EarthDance Farms: Growing Crops—and Growing Farmers

“I think I’m not cut out to be a full-time farmer,” Molly laugh­ingly told Organic Connections. “I learned that when I was an appren­tice at UC Santa Cruz’s organic farm. But I still really wanted to be immersed in it. I real­ized my pas­sion is in edu­ca­tion; as a kid I thought I was going to be a teacher when I grew up. So in this way I can be both a farmer and a teacher.”

Coming Home

It was Molly’s own expo­sure to organic farm­ing in her youth that spurred her inter­est. At age 15, she vis­ited a local farm owned by Al and Caroline Mueller, and the nat­ural farm­ing meth­ods they employed left a last­ing impres­sion on the young girl. Her sub­se­quent edu­ca­tion took her far and wide. She com­pleted a BA in envi­ron­men­tal stud­ies at Eckerd College in Florida, earned a cer­tifi­cate in eco­log­i­cal hor­ti­cul­ture from the University of California at Santa Cruz, received a post­grad­u­ate diploma in devel­op­ment stud­ies from the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, and then worked with farm­ers in both Ghana and Thailand. Upon return­ing to St. Louis, Molly dis­cov­ered that Al Mueller had passed on, leav­ing the farm with no heirs, and she decided that this farm that had so inspired her would become her new home.

“I have always been inter­ested in start­ing a non­profit that was devoted to com­mu­nity renewal merged with agri­cul­ture,” Molly said. “When I found that the Muellers did not have any chil­dren and didn’t have any­one in the fam­ily to keep the farm going, I was really moti­vated to estab­lish EarthDance there so that the farm could remain in pro­duc­tion, and also could be used as a teach­ing mech­a­nism for other begin­ning farmers.”

Of course, a farm must sus­tain itself. Hence, all of the activ­ity around appren­tice­ships pushes for­ward the farm’s thriv­ing food busi­ness through CSAs, farm­ers’ mar­kets, sales to restau­rants, and more. It has paid off, even in a down econ­omy. Molly ini­tially estab­lished EarthDance Farms on a sin­gle shared acre of the Mueller prop­erty. The oper­a­tion expanded both in acreage and in yearly num­ber of apprentices—and this year EarthDance was able to fully pur­chase the farm.

Positive Changes

Part of the joy that Molly derives from the farm and the appren­tice pro­gram is watch­ing the changes the appren­tices go through. “Folks that are urban and sub­ur­ban dwellers are not used to spend­ing this much time out­side on a reg­u­lar basis and see­ing the sea­sons change on a farm,” she said. “One of our grad­u­ates pointed out to me the amaz­ing improve­ment in people’s men­tal health that she has wit­nessed. One guy that came into our pro­gram with pretty severe depres­sion felt like he had his life back after spend­ing a whole sea­son on the farm. It’s excit­ing to see how it affected him on a very per­sonal phys­i­cal and men­tal level.

“In addi­tion, a lot of the appren­tices have gone on to start their own farms, which is really the intent of the pro­gram. So that’s been very rewarding—to see that peo­ple have taken what they’ve learned and it’s moti­vated them to actu­ally be able to set up their own operations.”

Of course, with this level of involve­ment in whole foods, changes in diet can be expected to occur as well. “A big com­po­nent of the com­mu­nity aspect of the appren­tice­ship pro­gram becomes cen­tered on shar­ing recipes, dishes at pot luck meals and what­not,” said Molly. “So there is def­i­nitely a big change in their taste buds—and for their fam­i­lies too. Many moth­ers are doing our pro­gram, and a lot of them take this home to their own kitchens.”

Click any image above to see a larger version.

Camp EarthDance

Molly is excited to also be intro­duc­ing chil­dren to sus­tain­able farm­ing, through Camp EarthDance. “Camp EarthDance is a farm-to-table sum­mer camp that we’ve offered for middle-schoolers in the area for the last two sum­mers,” she explained. “The pro­gram has stu­dents work­ing and learn­ing on the farm in the morn­ings, and help­ing har­vest some of the veg­gies that they’ll then be prepar­ing into a healthy meal for lunch. The after­noon entails art, along with music and fit­ness activities.

“It’s amaz­ing to see how much even one week of being exposed to the farm can change a kid’s per­cep­tion,” Molly related. “We’ve had the young peo­ple say that they weren’t too sure about get­ting dirty and being around bugs, but then by the end of it they’re pick­ing up earth­worms and talk­ing about how won­der­ful they are.”

Interconnections

Since found­ing EarthDance, Molly has seen a shift in aware­ness as regards organic food. “I think that a lot of peo­ple who were ini­tially inter­ested in organic food for health rea­sons are now inter­ested in the envi­ron­men­tal impli­ca­tions, and are under­stand­ing more of the polit­i­cal aspect of food too,” she con­tin­ued. “That’s one of the ways that I really love to get our appren­tices engaged in the food move­ment. It’s not just learn­ing how to grow healthy food, but also how to grow the movement.”

But it’s the sheer expe­ri­ence that keeps Molly inspired every year, and she shared one of her hap­pi­est mem­o­ries. “One mem­ory is of a really amaz­ing har­vest day,” Molly recalled. “The rain just started pour­ing down. It wasn’t thun­der­ing or light­ning though, and we had a har­vest to bring in; so we sim­ply decided to bring it in, and in so doing we saved the field. It was one of the most fun days of field­work; in spite of the pour­ing rain, every­body just kept laugh­ing and work­ing through it. What else were we going to do? We needed to bring in the crops! The peo­ple that were there that day often say it was their favorite day on the farm in the whole year. And it was metaphoric in a way—farmers cer­tainly don’t mind the rain. A lot of peo­ple have an atti­tude of ‘Oh man, it’s going to rain this week­end.’ We’re always like, ‘Yes! It’s going to rain this weekend!’”

For more infor­ma­tion, please visit www.earthdancefarms.org.