Farming is an Act of Social Justice

A slightly different version of this story was published by Civil Eats.

The first CSA pickup of the 2020 summer season at Woven Roots Farm in Tyringham, Massachusetts, was a joyous event. Pickup procedures were different, to be sure: masks and physical distancing were required, and only one person was allowed from each household during a self-assigned pickup time slot. Yet the farm felt safe and welcoming and  everyone wanted to talk with farmer Jen Salinetti after so much time quarantined at home. People were “like moths to the flame,” says farm manager Matt Boudreau. “They had a lot of pent-up conversations in them.”

The open doors to the CSA pickup spot had been painted with a rainbow and multiple statements of welcome: “Black Lives Matter. No Human is Illegal. Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere. Love is Love. All Genders are Whole. Women’s Rights are Human Rights. Water is Life.”

They are sentiments that resonate deeply with Jen, a community vegetable grower and educator who started the farm with her husband, Pete, 20 years ago in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massacusetts. Jen is the outgoing face of the farm, the earth mother who welcomes all, while Pete tends to stay more in the background. “Like during CSA pickup,” he says. “I definitely connect with lots of people, but I’m working, doing whatever, whereas Jen likes to talk to every single person for a half hour. She stands there and greets people and hugs—well, no hugging this year.…”

Early on, the Salinettis were happy to be selling their produce to local restaurants, but they soon they realized it wasn’t quite fulfilling them. “If we’re going to be growing food,” says Jen, “we want to grow it for the people, not just those who can afford a high-priced meal.” They made what she considers a moral shift away from restaurant sales and put more effort into growing their CSA, which started in 2010 with 10 members and this season is up to 200.

Farming is an act of social and environmental justice for Jen, a stance the current COVID-19 crisis and protests over racial injustice have only confirmed. “As a person of color,” she says, “it is my responsibility to be speaking up and to be identifying ways that our current system has caused harm and disconnect, and offering skills to be able to reshape that.”

Jen feels a total affirmation of the choices they’ve made, not only to be farmers but also their commitment to affordable access to food and a deep involvement with their community. Everything that they have been creating for years places them in the perfect position to respond to people’s needs in this moment. Especially this year, they have experienced more requests for financial assistance, and they work with CSA members so that income isn’t a barrier to receiving food, either through some kind of work or skill barter, a reduced-price “solidarity share,” or payment plans. Jen is also heavily involved in educational programs that teach people how to grow their own food.

Maximum yield in a minimal space

Jen was born in Colombia and grew up as a transracial adoptee in suburban New Jersey. As a child, she would sit on a little rock among the rhododendrons outside her parents’ house. “I would go out there all the time. I remember feeling a fullness that was there,” she recalls. “I didn’t feel alone. I knew with certainty that there was something greater to be connected to. I didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t know it was necessarily food that would be the driving force, because I knew nothing about healthy food and where food came from.”

It wasn’t until she met Pete in college, where she was studying nutrition and agriculture, that the pieces started to come together.

Pete comes from a long line of gardeners. His great-grandfather immigrated to the U.S. from Italy with bean seeds in his pocket; Pete grew up in the Berkshires tending a large family garden with his father. When Jen first stepped into Pete’s family garden and heard the story of the bean seeds, she immediately felt she wanted to learn to grow those seeds, and she wanted to do it with Pete.

Now 20 years into growing, married with two children, Jen and Pete have an intense relationship with soil. While Jen jokes that they are actually growing soil and the vegetables are just a byproduct, the couple manages to cultivate an abundance of produce in a very limited space.

On just under 1.5 acres, the Salinettis and their small team grow more than 70 different crops using a biointensive, no-till method of regenerative farming that prioritizes soil health. Through intense study, observation and trial and error, they’ve devised methods that maximize their yields, and they’re able to feed at least 200 families through their CSA, as well as sell wholesale to the local food co-op and natural food stores in the area.

To achieve a consistently high yield, Jen and Pete plant vegetables in permanent beds that are 50 feet long and 30 inches wide, with a 12-inch aisle between them. They never till the soil, which would bring up old weed seeds and destroy the integrity of the soil structure. Instead, they aerate each of the 330 beds with a broad fork and gently incorporate compost into the top inch, relying on microorganisms and worms to take the nutrients deeper. On a yearly basis, as the team adds organic matter to the top of the soil, the weed seeds get deeper and deeper, which is one reason the farm does not have a weed problem. When weeds do emerge, they manually remove them with a shuffle hoe before they reach an inch tall.

The Salinettis plant the same family of crops in a given area, yet they constantly rotate them and can turn over any given bed space as many as four times in a season. As soon as a crop is harvested, they plant other crops in the space within a day. “Transplants always have to be ready to go into the ground,” explains Pete, “or else I won’t have enough food.”

There is always something growing in each bed, even over the winter, and the team plants the breaks between the 50-foot rows with clover, which helps with erosion control, suppresses the weeds, adds nitrogen to the soil through its roots, and attracts beneficial insects.

“The beauty of being small,” says Pete, “is that you are forced to take care of every one of those beds as best as you possibly can. It’s not just for the crop that’s in the ground, but it’s for the next crop going in there, and what’s going to be in there the year after that.”

It’s a hands-on, labor-intensive process that requires long hours and not much sleep during the growing season.

A people-first ethos

The Salinettis are grateful for their excellent farm crew manager Matt Boudreau, who has been with them for six years, and the five returning farm crew members this season. Having Matt on board frees Pete up for deeper exploration of how to maximize the yield so they can continue to expand their CSA and feed as many people as possible, especially now, as shopping in a traditional grocery store requires the assumption of risk.

“From the beginning,” Pete says, “that was how we wanted to go, to give real people real food. When I distribute to a food store, I don’t know who’s getting that food, and I don’t know if they really appreciate it. But when people come to my farm to pick up and they tell me how much they appreciate it, well, that’s why we do it.”

The compost pile.

The people-first ethos of the farm extends to the employees as well. The Salinettis treat the farm crew like extended family. Traditionally, Fridays have been a day where one team member would cook for the team with the farm vegetables, and everyone would eat together in the house. Those meals have been canceled this season, says Matt, “and that’s been the most heartbreaking part of all of this. Now we sit together under the trees, eating our own food and talking about how much we miss the farm sandwiches Jen and Pete made with the homemade pesto and cheese and veggies.” Jen shares the heartbreak. “I miss cooking for people and being able to show my appreciation that way.”

 One tradition hasn’t disappeared, though. Pete still brings coffee and tea out to the field every afternoon and the crew stops for a break and conversation. Now everyone just brings their own mug.

The Salinettis feel a responsibility to share their knowledge with their employees. Says Matt, “the feeling is very much ‘we’ll support you in whatever you want to do.’ We can’t have farms without farmers, so the more people we can have go through our system and learn here, the more they can go on and spread that knowledge.”

Spreading knowledge and power

Jen has long been involved in sharing knowledge, both on and off farm. Her mission is to foster a deeper understanding of the soil and the earth, and she now views her educational work as equal in importance to the actual production and offering of food. Before the pandemic, Jen, Pete and Matt offered on-farm workshops and intensives, as well as regular farm adventures for CSA members. Jen looks forward to expanding the programming into weekly year-round study for both youth and adults.

At The Montessori School of the Berkshires, she has created and teaches a land stewardship program for students ages two through eighth grade. She shows the younger students how to respect plants, beginning with tickling the roots before planting, and teaches seventh and eighth graders how to create a farm business by growing and selling vegetables and cooking for the school.

“Jen is teaching the kids how to be a respectful, loving, caring person, through the medium of dirt,” says Jeanette Maguire, the director of communications at the school and mother of one of Jen’s students. “She really is the mother of the earth. She operates from an ever-expanding perspective of the more you give, the more there actually is for you.”

Jen is also on a team negotiating to bring environmental literacy and a student-led learning experience to the Berkshire Hills Regional School District.

In addition, this spring she began partnering with Multicultural BRIDGE, a local nonprofit working with vulnerable community members on issues of equity and justice. The farm donates 30 CSA shares to BRIDGE’s constituents, as well as seeds, starter plants, and help starting new garden spaces. Through recorded lessons and interactive Zoom calls, Jen is teaching the immigrant women how to grow food in the New England climate, helping to increase their control over what they eat.

Gwendolyn Hampton VanSant, BRIDGE’s CEO and founding director, is thrilled to partner with Jen. “It’s really quite beautiful to build and expand community in this time of stress,” she says. “Jen’s program is fostering empowerment in so many ways. It’s not just the immediate need of food, but it’s also the need for connection in community. Jen’s way of teaching helps participants feel validated in the knowledge they might already have, which increases their sense of safety. Jen listens deeply, and she exudes a love and respect for the land.”  

Jen’s vision is to help people reconnect with their ancestral wisdom and their connection to the soil. In her work with the BRIDGE students, she feels just as much a student as a teacher. “I’m connecting to my own lineage and to my own ability to listen to and center women’s voices. I don’t think I would be experiencing the same level of collective upliftment and joy if all we were doing was just handing out food.”

Through her own lived experience, Jen has seen the inequities and the harm that people of color experience on a daily basis. “I’m committed to shifting that,” she says, “to find ways to fight the system and bring the humanity back into who we are.” She dreams of a solidarity economy, one based on mutual aid where everyone benefits. “Not the current mentality of hoarding for the individual,” she explains, “but rather to respond to collective needs. For example, as a farmer I have an abundance of food, whereas other people don’t have access to land or the ability to grow food. But everybody has something to offer.”

Strength in community

Having developed a reciprocal relationship with their community from the start, the Salinettis have found that in moments of challenge throughout their farming careers, their community has been there to help.  

At the very beginning, Jen and Pete were selling vegetables through an ever-more-popular farm stand. When a van hit the stand and demolished it and the young couple didn’t have money to rebuild, it was neighbors who convinced them to start a CSA model.

Their biggest challenge came in 2018, when unrelenting rains destroyed their entire fall harvest, devastating them. Pete took an exhausting and unfulfilling landscaping job off the farm, and they agonized if they could or even should continue to farm. It was a tough winter of digging deep and determining what was most important. Ultimately, they found the strength to go on through their community’s support and their own commitment to farming as an act of social justice.

Many CSA members paid far in advance for next summer’s season and encouraged others to join. They made granola and baked goods for the Salinettis and wrote notes expressing that the CSA was so much more to them than a place to pick up vegetables. Jen remembers that one CSA member said that it didn’t even matter if there were only two vegetables to pick up; the farm was a place where community grew and connection with the land was celebrated, and that was just as nourishing.

The experience confirmed to Jen and Pete that the work they do is both a collective project and a collective responsibility that the farm and the community have towards each other.  “It was almost like a glimmer of what we are experiencing even more now,” says Jen. “In times of great loss and great suffering, it's the people who we lean into and who lean into us that are really available and able to carry us through. Our impact is so much greater when we're working together.”

Jen experiences that same collective message in the soil and applies it to the deep messages of imbalance that the world is experiencing now. “On our farm, when there is balance, there is mutual flourishing; when there is imbalance there is weakness and disease. I don’t see, both in the soil and in our communities, how we can thrive without interdependency.”

The Salinetti home sits on original land of the Stockbridge Munsee people of the Mohican Nation.

Jen sees the pandemic as a forced slowdown, a time for us to reconsider our relationship with ourselves and the earth. “We are being given the opportunity to create a new tomorrow, one that unites all of humanity and nature again,” Jen says. “The earth is here for us, and she provides in ways that continue to astound and amaze me. Even at moments when we have caused unbelievable amounts of harm, the earth is there for us.”

Thinking back to her 8-year-old self, sitting on that little rock and dreaming of a larger purpose, Jen sats, “This life I've chosen has, without a doubt, made me more connected to the earth and to humanity than I could have ever dreamed of.”

And in this moment, both Jen and Pete feel strong and ready for the necessary work ahead.