions, they pick out the cucumbers that are ready for the market, and they plant, harvest, and clean a lot of garlic. When we had to get 100 pounds ready for Good Shepherd, we had to harvest them in one day, and get them ready on the second day so a lot of work. I paid friends to help, ten dollars each, but I didn’t pay these young boys, my sons, they are too young. But I buy them stuff. They’re great boys. They do a lot of work. [John invites his two youngest sons who are playing nearby to come join the interview, but they refuse. They are shy. They nod when asked if they are proud of their dad.]

Interviewer: Is there any advice you want to give your boys or things you want them to remember, or know about this experience?

Farmer: I wish the young children, like mine, would surround themselves with the family, in work, too, like record keeping, customer service, work for wholesale…I can do the farming, but if they can do the rest and the marketing that would be great. I feel like I’m wasting time when I’m doing the marketing. Of my seven children, the eldest is getting ready for college, Francesca—she’s doing this young farmer program [Cultivating Community’s Youth Grower program—Francesca was then in an adjacent field interviewing another farmer] and she helps on market days with my wife. Now my two boys here—they help. The hardest thing I have to do as a farmer is selling. You spend so much time, money, and effort to bring the food to market, and then you have to sell it, and that’s so hard.

Interviewing team: Andrew and Nasar

Interviewer: What is your name?

Christine grows molokhia, corn, black beans, okra, winter squash, and summer squash.

Farmer: My name is Christen Lokiware.

Interviewer: How long have you been farming?

Farmer: I have been farming here at this farm [the Littlefield-Packard Farm in Lisbon] for three years.

Interviewer: What made you choose farming?

Farmer: I was a farmer a long time ago in my country. When I was young like you guys, a student, I helped my mom, weeding and planting in the garden and also harvest food from the garden. When I was grown I got married and after that I joined a women’s organization in Juba. I worked with them for five years and after that I traveled to Egypt. There was no work to do. I stayed home when my baby was young and after that I started working as a house maid. I worked for people and got paid.

Interviewer: Tell us about your children?

Farmer: I have four children and their names are Dennis Ochan, Rebecca Ochan, Steven Ochan, and my youngest, Robert Ochan.

Interviewer: Is it important to you that they know how to cook, to farm, or to raise animals?

Farmer: Yes, they already know how to cook. One day I brought them to the farm and they asked me, “What is this? Is this the same thing that we are eating every day?” I said, “Yes, and now you can learn how to weed,” and they said, “You know, we think that you can leave the weed and let it grow without the plants and it will still grow good.” When I asked them, “Who taught you guys?” (She laughs.) Their answer was “It’s just what we think. There is too much weed growing that needs to be pulled out all the time.”

Interviewer: Have your children come back to help you at the farm since then?

Farmer: When I brought Steven, Rebecca, and Robert to come help me at the farm they said they were tired and didn’t want to work. They said to me, “You know what, Mom? You can go to the farm by yourself because that’s just not me.” (She laughs again.)

Interviewer: Is farming something you do for a job?

Farmer: Yeah, farming is something I do as part of my job right now.

Interviewer: What got you started in farming?

Farmer: I got interested in farming because I benefit a lot from farming and I eat fresh vegetables that I grow at the farm all by myself. I also sell the foods and get the income from it.  I don’t waste a lot of money buying green vegetables when I can just grow it myself. If I want meat then I have to buy meat to cook.

Interviewer: Do you farm to stay healthy?

Farmer: Yeah, I farm to stay healthy and I like it. In my life I put it as my best job. I used to farm all the time, and I eat most of the stuff that I grow and don’t buy a lot of stuff.

Interviewer: Do you have dreams of doing stuff other than farming?

Farmer: Yes, I do a lot of hand work like sewing and using the sewing machine. Now in my house I sew a lot of clothes and sell them.

Interviewer: Has farming helped your life or your family’s life?

Farmer: Farming is helping, but this year is the year that I want to know if farming is going to my family enough so I can continue working at the farm and use my strategy to become a business farmer. That is my goal!

Interviewer: Can you tell us the different places you have farmed?

Farmer: I started to farm in Sudan. I moved to Juba when my mom took the exile to Uganda, to my uncle’s, and from there I started to farm because my uncle was the general director of agriculture in Juba. I think that it is good work.

Interviewer: Can you tell us what vegetables you grow for yourself and your family?

Farmer: The vegetables that I grow for my self and my family are molokhia, corn, black beans, okra, winter squash, and summer squash.

Interviewer: What is the best part about farming in Maine?

Farmer: The short season because soon the frost is going to come. We start planting early and end soon.

Interviewer: How is the land different in the places you’ve farmed?

Farmer: The land is totally different because here we get a small amount of land and farm in groups. In my country, I have free land and I own land. Nobody can ask me to buy it. You don’t grow in rows there. The land there is easier because all you do is plant the seeds on the ground and it will grow. There isn’t much to do to it. There is not too much weed there like there is here.  There you cannot buy compose or cow manure. But a smaller piece of land is easier to farm, too.

Interviewer: Can you share a trick about farming?

Farmer: The trick to farming is you have to use your common sense so that your planting will succeed, and you don’t want to put your mind on somebody else’s teaching. Learn only a few plants and learn them well. If it’s a new seed and you don’t know how to use it, then it won’t grow. When we first started farming here in Maine, we went to a conference with others farmers and we would learn a lot from them.

Interviewer: What is one farming method or tool that you wish to change, and how would you change it?

Farmer: I think the tool you need is money. I have money but not a lot of it. I want to get the big machines but only the rich people have those kinds of machines. The machines are very expensive. There is one woman who found an old machine that cost about three thousand. She got one for herself and she uses it.

Interviewer: What does that machine do?

Farmer: The machine can plow the rows and you can weed with that machine, too. So then you don’t have to dig the weeds with your hands. All you would have to do is just weed around the plants when it starts growing.

Interviewer: What types of pets/ animals is the worst to deal with?

Farmer: The worst animals to deal at the farm are turkeys and deer. When people leave after working at the farm they come out and eat the plants.

Interviewer: How do you get rid of the turkeys?

Farmer: Last year the owner of the land said if you catch a turkey eating the garden you have to kill it, and the owner does not have to charge us for the turkey meat we bring home because they are destroying the food that is growing. No one killed the turkey yet. (She laughs.)

Interviewer: What kinds of food do you grow during the winter?

Farmer: I don’t grow anything during the winter because during the winter you need a greenhouse to grow things. You need heat, and it’s very expensive.

Interviewer: How do you keep your summer harvest over a course of time?

Farmer: I don’t have enough room to put stuff in the freezer but I keep some stuff. That’s a real problem for me, because I cannot keep my food through the winter for three or four months, but instead we have to eat it when it is fresh.

Interviewer: Is there anything in general that you would like to say?

Farmer: In general, farming is a good thing and good idea. Farming is good exercise and your exercise can be done right here at the farm.

Interviewer: Is there any advice that you would like to give to us young farmers?

Farmer: Yes, my advice to you guys is keep being interested in farming, because you the young need to eat fresh food, and not the food that you cannot grow yourself. Farming is good exercise and your exercise can be done right here at the farm. Keep farming with the little you have and the better you can eat. You can stay healthy. Here there is too much diabetes. The younger kids didn’t really have diabetes but now they do. Sometimes they can get sick from food you get at the store, and sometimes when it’s not well cooked. My advice to you is to continue farming and teach the others farming so they know the good and the bad. If you don’t try it, then you don’t know what you can do.

Khadija has farmed in Somalia, Kenya, and Maine; and she grows broccoli but does not eat it.

Farmer: Khadija

Interviewing team: Halema, Farida, and Ali

Interviewer’s notes: When we were interviewing Khadija, she was hurrying so she could go back to working in the fields. She had hurt her hand in a fall and she was weeding the grass at the same time she was talking to us—she couldn’t stop, with her one hand. She wore two big beautiful purple rings on her good hand, and hid her hurt hand under her hijab for the interview. She talked with her hands a lot. She loved talking about her husband, her cousin, who she married when she was fifteen. He was a good farmer, he had a farm, too, and they learned how to farm together.

It was a sunny afternoon, and we were sitting under a tree in the shade on the grass, by her fields. We could hear crickets in the background. She told us we could have whatever we wanted that was ready on the farm. She told us, “If I make money from the farm, I would want to buy a goat, a cow, something.” She has two sons, two daughters, and a lot of grandchildren. Neither of her sons wants to get married. One has a mental problem and the other is in college.

When we were describing all the potluck lunch food we made—lots of ethnic foods from where we’re from, Sudan and Somalia and other countries—when we got to the lobster salad that a Maine farmer had made, she made this sound—oof!—to say she didn’t like it. She said she’d only eat the rice we made, and the goat meat.

“If a human has five fingers, they will understand each other.”

Khadija’s interviewer was conducted through a translator.

Interviewer: Where do you originally come from?

Translator: She originally came from Somalia.

Interviewer: What do you think you need to live a good life?

Translator: For that she doesn’t have a good knowledge except that she knows about farming, and she just wants to continue what she knows already. She said that the first time she came here she didn’t know anything about farming, but after, year by year, she was thinking, “I’m getting better and better and better. I think, though I don’t know how to speak English, I think pretty much I can keep going on what I’m doing.”

[For a good life,] she’s just asking that she can have more tools that she can use. She’s a female so she feels she needs someone to help her…. she’s asking for more help and more tools if we can help her.

She’s explaining that she felt bad because she was taking care of a lot of the farm and she didn’t get much to the market. There’s a lot of zucchinis and they are all dying—they are overgrown she needs someone to help her harvest.

Interviewer: Do you have any kids or grandchildren?

Translator: She has grandchildren and she has four kids. One is in middle school, another one in college, another one has a mental problem, and she has a lot of grandchildren. Her oldest daughter got married and had kids so she can’t help, I think, that much, because she’s kind of busy with her own family.

Interviewer: Do you think it’s important for them to know how to farm?

Translator: She doesn’t think they would need it. Her kids were all, “Why do you need this thing?! You were in Africa farming, now you are here…” so, she doesn’t think they would be interested in it. She can’t live without farming, it’s what she does, she’s proud of herself. That’s why she goes with it. Any human in America, anywhere, eats, we all use the source from the earth; it doesn’t matter if we’re in America or Africa, wherever you are.

Interviewer: Wow. That’s a powerful thing to say. I agree. Do you remember the first time you farmed?

Translator: She can’t remember. It was kind of part of her life, it was her great- great- great- grandparents’ [occupation], so it’s something that goes along with her generations.

Interviewer: When did you become a farmer?

Translator: When she was fifteen or younger, she got married and then her husband was a farmer, too.

Interviewer: Does she farm to earn money? Does she sell her crops?

Translator: No, and that’s what she was talking about a little while ago. She doesn’t have marketing and she doesn’t have the CSA thing, so she’s having a hard time.

Interviewer: But you want to sell your food, that’s part of why you grow?

Translator: She thinks this year is ending, but if she can have marketing help that would be great.

Interviewer: Do you dream of doing something else someday?

Translator: She said she would just want to retire and become an expert for farming—she’s not going to go to school to become a doctor or whatever—she just wants to improve her farming and education for that thing. She wants to get money to buy a cow or camel or chickens. She said people used to buy her fruit, her vegetables, and then she would go get a camel or cow. So now she’s dreaming, that’s her dream. She said she knew what to do, how to do all kind of things, but now you plant the thing and grow, and what else do you do? There’s no language, she doesn’t have the language, so what do you do?

Interviewer: Has your farming helped or saved your life, or your family’s life?

Translator: She said that she’s having a hard time…she’s just explained again, she doesn’t think she will receive money because she didn’t sell her produce, and it’s going bad, so it won’t help her family and her.

Interviewer: In the past, when you were living in Somalia, did the food that you grew, did it feed your family?

Translator: In the past I used to sell some and get money, maybe sheep or chicken, get something.

Interviewer: Can you tell me more about when you and your husband first were together and started farming? Because it made you laugh (laughter from everyone).

Translator: He had his own farm, and they both took care of the farm. It was really good; he helped her and showed her the good ways.

Interviewer: Tell me different places that you farmed.

Translator: She farmed in Somalia, Kenya, and Maine.

Interviewer: How is the land in Maine?

Translator: She doesn’t think this is real soil. It is not the soil that she is used to seeing. She’s never seen the place where they put the fertilizer. They just plant things and they grow. In Africa, they use irrigation to water the farms and it was easer than this.

Interviewer: What food do you grow for yourself?

Translator: She plants for herself corn, beans, cucumber, tomatoes, but she didn’t used to plant, what do you call it, the broccoli. She said she doesn’t eat it and she just sells it here. It’s for the Americans to eat. She loves milk. She used to have milk from her farm, meat, and all that stuff.

Interviewer: Do you know how to make cheese?

Translator: She used to keep the milk and then make butter out of it. But she did that back in her country, not here.

Interviewer: They used to make butter here, too. They would, like at a farm like this, they’d have a cow, they’d make butter, but they’d put it in a wooden bucket with a stick. (Whoo, whoo whoo!) How would you do it? How did you make butter in Somalia?

Translator: They’d put it in a big bucket, a kind of wood container, called han. It’s about bucket size, with a little hole in the top and a lid. They put the milk in, and then they hold it in both hands and rock it back and forth for thirty minutes or so. And then you do like this, like she’s doing (Khadija rocks with her hands and says “shhh, shhh, shhh”). And that’s how you make the butter. You separate them.

Interviewer: What is the strangest part about trying to farm in Maine?

Translator: The question is not clear for her. Is it how they are different, here and Africa?

Interviewer: How is farming here weird?

Translator: Africa is not cold, first of all. (Laughing.) It doesn’t have ice or snow! When it is snowy here, it’s raining out there. They don’t make the rows, the beds, they don’t measure their plants or rows or the beds. When the rain comes, you just plant your seeds and they come up. Here is much harder. You have to make the beds, all this and this, you have to measure. Africa is not like here. You cannot even take off your shoes here. Here it is much harder. If you don’t take your shoes, everything will stick your feet. There, it’s so flat, it’s nice, it’s smooth. It’s better.

Interviewer: Farmers do go barefoot here (in Lisbon) in the fields, in the earth. Do you like to have bare feet?

Translator: Here you cannot walk without shoes. Something is going to hurt you, or you are going to die. You can’t go without a jacket, a coat. In Africa, there’s a season in the fall when it’s not cold, it’s not hot. The weather is perfect, so you can walk without anything on your feet. They don’t care, they just walk. It’s free.

Interviewer: What is the best part about farming in Maine?

Translator: What she likes here is that she doesn’t know English, and so she can’t work in the factory or do something else. All she knows is being a farmer, and that’s what she chooses, and she likes it. She has to do something else, though. Yeah, she has to do something else, that’s what she said.

Interviewer: Take me through a day of farming. Take me through your routine.

Translator: She comes out here at ten. First, she looks over what needs to be done. What has been eaten, what needs to be done. If the vegetables on one part of the farm are fine, then she will take the other side, and do the other side. In the evening, when the sun is going down, when one of the fields needs watering, she waters it when everything else is done. At six, she will be done with the work.

Interviewer: When do you start your day at work?

Translator: She gets up at nine, she calls someone to pick her up because she doesn’t drive, she cannot drive. So she has to find someone to come and take her to the farm. She calls the other farmers and asks them, “Can you come get me?” Then they give her a ride. At twelve she gets a little bit of lunch time and then she starts the work.

Interviewer: Do you have any advice or anything to teach the young people?

Translator: First, she wants to say thank you for all the hard work you have done. We helped her a lot today a lot and after you leave she will keep working. She said having three of us weeding in the corn helped a lot. She says she believes that in her mind: “They will be doing better than us, because we don’t know the language, and they do. They know the farming and the language at the same time, so they will plant the crops, and then they could sell them.”

Santa was taught to farm by her parents in Sudan.

Interviewing team: Mary, Samar, Abdi, Patty, Nick

Interviewer: Where do you live?

Farmer: I live in Portland.

Interviewer: Oh, in Portland? You drive all the way up here (to Lisbon)?

Farmer: Yeah.

Interviewer: Wow.

Farmer: I learned a long time ago. My mom and my dad taught me. In my country. In Sudan.

Interviewer: So is farming a tradition in your family?

Farmer: Yeah.

Interviewer: So your mother and father did it?

Farmer: Yeah, yeah.

Interviewer: Do you have children?

Farmer: I have two.

Interviewer: Will they farm?

Farmer: Yes, they come, everybody come. They say, “Oh mom, hot, hot,” or “I am tired,” or “Oh, hard work.” (She laughs.) You come to work, it’s hard though, work and fun. I think, oh, my god, my back. (She laughs again.)

Interviewer: What kind of plants to you grow here at your farm?

Farmer: Carrots, onions, cabbages, a lot, yes, I plant lettuce, a lot.

Interviewer: A lot of people get groundhogs around here. What animals eat your food here, in Maine? Woodchuck?

Farmer: Woodchuck, squirrel.

Interviewer: Mice.

Farmer: Yeah, animals don’t eat a lot, here.

Interviewer: Did you have animals in Sudan eating your food?

Farmer: Yeah, a lot.

Interviewer: Like what?

Farmer: Elephant, lion, tiger.

Interviewer: What? Wulu! What? On your farm? On your farm? Elephants? Wait, there were elephants on your farm? Did they come eat? Or just come? Did the elephants do work?

Farmer: Yes, they come eat something, and with your friend you come to them and you are going to cry EEEEEEEE! Like that.

Interviewer: Did anyone use the animals to work?

Farmer: They work, in the forest.

Interviewer: But then they could also trample things, like step on everything.

Farmer: Yeah.

Interviewer: Mmm. That’s crazy. What other animals? I like this.

Farmer: Another one, giraffe. A lot.

Interviewer: Monkeys?

Farmer: Monkey, yup.

Interviewer: Monkeys, they come, do they eat out of the garden?

Farmer: Oh, they come eat corn, all. (Gestures all around her.)

Interviewer: Oh, the monkeys eat all the corn? Did you grow bananas and stuff like that?

Farmer: Yep, they eat all.

Interviewer: Sad, I would be so mad.

Farmer: Yeah, when you come and see, you say, “Oh my god, what is this?” (She laughs.)

Interviewer: Did you ever have to deal with like, snakes?

Farmer: Oooo!

Interviewer: You scared, huh. Snakes in Maine?

Farmer: No, no. In Sudan, big, big.

Interviewer: How big, the snakes in Sudan?

Farmer: Like big! (She points at her thigh.)

Interviewer: What would they eat?

Farmer: (She laughs.) I don’t know! I don’t what they eat? I don’t know. (She laughs more.)

Interviewer: She doesn’t stick around to find out. Out of there. Yeah, there’s no poisonous snakes in Maine.

Farmer: In Maine, in the June, sometimes. In Virginia, ooo, snake, lion, elephant.

Interviewer: In Virginia? No.

Farmer: Yeah, but in the park.

Interviewer: What do you think you need to live a good life?

Farmer: Stay together with the family, with the kids.

In Maine, actually, it’s good, but sometimes when the weather is dry like this, which is the hard time, we need to spray water all the way down there (indicates down a long field), this is the worst part, and I don’t like it. Photo by Cultivating Community Youth Growers

Farmer: Theresa Okia

Interviewing team: Lillian, Sabir, and Kidayer

Interviewer: Who taught you how to farm?

Farmer: I know how to farm from my country.

Interviewer: Was it your parents who taught you?

Farmer: Yeah, I learned from them. We used to go together to the farm and they tell me, “Do this, and do it like this,” and so I learn from my parents.

Interviewer: How old were you when you were in Sudan?

Farmer: I came here when I was already big. I have four kids with me. I came here in 2003, but I started farming in 2007, with Maine American Sustainable Agriculture [NASAP-New American Sustainable Agriculture Project]. They really teach us a lot of stuff. They took us to conferences and they took us to farm meetings and we learn a lot of things about farming.

Interviewer: Did you farm with your parents or do you farm with your husband?

Farmer: Right now here I don’t farm with anybody; my husband is working, I farm by myself, with co- groups of mine in separate fields, and everyone has different parts.

Interviewer: Do you farm for your family’s health?

Farmer: Yeah, three quarters of my vegetables go to the market for selling and a quarter of it I take for home use, and it really helps me during summers like this. I don’t buy vegetables from markets. I have to buy some things like meat, beef, bread; but the vegetables I take from my farm, which is a part of my earning, and we eat the fresh food form the field and we eat it natural, it’s not chemical.

Interviewer: Do you think it’s important that you know how to farm?

Farmer: Actually, I can say I know a lot but not everything, because what we’ve been learning in America is different from our country. Like irrigation systems…we need water for irrigation, but we don’t have it in our country. In Sudan, we use the rain water. Also here we learn how to plant in rows so that we could get more easily to weed. Farming in my country we don’t make rows, we just plant anywhere, we just spread seeds everywhere.

Interviewer: Has [farming] made you strong and healthy?

Farmer: Yeah, that’s really true. During this season the food I eat is different, when wintertime comes, when I buy from the store, it’s not the same, like what I’m taking from here, and my kids can tell: “Mom, this doesn’t taste like what you bring from farm!” (She laughs.) This one tastes nice, I don’t know why, maybe because they don’t use a lot of chemicals? And also we have the ethnic crops: the ones we don’t buy from the market [and instead] we get it from the farm, like the black eye peas, mulakeya, and the other ones I don’t know the names for in English. We have a lot of seeds…we just send money to Sudan and they post it to us, we plant them and we eat them, and sometimes we sell to our fellow Sudanese.

Interviewer: What’s your favorite vegetable?

Farmer: My favorite vegetable is black eyed peas. I can cook it bitter and I like eating it.

Interviewer: Do you eat it with vinegar, or how do you eat it?

Farmer: (She laughs.) No, I don’t eat it with vinegar, I just cook it. Sometimes I cook with peanut butter, sometime I cook it like fried onions with a little bit of oil…it’s really nice…and some beef.

Interviewer: What foods do you grow for you and your family?

Farmer: Mulakeya, black eyed pea. We have also sukuma, my family like it, collard greens, we grow them here.

Interviewer: What’s the best part about farming in Maine?

Farmer: In Maine, actually, it’s good, but sometimes when the weather is dry like this, which is the hard time, we need to spray water all the way down there (indicates down a long field), this is the worst part, and I don’t like it.

Interviewer: Too much work!

Farmer: Yeah, but when it rains, it’s okay.

Interviewer: How would you design a better irrigation system?

Farmer: It depends, because we depend on organizations that help us. Mostly we talk with them and they have a lot of help coming through them, so when everything changes through them maybe we can get better irrigation for farming.

Interviewer: Would that be something they just run in pipes?

Farmer: Yeah, like the one we have now at the small farm in Falmouth: right now they’ve already put the pipes around like this (she shows with her hand) with water, and we only need to take the hose for the water, which is good.

Interviewer: How do you get water to your plants and stuff?

Farmer: Right now we have, they call it barrels (see that blue one? yeah)…we have one each in front of the farm, they bring the water with the trailer and put the water there, so we have to carry with the small bucket to the crops. It’s not easy.

Interviewer: What time do you get up for work?

Farmer: Sometimes like today, we leave home at 8:00, and we come here almost 9:00…

Interviewer: What time do you guys leave?

Farmer: Sometimes we go home at 8:30…

Interviewer: Wow! Well, what’s the first thing you think about when you’re done with work?

Farmer: We have a lot of stuff to do…like tomorrow, Saturday, we have market at Deering Oaks [in Portland], so after weeding we have to pick up the vegetables, take them down there into the greenhouse (the washing station is there), and we have to wash everything, tie them in bunches…get ready for tomorrow. It’s going to take us long.

Interviewer: Do your family, children, help you farm?

Farmer: Kids? I don’t think so! (She laughs.) These kids, they don’t like farming.

Interviewer: Do you drink a lot of water?

Farmer: Maybe eight bottles a day.

Interviewer: What do you think about when you farm?

Farmer: When I’m here, actually, I don’t know how the day passes by, because I’m busy. When I work hard I’m tired at the end of the day…I find out it’s already a late hour…maybe 8. I go home and just do a little bit of work and go to bed. The days go by fast, but when I stay home I feel like I’m sick. My body gets used to work (she laughs).

Interviewer: Do you think that as your kids get older they might come try to learn some of the farming skills from you?

Farmer: I don’t think so. I tell them, please, come, I need help. They say, “We told you, ‘Don’t go farming,’ you don’t listen, so don’t complain or anything.” But I really like this job. They don’t know how I feel about it.

Interviewer: How does that make you feel as far as how you view the food supply and having your kids not having that skill? Does that worry you at all?

Farmer: Actually, I say everyone has his or her own choice. Maybe they don’t choose to be a farmer.

Interviewer: Can you tell me a secret about how you farm?

Farmer: This is nothing like a secret, but over here we get too dirty. When we got home, my youngest one, three years now, said, “Mom! Ewwww!!!” All my nails, my hands, were rough, while I was putting lotion on his face, and he was saying not to touch him. I don’t care because it’s part of my work.

Interviewer: Is there anything else you want to tell us?

Farmer: Actually, today I’m glad because you guys are here, witnessing with your own eyes what we’re doing here. This is a big encouragement to us. We know what you guys are thinking about us, but when we’re here by ourselves we think maybe we’re lost with what we’re doing. But we see people supporting us like this…we really appreciate that, and we feel that we’re really blessed on what we’re doing, and that people do care about us.

Interviewer: Do you have any advice for the young farmers like us?

Farmer: This year I think Cultivating Community, I don’t know about that program very good, but [another farmer named] John is a part of them…he is telling the youth, you guys need to come learn about what we’re doing. He actually brings his family every weekend here, so that’s a good example.

Interviewer: How are you feeling about farming?

Farmer: I feel good, and I feel like my body is motivated, and that I have strength. I sometimes feel tired at the end of the day. I say, ‘Can I really come tomorrow?’ I have to walk on my knees upstairs. But in the morning, the first thing I think about is the farm.