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June 15, 2020 19 mins

A farmer in Connecticut is stunned—and grateful—to see his business booming as his customers embrace a slower pace of life.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:07):
I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is the way we live now.
Today is day since weekends have meant anything, and day
forty five of this podcast. I live in an area
of rural New England where there are many farms and
farm stands, where the commitment when possible to eat local
is strong. I've wanted to have a farmer on the

(00:29):
show since the beginning, so today I'm happy to say
that my guest is Patrick Horn, whose family owns and
runs Waldingfield Farm in Washington, Connecticut. Patrick, thank you so
much for joining me to talk about the way we're

(00:49):
living now. Thank you so much for having me. So
could you describe for me where you are while we're
having this conversation, what your looking at, what you're surrounded by.
I'm in our office, which is in our barn, our
main farm barn here at Waldingfield. It's on the first

(01:10):
floor of a big, open space barn. I think it's
rather lovely. I'm surrounded by things which remind you of farming,
but also things which remind you of being a citizen.
There's a portrait of Thomas Jefferson I got from my
grandfather which sits here. Jasper John's replica of a painting

(01:32):
of American flag, and books and all the other accoutrement
of running a business. It's one of the places where
I come to to get away from when the farm
work becomes intense. I come here and it's a place
I sit often, and I look at pictures of the

(01:55):
farm which are on the wall, and pictures of my family,
and yeah, it's a pretty special place for me. It
sounds like a safe haven. It is. So tell me
about Wallingfield Farm. It's history, a little bit, and a
sense of the landscape and what you're growing there. Waldingfield
Farm has been in my family for the last century.

(02:20):
It was purchased by my great grandfather, lawyer from New
York City, who was looking for a place to spend
his summers, or more importantly, for his family to spend
their summers, and he purchased an old dairy farm, which
turns out from a cousin. Technically, the Smiths have been
here since seventeen thirty, which is a long time given

(02:42):
our our brief history of our country. But my older
brother Daniel announced to the family that he was, upon
graduating from college, was going to start an organic vegetable
farm at what was then our grandparents country house, and
the farm land had been leased out to local dairy farms,

(03:04):
and you know, it was a working environment, but in
essence for our family, it was the gathering spot to
see my grandparents. And this was in and my twin Quincy,
and I were freshman in college and we signed on
for summer work with my brother Daniel, with our brother,

(03:26):
and I don't think anybody anticipated that thirty one years
later we would have this sprawling working farm again, and
we grow organic vegetables. And we started on a quarter
acre and now we're about twenty five acres of vegetable production,

(03:48):
and we do about fifty acres of hay as well.
It's one of those things, for lack of a better word,
it actually grew organically out of a very small all idea.
Lo and behold, it became my life's work when it
wasn't necessarily so when I was twenty, I wasn't thinking

(04:12):
that this would be when I'm fifty is where I
would be, but I am. And it's reminiscent like a
lot of the corner of Connecticut where we're from. It
looks a lot like parts of England, which is what
it's named after Waldenfield, is a little hamlet in Suffolk, England,
where an ancestor of ours is from. When my great

(04:34):
grandfather purchased it, there were no trees here, so which
is always rolling hills and pasture and now it's filled
in a lot. But well, I often tell people I
have a pretty nice office, and that's uh, very fortunate
for that. When did you realize that this was going
to be the course that your life was going to take.

(04:56):
I think sometimes in life you find your your path
because somebody else introduces it to you. In this case,
it was our older brother. You know. I went to
college and got an English degree and went to graduate
school for theater, and I wanted to be an actor
and tried that for a decade or so, but that's

(05:18):
a tough go. Um. But all the while I was
still coming back to the farm during the summer and
participating in its growth, while my twin ran what was
then pretty small operation. And um in two thousand and five,

(05:38):
I realized that, you know, my day job when I
was living in New York City pursuing theater and film
and television, and my day job was accidental. I was
working in a trading firm, because that's what apparently most
farmers do, they work at trading firm. But I realized
that just wasn't what I wanted to do. And I

(06:01):
had a passion for food. I had a passion for
organic production. And this was something which correlated to this
growing movement of sustainability transparency in the food space, and
this excitement around restaurants and farmers markets and c s

(06:25):
a s. Which you know the share program which a
lot of farms that I know and respect operate under.
I just met my future wife and I announced to
her that I was leaving New York City and the
safety and security of a good paying off his job
and was going to be no longer be a weekend farmer.

(06:47):
I was going to be a full time farmer with
my brother. And I came back and I've never regretted it.
I think that I think it was it was something
which which chose me. It's just tapped me on the
shoulder and said this is what you need to do.
I see a lot of similarities between somebody who pursues

(07:10):
this type of work or somebody who pursues art. If
you're in it for the glory and you're in it
for celebrity. This is the wrong gig. Those can come
as a byproduct of luck or or hard work. But
this is a this is a craft. Like a lot
of people UH seemed to have we've seemed to have

(07:33):
removed ourselves from the idea that craft takes time where
we live in a very immediate gratification culture. And you know,
you just can't be a great farmer overnight. You can't
be a great writer, or an actor, or a sculptor
or anything which pursued or you know, any of the
guilds like blacksmiths, etcetera. They take somebody who will show

(07:56):
you will take the time to to nurture that, and
now you fast forward to today. I've often told people
that one of the things that I grow as new
farmers take I take that very seriously. When people come
to work for us, I want them to think very seriously,

(08:19):
this is a vocation which is worth pursuing. How has
the pandemic these last three months impacted your life as
a farmer? HM, That's a really good question. This is
been a an extraordinary challenging time for all of us

(08:44):
from all stations of life. Back in early March when
things were getting a little frisky, both in the media
and and kind of closer to home, when this idea
of pandemic was becoming a reality. I didn't quite anticipate

(09:07):
that the farm was going to have this extraordinary rush
of business appreciation by our community, one of our markets,
and all prefaces by saying that our farm does two
markets all year round. We do one in New York

(09:27):
City in Brooklyn in the Green Point neighborhood, and one
in New Haven. So we're, you know, we're producing food
indoors and these grow tunnels all winter, and we have
storage crops and things like that. And the New Haven
market decided to shut down for a couple of weeks
because they didn't really quite know what to do. And
our farm manager, who he and I and my brother Q,

(09:50):
we sat down and said, well, we have product. Why
don't we just open up the barn and create the
story we've talked about and see if anybody responds. And
they did. They kept coming once we announced that we
were open. I'm sure some of it was borne out
of fear of going to supermarkets, and there was such
uncertainty and this kind of lovely you know, post and

(10:14):
being barn of Ours was an inviting and oddly familiar
place to shop for people. They felt secure. We started
to see all these people come in on a daily basis.
We opened up five days a week and then six
days a week, and you know, we didn't have a ton.

(10:35):
We had lovely greens, and we had potatoes and carrots
and things which were the overwintered crops, the storage crops, beats.
And then we started to cooperate with some of our
friends who's their own particular models were affected by the
shutdown of food service restaurants being shut down. These were

(10:55):
farms which didn't go to markets all winter, had traditionally
relied and selling locally to restaurants to make their their money,
and we started buying from them and promoting them here,
and we created a little store based around what's available
in New England in March. I don't know whether people
were coming here because they really believe in sustainable farming

(11:17):
and and really wanted to get behind the farm, but
I appreciate the fact that they found us. We've benefited greatly.
I'm not gonna live for a couple of weeks. I
felt a little guilty. My wife's business, my wife is
in the production world, and you know, we had come
back from vacation in early March and her entire year

(11:37):
had been scrapped. All of the events that she was
attached to with her company we're canceled. And it was
very nervous time. It was a very nervous time. Yeah,
make a joke, you know, she makes the bacon and
I grow the edgies. But this was a significant issue.
And all of a sudden, during this in credibly difficult moment,

(12:02):
my world was was doing you know, late summer numbers.
We were just because we were ready. We were just
we were nimble enough when we were ready and people
started to arrive, and we've kept that going. I think that,
you know, one of the benefits of having been a
business around town and around the county for the last
thirty years is that, finally, and I hate to say

(12:24):
that it took a pandemic to do it, finally people
found us. That's extraordinarily rewarding financially aside, and you put
that aside, it's reworrying that people come in and say
thank you for what you do. I never knew you
were here. I'd heard about you, but I'm really glad
I found, and that's been happening on a regular basis.

(12:46):
And going back to that idea of when if you
if you question about what the decisions you've made in life,
I'm never going to question it again because people have
responded like thank you. This is thank you for what
you and your brothers and your family are doing here.
Like not not necessarily on on the timetable that you

(13:07):
might have first anticipated, but you know, life on life's
time table, right, the concept of life's work. A lot
of people spent a long time trying to justify what
they're doing. This pandemic has shown our farm and the
our manager and our employees, and one of the thought
one of the things we've been able to employ, which

(13:29):
is extraordinary. You know, we've been able to actually add
workers because people were coming here and we could afford
to do it. You know, we're usually super lean in
the spring, you know, when you really need capital. Um.
I just think that my peers, people with whom I
hold huge respect, we put in long hours, often for

(13:54):
very little glory. They've all most of them have experience
and a very similar uptick in their business, in their
community's recognition of what they do when we started farming
in there were nine dairy farms in Washington, Connecticut. There
are none today. And those those spellas were like, oh,

(14:16):
these organic farmer guys are sure, and they kind of giggled.
And now they're out of business and we're still going,
and I wish they were still in business. That's a
whole other, separate matter. And you know, my older brother
who founded the farm, he started a dairy company for
the sole reason that you know, he wanted to ensure
that farmers in the Northeast could survive. And I'm certainly

(14:38):
conscious of that. We live in this Bucolic area which
has a long rich or grarian tradition, but there aren't
many farms left, right. I think that's probably part of
two why. You know, the people who had heard of
you but hadn't found you have finally found you and
are appreciating Waldingfield Farm because there's a slowness that has

(15:03):
descended upon all of us in a way, and an
appreciation during these times that are so troubling and painful
in so many ways, an appreciation for and this is
gonna sound so corny, but the small things the perfect
piece of lettuce, a salad that was picked that morning,

(15:23):
and people are inhabiting their lives and inhabiting their homes
in a different way because they've been forced to, and
then there are gifts that come out of that. I
think it's very easy to get caught up in the
chaos of the big world. There's a lot going on
right now which is is troubling, and but there's also

(15:45):
a lot going on which is which brings you joy
and brings a sense of gratitude to the people who
provide that joy. Made a conscious decision to shed that
negativity which we all carry at times. And I've tried
really hard to think about how how how lucky I am,

(16:08):
um not take that for granted, work hard, but also
pass it down and still within others that you know,
the collective is a lot better than being alone. And
those little moments, whether it's one of the young kids
whose working at home kids, these are in college kids

(16:29):
who worked for somebody, came to me recently and said,
you know, I didn't know hoeing five feet of Swiss
chard could be so gratified. And that's it. That's that's
the little moment, you know, that's the forty five minutes
with one another person probably working quietly and just completing

(16:51):
a task and checking it off the list and then
moving on to the next and you build those small
moments and then you've had this this wonderful day or
this wonderful week. I'm trying to build my own Bible,
so to speak. You know, you the idea of you.
You collect your Bible and you bring that all in

(17:12):
and that's your experience. And if you have the book
at the end of your life that you can draw
upon and then maybe hand down to somebody, they'll get
an idea of Like this is what Patrick was about.
It's a long, difficult season every year being a farmer,
and I would imagine it's the same for numerous trades

(17:32):
or occupations. Mine just happens to be farming. You've said
so many incredibly wonderful and hopeful things. Thank you so
much for taking the time after what undoubtedly has been
a long week and will undoubtedly be a long weekend
to talk to me, to talk to us, and it's
just a very beautiful and hopeful message that you have,

(17:55):
so I appreciate it. Well. I I thank you for
including in this uh this chronicle to share the experiences
which all of the wonderful interviews you've done so far.
I've been brillion lightening for me too, and I thank
you for the opportunity to speak for you. Thank you,

(18:19):
Thanks for listening to the Way We Live Now. Tell
us the way you're living now. We want to hear
call us on. You might want to pen for this
nine nine three that's nine O nine seven eight nine
nine five and record your story and we might just
use it on the pod. Also, you can join our

(18:41):
Facebook group at facebook dot com slash groups slash the
Way We Live Now Pod. We are creating a community
here and we would love for you to join us.
You can find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder. The
Way We Live Now is a production of I Heart Radio.
It's produced by a lowebrol Anti. Bethan mc luso is
executive producer. Special thanks to Tristan McNeil and Tyler Klang.

(19:05):
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