We welcome researchers to the Center!
The Farley Center is happy for students and educators to come and learn more about us. We welcome researchers and other observers to visit us and explore issues of sustainability, community, small farming, etc. Contact us if you have a project idea that might fit.
Below are the reflections of Josh Taylor who is finishing up a project exploring community farming.
The Value of Community Farming
Josh Taylor
Farley Center Visit – How do community farm programs work to improve farmers’ quality of life and overall sustainability?
The Farley Center holds a special place in my heart and mind, since my first visit in the summer of 2016, arriving with Farley family member and my academic mentor Josh Farley. Traveling on a research trip, we arrived at the center driving through the path of a tornado and thunderstorm that narrowly missed both us and the farm – and having been somewhat near a death experience, the Farley Center filled me with a sense of peace, and that death is a natural part of life. I felt blessed to be in such a serene place, and that made me feel less anxious about mortality and the severe storm that we had just been through. Since then, as a doctoral student at the University of Vermont in the faculty of Food Systems, I have had the immense privilege of continuing to develop research with Farley Center staff and farmers to inquire into the benefits of community farm programs that work to create farming opportunities for immigrants and refugees.
Most recently, I returned for a week this May with my partner and research collaborator Ella Mighell, to complete field work, interviewing all of the farmers at the Center. We had the joy and honor of asking them deep questions like:
- How does farming make you feel? What do you think about farming?
- What benefits do you get emotionally or spiritually from farming and gardening?
- How do you feel when you are not able to farm?
- How was farming important to feeling at home when you immigrated to the United States?
- What do you need to make farming easier or more enjoyable?
- What challenges are there to farming here in the Farley Center in Wisconsin?
- Do you experience other challenges, such as prejudice or racism in your work or community?
The interviews were rich with experiences and deeply thoughtful reflections from the farmers. I am working over this summer and fall to analyze the responses and write them up into articles that aim to inform the Farley Center and similar programs to better understand and publicize their impacts, as well as take into consideration the needs and ideas that farmers have expressed as being helpful to better support them. Additionally, I will continue working with the Farley Center and a similar operation in Vermont (“New Farms for New Americans”) to create a sustainability analysis toolkit that will be used to evaluate the social, ecological, and economic sustainability and resiliency of the program. The Farley Center serves as a pilot for this new toolkit, which will become available for small, community farm programs to assess strengths and weaknesses, both celebrating and improving programs and lessening any negative effects.
In addition to the research and interviews we did on this visit, we also got to enjoy being on the farm, meeting old and new Farley Center friends, and helping with projects both on farm and in the Natural Path Sanctuary. We had time in the evenings to go on peaceful walks in the Sanctuary, as well as quiet bicycle rides in the surrounding rolling countryside – what a bucolic and serene landscape at the edge of the Driftless region! It is deeply fulfilling to experience how the Farley Center community integrates life and death in uplifting ways that contribute to both human and ecological well-being. Deep gratitude and thanks to everyone at the Farley Center for the open-hearted welcome, and I look forward to a future of working together to synergize our human-earth relationships, building fertile fields, peaceful forests, and happy farming communities.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or the Farley Center regarding our work for sustainable, agricultural communities that focus on building equity and resiliency.
With gratitude and care,
Josiah (Josh) Taylor & Ella Mighell
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