By Tim Rowland | Contributing Writer

Courtney Grimes-Sutton’s grandfather was quite proud that he had clawed his way out of farming to become a dignified, suit-and-tie insurance salesman. So he was understandably nonplussed when she broke the news that she was desirous of a career in agriculture. “Dirt to dirt in three generations,” he sighed.

But like many Adirondack women who have chosen a career in agriculture, Grimes-Sutton, co-owner of Mace Chasm Farm, believes it’s people in office cubicles who deserve our pity. “Sitting is the new smoking,” she said.

In this, the UN’s International Year of the Female Farmer, the North Country is a role model. According to the USDA, there are 1.2 million women farmers in the US, representing about a third of producers. 

But in Essex County, that percentage is closer to half. There are 513 producers in Essex, and 229 are women.

“The northeastern small AG scene is quite female,” Grimes-Sutton said. “These are relatively new and smaller scale businesses — maybe they’re socially comfortable workplaces for women in addition to meeting needs for those who like the varied, physical work of agriculture.”

Grimes-Sutton began her career in arts school before learning how to butcher a steer and run a welding rig. She also propagates antique fruit trees, grafting favored roadside wild apples onto hardy root stock so local families could have one of these special trees of their own.

“Women have been socialized to multi-task at a superhuman capacity, and that alone brings a lot to the table in any field,” she said. “We’re also socialized to care and be attuned to the nuances of needs around us. These skills go a long way in managing the life systems and social systems that sustain a farm business.”

Growing up in the sprawling city of Columbus, Ohio, Becca Burke, owner of The Meadow Farmstead in the town of Jay, did not appear to be a candidate for growing vegetables in the Adirondacks. “There was an aspect of wanting to be healthy and eating a certain way and respecting the Earth, but didn’t really make that connection to farming until later on,” she said.

She caught the bug in 2012, visiting friends on a homestead in Northern California where they were “planting pomegranate trees and digging ponds and growing weird things.” Burke enrolled in Chico State University, which has a strong organic vegetable program, but more typically attracted male scions of big California farmers with commodity-scale olive orchards and dairies. 

“It was pretty evident from the beginning that I was in a small group of people that were focused on a different type of agriculture,” she said. “I was really drawn to the small, diversified farms raising vegetables; I wasn’t really interested in commodities or tree production.”

Burke hadn’t heard of the Adirondacks, but a friend connected her with an internship at North Country School in Lake Placid, which cemented her love of the land. But, after that, as she bounced around from small farms in California to Oregon and then all the way back to Vermont, the same problem kept materializing. These small farms could scarcely pay a living wage, and their owners weren’t going anywhere, so there was no room for advancement. Burke decided she wanted her own farm.

Her path to Jay helps explain why the North Country is such fertile ground for female producers. As opposed to sitting in the cab of a tractor all day, these small, curated farms require a wide arc of activities and problem-solving.

“I would say that women in general tend to be more detail oriented and really great multi-taskers,” she said. “With this type of farming there are a  hundred different things going on at any given time. You have so many things in your head and, especially at the scale I’m at, everything needs to be meticulously organized. And it’s not to say that there are no male farmers that are like that, but I do think that there is more space for men in that more industrial world where they’re getting to use their big machines.”

The ability to multi-task — the term comes up often in discussions with female farmers — has value to the farm, but also to the communities in which they live. When the small Ausable River Valley Business Association needed a grant, it was Burke who knew how to write one. 

Laura Cook, co-owner of The Cook Farm in Franklin County, grew up in one of these small agricultural communities in New Hampshire, but farming was the last thing on her mind when she went to school in Athens, GA, with an eye on a career in finance in Atlanta. The city and the culture changed her mind in about a week.

“I had a meltdown, and I was like, I’m not cut out for this, and I’m gonna quit school,” she said. “I cried and called all my friends at home, and told them I wanted to move back. And my best friend from home grew up showing through 4-H and she worked on a dairy farm. She said, ‘No, you just need to meet more people like me.’”

So Cook switched her studies from finance to cows. “I joined the Dairy Science Club and the dairy show team and got my first taste of the dairy industry,” she said. “And just immediately it clicked for me, like, this is what I want to do with the rest of my life.”

She went to work on a dairy farm before moving to Owls Head to raise goats, make goat-milk soap and raise just about everything else except, ironically enough, cows. In that time, Cook has seen more women enter the field, particularly in smaller farms.

“When I worked on the dairy farm, there were a lot of days where I was the only woman on the property, and that was on a crew of 20,” Cook said. “I had a mentality of, like, oh well, I’m gonna pick up this 100 pound calf and put it over my shoulder and carry it to the other barn over there, and that’s not a problem, even though there are smarter ways to do it — but when you’re 19 and you’re the only woman, you gotta prove yourself.”

When Marisa Lenetsky, co-owner of North Point Community Farm in Plattsburgh, walks into the auto parts store now, she’s treated with respect. But it’s taken some time. “The North Country is in some ways a pretty traditional place culturally, so some people aren’t used to, like, seeing a woman drive a tractor,” she says.

She and her business partner, Mike Champagne, prioritize an atmosphere among their employees where it’s assumed that men and women are equally adept at all tasks. Sometimes they still have to explain that they are partners in business, only to those who assume a woman would only farm in support of her husband. “He’s great about being extremely supportive and making it clear to people I actually have more tractor experience than he does,” Lenetsky said.

It helped when they began to farm fields along the busy stretch of Military Turnpike. “So for the first time, people driving by could see us in the field and on the tractor,” she said. “And I think that we definitely have gotten a huge response — people just like watching us work and quietly observe what we’re doing. Around here, respect just needs to be earned, which is legitimate. But four years in, I think people are starting to figure it out.”

If earning the respect of others is important, so is maintaining personal equilibrium. Farming can be socially, emotionally and financially taxing too. Some of the support in more mainstream professions can be lacking. Health care, for example, can be unaffordable, although as Grimes-Sutton notes, good exercise and good food is probably the best health care policy of all. “I like the steady, urgent work, which keeps my mind present,” she said. “In a society with too much clutter, in a mind with too much clutter, I’m grateful for a job that isn’t generating more clutter. The work is inherently hopeful, the crops and seasons successive, and it all adds up to a long game worth thinking about.”

Lifestyles are both rewarding and challenging. “I don’t have to go anywhere, and it’s wonderful, but it’s also extremely isolating,” Burke said. Particularly in-season there is little time to communicate with the outside world, and to talk about perhaps better coordinating production or transportation.

But at the end of the day, long as it might be, the connection between women and the land is embedded from time immemorial. “I think that in many ways, farming is about nurturing the land or the crops or the livestock, and I think that’s just something that comes really naturally to a lot of women,” Burke said. “And really, who wouldn’t want to work outside and have a meaningful job instead of being stuck in an office?”