This is the fifth article in an eight-part series running that will follow our Chicago urban farms through harvest. Go back to part four. Go ahead to part six.
9:00 AM – Pour coffee. (Fresh pot, sip carefully.)
9:10 AM – Read emails from night before. (Prioritize and respond accordingly.)
9:30 AM – Team meeting. Numbers are down, boss wants solutions.
10:30 AM – Finish and File Quarterly Reports
11:30 AM – Stare out the window, wonder how things could be different. Can they be different?
Just one year ago, Raissa Scheller worked forty hours a week as an administrator at a commodities brokerage firm in downtown Chicago. That was before Heartland Alliance and The Chicago Botanic Garden came into her life. Now, in a t-shirt and sunscreen, Raissa is getting her hands dirty.
“It’s taken a while to get used to working outside all day,” Raissa says, taking a break from weeding to chat on an 85 degree day – with a heat index well over 100. “This is one of those days that I’m questioning my sanity,” she laughs.
“I was becoming more and more concerned with the environment. I just wanted to make things a little greener if possible…”
Raissa in an apprentice at Heartland Alliance’s poverty-fighting urban farm, as part of a nine-month urban agriculture program run by the Chicago Botanic Garden. After six months in the classroom, students participate in a 14-week paid apprenticeship at a partner farm somewhere in the city, ultimately earning them a certificate in urban agriculture from the City Colleges.
For all the hipster cred urban farming receives, getting your hands dirty and growing produce for a living is not as popular as you might think. Is it too physical? Is it a financially sound choice? With many unsure about the return on investment in farming, the average age of farmers in the US has risen to 58and fewer and fewer people are deciding to farm. But, for Raissa, moving out of air conditioned offices and into the field was about reconnecting.
” When you see something grow, something you helped to grow, it’s just, it’s just…very fulfilling.”
“I was becoming more and more concerned with the environment,” she explains. “I just wanted to make things a little greener if possible, instead of using more paper, using more electricity. It was important enough for me to leave something stable, a decent job.”
The opportunity to find a new way of life has been motivating enough for Raissa. Shifting from reports and bottom lines to trowels and fertilizer changes how one thinks about the nature – and satisfaction – of work. Bringing these plants to life, creating a greener landscape for the community, and providing healthy, fresh food to individuals and families provides more than a paycheck. It provides a space for belonging. It provides a personal mission to create good.
“When you see something grow, something you helped to grow, it’s just, it’s just,” Raissa pauses, as if looking for the perfect word. “Fulfilling.”
5:30 PM – Move day’s worth of weeds to compost.
5:45 PM – Sort and place produce into proper crates for tomorrow’s food pantry drop off.
6:45 PM – Lock up, take bus home.
7:30 PM – Shower, relax.
9:00 PM – Look out window, close eyes. Rest. Tomorrow, you get to go back to the farm.
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This is the fifth article in an eight-part series running that will follow our Chicago urban farms through harvest. Go back to part four. Go ahead to part six.
Dave Snyder is a writer and farmer whose poems, essays and criticism have appeared in Best American Poetry, Gastronomica, Colorado Review, The Iowa Review and elsewhere. He is currently Farm Director for Pisticci Restaurant in New York City. From 2012 – 2015, Dave worked for Heartland Alliance managing Chicago FarmWorks. This year he returns to tell FarmWorks’ story.
