Vermont Farmers’ Land Ethics: Stories from the Ground Up

Farmers shared stories of deep connections to place and persistence. Each farmer I interviewed, in their own way, farms out of love – for their land, their animals, their family, their history, their community, or their independence.  

How did you come to farm here? 

I began each interview with this question. This question elicited responses that included both the reasons why someone initially got interested in farming, and also their story of accessing land. Land tenure was a central challenge for many farmers, and posed challenges in making long-term investments in practices many farmers wanted to adopt.

Farmers described different journeys to access their land, and many described challenges their existing land bases presented. Land availability, land affordability, suitability for a particular operation’s needs, and the proximity of suitable, affordable housing were each challenges described by farmers. For those who inherited farmland from family members, sometimes their family land might not be best configured for the type of operation they wanted to create (this was particularly true for farmers who wanted to farm using different methods than their parents). For farmers who did not grow up on farms and did not have generational access to land, it look a long time to find land that was affordable, available, near markets, and suitable for their preferred type of farming practices and products.

The land farmers had access to significantly shaped both the ways they were able to manage their land, and the long-term decisions farmers were able to make. One farmer who sought to scale up was unable to do so without access to contiguous land on which to continue their existing land management practices. Without secure land tenure, said one farmer: “We're always moving. It's never worth setting up something permanent.” For some farmers seeking to scale up, not having access to land made it impossible to manage their animals in the ways they thought was best for both animal and ecological health, and to farm on the scale they wanted. One farmer, currently raising 50 sheep, said that she wanted to graze 200 sheep to be able to be a full-time farmer, able to focus entirely on her sheep, and not need to work a part-time, off-farm job. Without secure land tenure, she was not able to scale up or make investments in any permanent infrastructure (like fences) which would help her better manage her animals and their impact on the landscape.  

Why do you farm?

I asked the question Why do you farm? in order to understand farmer’s priorities, and the things farming enabled them to do and be. The diversity of responses to this question (which were never short, or singular), surprised me. The responses were full of emotion, too. Below I summarize and group the range of responses I heard to the question of why farmers farm. Though each farmer had words and stories to describe why they farm, they told these stories with emotion that is challenging to capture on a page. I urge you, reader, to ask a farmer this question and listen closely not just to their response, but to how they tell the story. 

“Because I don’t want to do anything else”: Independence and Personality Reasons. One farmer looked at me after I asked why they farm and said, “Because I don’t want to do anything else.” Another farmer said, “I want to be at the bottom of the driveway each day when my daughter comes home on the bus.” A third said, “I want to be my own boss.” Many farmers described how farming was something that they knew they had to do: one said it was "in their bones.” Farmers would often build on these initial responses with a broader set of reasons. But there was a poignancy to these first, immediate, and direct responses.

Many farmers cited how much they enjoy the independence that comes with being a farmer – they appreciated being their own boss and being able to develop a farming system that worked well for themselves, their land base, and how they wanted to spend their time and energy. Some farm because they feel it matches their personality type: one person described appreciating how farming offers many different outlets for her varied interests and high energy levels.

Climate Change. One farmer’s interest in farming began when she first learned about climate change. This farmer’s interests were geared towards farming as a way to mitigate the effects of climate change: she talked about how we have to eat, and how by farming responsibly, she could play a role in reducing the emissions that come from producing and consuming food. She went on to talk about how raising sheep on grass feels the only thing she can tangibly do in the face of climate change: sheep can survive by eating only the grasses that grow in the high hills of Vermont, and fully grass-fed meat is a way to eat what her land provides, rather than need to import feed, or food. She described how, by using good pasture management practices, she feels she can sequester carbon, while also mitigating emissions that would otherwise be associated with imported meat.  

Another farmer described how farming was a way to ensure food security as the climate changed. She described how glad she was to have her own diversified farm (and thus food sources) to be able to feed both her family and her community. This was emphasized for her during the COVID-19 pandemic, and again during the Vermont floods of 2023 when she and her neighbors were stranded by high water up their mountain valley for a few days. She thinks that supply chain interruptions will only become more common with climate-induced extreme weather. She was glad to be able to farm in order to prepare for the future and build community resilience by producing food locally. 

Ecological Values. Many farmers mentioned ecological values: a concern for and interest in managing their land to create habitat for birds, pollinators, wildlife, plants, and more. I discuss this more in the outcomes section, but central to this notion was the fact that farmers saw their farming practices as a way to enhance ecological health and outcomes. One farmer said that she and her husband purchased the land that they did because it was a degraded piece of land that they knew they could improve through their farming practices and methods (it was an old hill farm, degraded by heavy farming generations ago). For her, farming was a way to enhance wildlife habitat and address biodiversity challenges. 

Care and Concern for Animals. Many farmers mentioned the health of their animals and wanting to give their animals an excellent upbringing as a key motivator. Many clarified that this was out of concern for the animals’ well-being rather than out of a concern for product quality. Farmers described deciding to farm because of how much they loved animals - either through childhoods spent on farms, or childhoods spent interacting with non-farm animals (i.e. horses), or experiences working on farms in school that helped them realize how much they loved animals. They said that these youth experiences made them want to farm in a way that animals would have the “best life possible.” One farmer described how raising and slaughtering animals himself was an act of reverence for his animals, and he disdained regulations that force large livestock farmers to use slaughterhouses.

Care and Concern for Community; a Sense of Wanting to do Something Greater. Many farmed out of an urge to do something greater. As the prior topics illustrate, farmers saw what they did on their land as responsive to and integrated with actions and challenges far beyond their landscape. One farmer said, “I can’t control the earth, but I can control these 565 acres right here.” Another farmer said she and her husband started a farm because they wanted to live “In a way that was defensible.” Still another farmer described his decision to farm as a national security choice: he felt it was important to have local food production to be self-sufficient in order to be able to feed ourselves as a nation in the face of potential global supply chain interruptions.

The ways that farming enabled farmers to be part of their community was a central reason why farmers farmed, and why they continued to farm. One farmer said that farming "is good for communities," because farmers often have more capacity and flexible schedules to be able to serve on volunteer boards or fire crews. One farmer was extremely committed to affordability and community access to her products, so much so that she didn't want to change her farming practices for fear that this would increase her cost of production and she'd have to charge more for her products. For a number of farmers who described community-oriented reasons for why they farm, they saw the loss of farms having visible and detrimental effects on the vitality of the communities where they lived. They described wanting to continue farming in countercurrent to that trend because they felt the community benefits of farming were too great to lose. They also wanted other farmers to continue farming for this same reason.

Many farmers farmed because they wanted to produce food. Many cited the importance of healthy, locally raised food. Some farmers seemed focused on not only producing food for their nearby communities, but also to feed people far beyond the gates of their farmstead. 

As a Site for Education and Connection. One farmer described how strongly she believes in place-based education as a way to instill change. She farms because she can use her farm to create a community-oriented educational space. She raises livestock on her farm, and runs educational programs and community events for children of all ages. She farmed because “we need to repair a lot of broken things,” and she sees the lack of connections between people, land, plants, and soil as one of the most significant broken things in our society. She sought to shift the narrative of needing to go “out into nature,” because nature is in fact us. Thus, she sees farming as a way to illustrate how humans are part of nature, and sought to instill that ethic in children, in particular, by giving them on-farm experiences that allow them to physically ingest their relationship with land and animals.  She wanted her farm to be a community space, especially for kids who will not be full-time farmers themselves, but will be eaters - one that instilled notions of stewardship by appreciating where their food comes from, and helps them experience how they are connected to place and land.

One farming couple, who lived in Vermont's dairy-heavy Franklin County, loved hosting tours for elementary school children, which they did every year. They talked about how, as the number of farms in their community declined, more and more students came to their farm without ever before having met a cow. They were glad to be able to help children find ways to meet and connect with animals. They felt like they were contributing to and continuing an agricultural legacy for the children in their community. 

Families and Legacy Values. Many farmers mentioned reasons for farming that involved their families. For those whose grew up on farms and inherited their farms from their parents, they wanted to maintain their parents’ (or in some cases, aunts, uncles, cousins, or grandparents') legacies. Others, even those who didn’t grow up on farms themselves, wanted to raise their family on a farm. One farmer said that farming was a way to instill a sense of hard work in her children, and to ensure that they "developed a work ethic." For many farmers, especially those with young kids, it was important to farm "so that the next generation can continue to." Another farmer spoke to the practicality of farming as a parent: he and his wife struggled to find childcare, and farming was a profession he could bring his daughter along to.

In the survey, we asked respondents to rank the top five reasons they farm (see question text in appendix). These choices were synthesized from the stories shared above. Ranked first, in aggregate, were love of animals and to be able to live in accordance with one's values. Ranked second was to be able to have a positive relationship with nature. Ranked third was stewardship or improvement of farmland. Overall, the characteristic with the most votes (i.e. the characteristic that was most often included in a farmer’s top five reasons for farming) was quality of life. Feeding the world; financial motivations; climate change mitigation; and improving the environment off someone’s farm did not make it into the top 5 list of any survey respondent.  

What do you manage your farmland for? What factors influence your farming practices? How do you know if you’re being successful?

Farmers defined their objectives in a variety of ways. Asking farmers what they manage their land for helped me, as a non-farmer, better see the full breadth of objectives and goals that drive farm management practices. 

Soil health: A number of farmers described the primary goal of their farming as "building topsoil," “feeding soil,” or “soil health.” Many went on to say that topsoil or soil was their most valuable resource. 

I asked farmers how they knew if they were successfully building or improving soil health. Many conduct annual soil tests, often funded by state or federal farm agronomic technical assistance programs. Others use observational data to track soil health and condition. One farmer, who had been grazing her fields for about a decade, described how when she purchased her land, the soils on her hillside farm were acidic and relatively bare. Wild strawberries grew, but not much else. However, over the decade she had been rotationally grazing sheep on her fields, she saw a great increase in clover and reductions in wild strawberry populations, which she suspected came from soil pH increasing to the point that the clover could survive and an overall improvement in soil nutrition. She hadn’t added any clover seed, so this was simply regeneration from an existing seed bank that had not been able to germinate in more acidic conditions. 

This type of observational data maps onto soil chemistry: wild strawberry grows better in acidic soils, while clover needs more basic soils. This farmer, at her own cost, tested her soil organic matter each year. She had seen steady increases year over year (from 4.9 to 5.3) and shared these soil organic matter numbers with pride. She said: “I’m doing soil tests periodically. But my biggest indicator, every single day, is to just watch and see where we’re grazing, and what these plant species look like.” She noted how her animals’ grazing influenced pasture species composition: both through the nutrition they added to soil, thus changing soil chemistry, and the species they selected. She saw soil tests as one source of data, but not the only way she knew what was taking place on her fields.

Water:  Many described water management as a key objective. Discussions about water need to be viewed in the context of the summers in which they took place. The summer of 2022 was one of the driest on record; in a conversation on a hot July day, a farmer noted that it had been 100 days since his farm had received any rainfall. The summer of 2023 was one of the wettest on record, with intense flooding events that slowed crop growth significantly. In both cases, farmers had significant water management challenges.   

Farming for water means retaining water in dry years, and having good water runoff in wet years. Managing for water is related to managing for soil organic matter: soils with high organic matter content can retain water without becoming overly saturated. Other farmers described how their farming practices increased water retention capacities of their soil – in some cases dramatically. Many farmers understood this to be possible because of the motions of animals on their land, rooting around in, aerating, and breaking up soil, as well as adding organic matter. One farmer described plant rooting depths that increased dramatically as a result of grazing practices: he said that in the thirteen years his farm had been managing their fields, plant rooting depths had increased to 36 inches, and he felt confident they could go deeper.  

Farmers are attuned to quirks of their land base, many of which have to do with soil types and their water retention capabilities. By being on their land each day, they can observe the subtleties of how habitat, hydrology, and place change. Some of these changes are due to tweaks in their land management practices, while others are simply due to close observation. One farmer gave me a tour of her pastures, and as we walked, she gestured to wet areas and dry areas. In one place, she pointed and said, “There's a sh**load of bobolinks out here, so I don't know if I'm going to graze here next year.” She noted how the area she was indicating was not a mapped wetland, but rather just an emergent wet spot. Thus, she wasn’t under any regulatory requirement to not farm there, and instead just felt it would be better for the bobolinks if she avoided farming there. Other farmers described how they shifted their management in wet years (like the summer of 2023), when some zones were too wet to farm because of intermittent streams or soil type changes that were not visible on any map.  

Pasture productivity: Several farmers spoke to the ways in which their farming practices improved productivity and land health. I walked with one farmer on land he was grazing for the first time in decades. He described how the land he was farming had been hayed for many years with “nothing put back in” (i.e. no nutrients or manure). Hay yields had declined to the point that the field had been abandoned. He pointed out areas where his sheep had urinated and the rich green color in those plants a sign of regrowth in direct response to nitrogen. He described how after his first rotation of animals on the land, he was able to give his animals a smaller paddock because there was so much more forage regrowing in a given area.  

One farmer said, “Everything I do is to ensure that we have a great first cut of hay.” First cut hay can then be stored as future feed for animals. This farmer went on to describe how he views farming as an act with compounding interest: everything you do has to more than make up for what you are taking away. This farmer saw first cut hay as an act of removal, so he did all he could to add nutrition back into soil for the rest of the growing season. The farmer knew that investing in first cut hay, and then letting his land rest, was a way to build soil while also growing the most nutritious feed possible for his animals. 

Pasture productivity was something that farmers had good anecdotal and quantitative data about. Many farmers noted how much they appreciated working with technical assistance providers to develop and follow grazing plans, and were committed to following and tracking these plans and yields. One farmer described how when he started farming cows could graze 10 days total on an acre over the course of a growing season; in four years, he had increased productivity such that animals could graze for 35 days total on a given acre (a 3.5x increase). This farm did not add any fertilizer or seed to fields, and thus he suggested that these increases in pasture productivity were due entirely to his grazing practices. 

Many farmers described how the grazing actions of their animals led to different pasture species compositions. One farmer pointed out how, in the three months he’d been grazing a field that had previously not been grazed for decades, he could see legumes and other nitrogen-fixing plants returning. Many farmers also add nutrients and specific seed mixes to their fields to ensure optimal species mixes. A number of farmers are involved in the emerging “Land Care Cooperative,” and one farmer took me to a field with new species emerging as a result of planting by the collectively owned ripsower. We stood quietly in her field for about ten minutes, admiring the small seedlings slowly emerging from the ground. At one point, her daughter drove past on their tractor, en route to a different chore. She jumped with excitement when she saw her first baby buckwheat seedling. 

Product Quality and Customer Satisfaction: Many described managing their land to produce the highest quality products, though they focused on different quality components. For some, focusing on quality meant that they could focus less on quantity. One farmer said, “When we just focused on yield, we missed things,” and went on to describe how he felt that paying attention to product quality improved his management, for it meant that he was better attuned to small changes. For many dairy farmers, product quality has a direct financial benefit: milk with higher fat or protein content fetches far higher prices. Many farmers described how creating high quality products was a way to honor their animals - this was especially true for livestock and meat farmers - and how they knew when they ate a rich, fatty, or tasty piece of meat (or when their customers did) that the animal had lived a good life. Other farmers described how motivating the compliments they received from their customers were. When their customers were happy with their products, farmers were proud. One farmer who sold her products at the farmers market described how her customers’ questions and suggestions influenced her decisions on the farm, because she wanted to farm in a way that they were comfortable with. For instance, it was because of customer questions and suggestions that she decided to become certified organic.

Biodiversity: Though many farmland management practices positively effect farming yields, some of them do not. Said another way, some of the outcomes that farmers seemed most excited about were not at all related to their farm’s economic productivity. For example, one farmer described how, in her ten years farming, the diversity in the number and types of birds visiting her fields had dramatically increased. Of this, she was so proud. She described how one of her favorite activities, towards the end of each day, was to sit with her husband on their porch and watch birds come to the wild apple tree in the middle of her field. Birds would fly over, and she and her husband would just sit there and watch, for hours. She left this apple tree in the field even though it wasn’t part of her farming operation. Similarly, with a tone of great excitement, she described how she enjoyed seeing bears walking across her field. This led to a conversation about how when she moved there, there were no bears in the neighborhood, and thus she wondered if her farm had created better habitat for the bear. Another farmer grew gourds specifically so that they could mount them on their fence posts and watch birds spend time in them.

Farmers described biodiversity on multiple scales. While some were focused on wildlife and larger mammals, others were interested in microbial diversity. One farmer said, “I try to keep track of the different trophic levels of species that we see. We have a pretty complete system. You know, we have snakes, we have amphibians, we have reptiles, we have, you know, small mammals and larger animals …” Many farmers who described biodiversity as an objective spoke to observing it on multiple scales. 

Farmers have strong opinions about each others’ practices, and sometimes described how they felt their farming practices were beneficial by comparing them to others. One organic farmer described visiting a conventional farm and standing in a corn field planted with a genetically modified variety of corn. He said that he stood in that corn field and felt it was “quiet, and dead.” For him, the insects and bacteria present in soil are critical, and he sought to farm in a way that supported biodiversity on multiple levels. He thought the field he stood in felt dead, in part, because there were no other plants visible besides corn, and while he can hear insects and pollinators in his multi-species pastures, this monoculture corn field was silent. He used this corn field and its lack of visible or audible plant or insect diversity to illustrate the objectives he sought from his farm fields.

One example of a biodiversity-oriented management practice was a farmer who let his hayfields flower and go to seed. He saw this as a way to support insects and pollinators who enjoyed flowering plants. He acknowledged this produces lower quality feed for livestock. But he viewed this practice on a longer time scale than just a single growing season: letting the grass go to seed resulted in seeds getting into cows feed, which they then pooped out and trampled into the ground, effectively reseeding fields for next year. He loved this cyclicality, and how it both supported biodiversity outcomes and sustained farm animals. He said, “It may not be the best for milk quality… but there are other benefits.” 

Another farmer spoke about how his college education in conservation biology influenced how he thought about the role of his farmland in providing animal habitat. He described the 'zones' of management on his farm: his intensively managed farmland (a mix of pasture and corn fields) was one zone, the edges of his fields were a wild edge habitat zone, and the surrounding matrix forests a third. He talked in particular about the habitat benefits he saw from leaving the edges of his field to be wild, and how much he enjoyed watching deer, coyotes, foxes, and other critters on the edges of his hay fields and pastures.  Thus, different farmers saw biodiversity in different places: both embedded within their farming operations, and in the woodlands and fields and edges surrounding their fields. 

Animal health and welfare: Farmers love their animals. Many grew up with animals, both farm animals and other domesticated pets or horses. Many mentioned wanting to give their animals the best lives possible, and they designed their farm systems to ensure this outcome. This drove some farmers’ decisions to shift to rotational grazing methods: they felt it was a better way to live for their animals - outside, in a new place each day, with regular exercise and a diverse mix of food. Particularly for sheep and smaller ruminants, parasites can decimate a flock very quickly. Reducing the risk of parasite pressure was a significant focus for many farmers. Small ruminant farmers let their pastures rest for 45-60 days so as to reduce parasite populations. Others followed their sheep and goats with other species to eat the parasites. Predation of animals was a concern for many farmers, especially those closer to the spine of the Green Mountains. A number of farmers included a donkey, cow, or herding dog in the same pasture with their livestock as protection.

Beauty: Many farmers described beauty or other aesthetic characteristics as a driver of their farmland management practices. They farmed because they felt it made their land look beautiful. Sometimes notions of what is beautiful changed (or discouraged changing) growing practices. One farmer described the reason her family started to graze animals as her husband thinking it would look nice to have cows in their field down by their river. Another  farmer had alternating strips of hay and corn in her steep fields to prevent runoff, and one of the challenges of shifting to organic and pasture-based production was that she had to let go of this aesthetic. Farmers live on their farms, too... thus, having a beautiful home was a key motivator. Many farmers had small food or flower gardens outside their homes for their own personal consumption, for bird/pollinator habitat, or for beauty.

What enables or constrains your ability to farm in the ways you want to?  

When I talked with farmers about what they are managing their land for, they would sometimes describe the barriers they experienced in trying to meet those objectives. Responses included inappropriate infrastructure (such as not having permanent fencing), having a land base that was not configured for the types of crops or practices that a farmer wanted to implement, lack of access to capital, not enough time or labor, and inefficient systems.

I asked what resources might help farmers overcome these barriers. Many mentioned money and time, but typically time was more scarce than money. Anecdotally and in reality, many farmers do not pay themselves, particularly small farmers. And they certainly don’t pay themselves for the full number of hours they work. Many said they didn’t want more funds to be able to pay hired labor, but rather more time so they could do all of these tasks themselves. For farmers who sought to raise their kids on a farm, time was an acute challenge: they wanted to do farm chores with their kids, and in some cases designed their infrastructure to be functional with a kid on the hip, but this made chores take longer. Spending every moment of every day on a farm wore out many farmers. Labor requirements on all farms are high, but for some farms, a lack of financial resources meant that they had relatively inefficient systems, and thus their farming systems required quite a bit of time. 

Very few farmers said that payment for ecosystem services (particularly payments for carbon or nutrient reductions) would substantially change their growing practices. One commented that the amount of money these programs would provide would have to be immense for them to be willing to do the paperwork, for they already had a hard time keeping up with other required reporting and paperwork. The bureaucracy of support programs for conservation-oriented farmland practices was a frequent complaint and constraint, and frustrating for farmers who wished for financial support to undertake practices that aren’t compensated by the market. Many farmers seemed to recognize that their practices improved and resulted in ecosystem services like carbon sequestration, but were not solely focused on tracking or improving these specific outcomes, and seemed skeptical about how payment for ecosystem service programs would ultimately be beneficial to their farm.

What does land stewardship mean to you? 

"Passing it along better than it was before."

"It's not just about productivity, but also about reducing erosion, sequestering carbon and nutrients, and having production areas that are beneficial for wildlife habitat."

"Farming within the carrying capacity of this place."

Most farmers described stewardship in a single sentence, something to the effect of “leaving the place better than we found it.” For almost all farmers, stewardship was very much tied to the act of farming: by farming their land, they were contributing to land health. 

Land health is key – and is a result of active management: One farmer commented, "If the land is thriving then everything is thriving." Many others spoke about how the health of their land, and soil health, were key indicators of how well they were doing. Farmers far more often described land-based factors, rather than economic factors, as indicators of their overall farm operation, what they were managing their land for, and whether they were successful. 

Many farmers mentioned that stewardship required maintaining agricultural land as agricultural land. Nearly every farmer described human action as embedded in stewardship. One farmer said, "Through management, land can support a lot. Without our animals, we have seen declines in productivity and more invasives." They said this one year after selling their cows, and seeing how their land changed without grazing animals. Many other farmers spoke about how their farming practices led to faster pasture regrowth and improved soil health outcomes. Some described outcomes that were explicitly economic (i.e. yields), and some that were explicitly ecological (i.e. habitat for wild animals). But for all, stewardship was a human action – it was the result of human engagement with and management of land.

Watching and learning from how the land responds: Farming practices are not static, but rather attentive to how land responds. One farmer said "The land indicates what we can do with it. We figured that out pretty early." Farmers pay close attention to the results of their farming practices, and are constantly iterating their practices to get to optimal outcomes.  

Many farmers spoke about how their land responded to the presence of grazing animals. I joined one farmer three mornings in a row as he moved his animals. Each day, he adjusted the paddock size to accommodate how much forage was on the ground, and how much animals had eaten the day before. When the animals didn’t eat as much as he wanted them to, or if a pasture was particularly lush, he made the paddock smaller so they would eat more. If a paddock didn’t have an ideal mix of forage for animals, he would make it bigger so they could find enough to eat. He wanted to give animals just the right amount of forage for what they needed for a 24-hour period, and he adjusted each day in order to calibrate. Because of the way this farmer’s paddocks were laid out (roughly circularly), we walked through most of the prior paddocks before arriving at the zone where we would be moving animals into. This meant we could see how land was responding over different rest periods. I remember the farmer stopping me as we walked to show me the regrowth of species he was excited to see coming back in his fields.

Many farmers described the many objectives they managed their land for - ranging from ecological to social - and how all of these objectives were embedded in stewardship. In our conversations about ecosystem services, or specific environmental causes (i.e. water quality, or carbon), farmers expressed concern about whether their farms could be resilient with a narrow focus on just a single outcome.

Restoring Traditional Land Management Regimes. One farmer described how part of his notion of land stewardship was restoring traditional grazing to the landscape. A couple of farmers spoke about the Pleistocene era, hearkening to the time when mastodons and other large mammals grazed on the landscape. They sought to mimic the actions of large mammals through letting animals graze for intense, short periods of time, and then excluding them from an area for a long time to support regrowth. The number of times Pleistocene-era land regimes came up made me wonder how this idea became part of the Vermont farmer discourse.

Living within Limits: One farmer described land stewardship as "Farming within the carrying capacity of this place." She described a particular rock that she always looked to, day after day and season after season, to judge how deep her topsoil and pasture grass were. She said that when she had even just two extra cows in her herd, that rock had much more exposed surface, and it was a sign to her that they had to back off. This story showed just one of many possible indicators farmers might use to understand what is happening on their landscape. Another farmer said that land stewardship meant "Doing what we can with the resources we have." I interpreted this statement as similar to the comment about carrying capacity: it illustrated a recognition that farmland, soil, and animal health are each finite resources. A central part of good farming practice for this farmer was recognizing and not exceeding those limits.  

Stewardship requires knowing a place, and being able to observe changes over long time scales: One farmer, in the midst of transferring her farm to a next generation of farmers, mourned that those new farmers were not planning to live on the farm. She said, “If you live somewhere you get to know it - at all times of day, and in all seasons." For this farmer, a critical component of stewardship was living in the place where she farmed, so that she could spend time on her farm both while she was ‘farming’ and also while she was recreating. She was able to observe the land at many times of day, and observe its small details that might not be explicitly related to her farm operation, but responded in small ways to it. She also noted the ways that she and her husband were able to do the small, detailed things that she felt really mattered – checking on cows when they heard a strange sound from the barn, for instance – that were only possible because they lived on the farm and able to see or hear that those small tasks needed to be done. This getting to know, because of spending so much time in, a place was a particularly beautiful illustration of the care that is possible through close attention. Farmers are able to pay minute detail to the function of their farmland, and to directly see how it responds to small changes.

Farmers make decisions on very long timeframes, considering impacts to their animals, land, and human communities many growing seasons or generations down the line. Farmers view land management not just in terms of its ‘now’ impacts, but also consider how what they do now influences what might happen next. This sense of time is different from that of the general public, and helped me better appreciate some of the tensions between agricultural and non-agricultural communities. For example, spreading manure might be seen by the public as an immediate threat to water quality, while farmers might see spreading manure as a long-term investment in soil nutrition and pasture productivity. This action’s impacts may not be pleasant one day after spreading (and in fact may be detrimental to specific environmental outcomes) but will carry long-term benefits for soil health and pasture regrowth and water retention. Balancing between these time frames is a challenging task which has led to much tension between farmers and the non-farming public.

Many of the farmers I spoke with spent many years on their piece of farmland. The act of farming over that long time span allowed them to try new practices and see how their land responded. Particularly for farmers with family members, they were also thinking about how to farm in a way so that the farm would be productive for the next generation. This statement had both economic implications (farmers wanted to be sure the farm operation would persist), but also illustrated how farmers saw keeping agricultural land as agricultural land as critical. For many, the continued presence of a farm was the only way that farmland could remain farmland, rather than be sold for development.   

Is stewardship the right word? I continue to wrestle with the fact that, while many of my other questions elicited long responses, when I asked farmers to define responsible land stewardship, they would respond in a sentence or two. This question was typically one I asked at the end of our conversations, at a time when our conversations were petering out. But farmers who had previously been somewhat verbose didn’t have much to say on this topic. I wonder if farmers saw ‘stewardship’ as a word that was relevant to their farms, or their actions. A couple of farmers asked me what I meant by the term, and seemed confused by it.