Rick:

Hello, and welcome to Northwest Philly Neighbors.

I'm Rick Mohr, and my guest is Nina Berryman.

She talks about her work as farm manager for Weavers Way Farms.

From hands-in-the-dirt know-how, through educating a mosaic of workers, to running a produce business with a dozen partner groups.

Among other things, we'll hear about the beautiful farms tucked away in urban Philly, her giant vegetable planning spreadsheets, working with students from Saul Agricultural High School, and preparing weekly vegetable shares for 250 CSA members.

Stay with us.

Your work has a lot of different parts to it.

Could you say what some of those parts are?

Nina Berryman:

Yeah, sure.

The cliche of a farmer wearing many hats is very true.

I need to know a lot about the basics of farming, so soil science and plant science, and additional techniques about harvest times.

And then you can get another layer into disease and pest and weather management.

And then there's a whole different category of the business side of things, budgeting, projecting sales, watching expenses, things like that.

Specific things that I'm responsible for are overseeing the efficiencies between our two farm sites, since we have two farm locations, and making sure that they're well coordinated so we're not missing an opportunity to have a more efficient system, I guess, between the two farms.

Then I'm in charge of pretty much all of the behind-the-scenes administrative work, so that would be the budgeting, keeping track of expenses, organizing the sale of CSA shares, hiring, staff training.

And then I'm the main point person with the rest of our organization at Weavers Way, so I'm the main point person for our membership department, outreach events, the general manager, the finance department, the produce departments.

So then I also oversee sort of the distribution of food, so coordinating our availability list for all of our different outlets.

Rick:

And then there are also Saul students.

Nina Berryman:

Yeah, so in partnership with Food Moxie, our affiliated non-profit, we work together with Saul students to make sure that they can have an exciting and educational experience on the farm.

So Food Moxie is kind of that bridge between the classroom and the farm to really make sure those educational opportunities happen.

And then our role as the farm team is to make sure that they have a living laboratory, which is the farm that's available.

So we'll make sure everything is functioning as a useful farm so that they can kind of just come in, do a project and go home and not worry about the Sunday watering or things like that.

Rick:

People are surprised when they hear that there's a high school that does farming in the Philly city limits.

Nina Berryman:

Yeah, it's super rare.

So I only know of one other urban agricultural high school, and that's in Chicago.

And I think Saul was established prior to the one in Chicago.

So it's really innovative and a cool place.

Rick:

And you work directly with the students?

Nina Berryman:

Definitely.

Yep.

We have students come out to the farm during the school day as part of their class, after school, and even during the summer, there's a smaller group of students that can be involved on the farm as well.

Rick:

And then you also have volunteers, Weavers Way, working volunteers to supervise as well.

Nina Berryman:

So I don't have to do all that supervising.

The rest of my team has a large role to play with that.

But we do have, over the course of the season, probably hundreds, if not close to a thousand different people that come through the farms and volunteer to earn their working discount at the co-op or just volunteer for fun.

Rick:

Yeah.

So that's a big split.

Well, so many different kinds of things that you do.

Did you expect that?

Nina Berryman:

Not at all.

I mean, I knew farming was multifaceted, but what really makes our particular farms even more multifaceted is these connections with other organizations, with Saul High School, with Food Moxie, even just being nested within the co-op, add so many layers of communication and coordination and layers.

Rick:

Do you like that side of it as well as the farming or?

Nina Berryman:

And I think that's why I've stayed with Weavers Way for so long, is because I really, I do get a lot of energy from feeling like there's a successful partnership or there's different organizations that have different strengths to bring to the table, and none of us could do this on our own.

The high school couldn't have a working vegetable farm on their campus without our help, but we also wouldn't have time to get the students really plugged in to what we're doing if it wasn't for Food Moxie.

And then that's just one layer.

And then there's Pennsylvania Horticultural Society supporting our work, and the Philadelphia Orchard Project, and Penn State Extension.

And it turns into a really exciting network that is a lot to manage, but I like it.

It keeps me excited to work with so many different people and figuring out the best way that we can make the farm function.

Rick:

Yeah, so you grew up in rural Vermont.

Was farming a part of your growing up?

Nina Berryman:

You know, farming was not a part of my growing up with my immediate family, but it's all around me in Vermont.

When I grew up, there's farms on every road, and some of my friends at school may have been from farming families.

So I really didn't learn myself about growing food until around probably when I was in college, but it was certainly a part of the fabric of the landscape that I grew up in.

Rick:

So you saw it everywhere, but you didn't feel it as a calling, particularly at that time?

Nina Berryman:

No, I really didn't.

I was always drawn to work that was hands-on and outdoors and based in the environment, and I knew going into college that I really wanted to study environmental science.

But it really wasn't until the end of college and even after school that I realized that farming could fit with my interests.

And it was, I think, really being more exposed to different types of farming, whether it was educational agriculture or urban agriculture that made me realize that I could have a place in that world because my perception of agriculture was the rural landscape of dairy farms in Vermont until I left Vermont for school and then I realized that agriculture could look in many different ways.

Rick:

Was there a moment when you kind of thought, huh, maybe this is for me?

Nina Berryman:

I think there was.

So after school, I really didn't know what to do next.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to do a masters or if I wanted to seek a specific career within the broad realm of environmental science.

And so I decided just to take some time to kind of develop my own personal interests.

And I learned about a farm on the West Coast that had a lot of skill sharing in homesteading and not only vegetable growing, but also herbal medicine and working with livestock and all sorts of cool skills.

So I was like, that sounds interesting.

I would like to learn more about that just for my own personal interest.

And then during that program, we took a field trip to see some urban farms.

And I think that's kind of when the light bulb went off for me when I realized having that urban connection really tied into some of my interests that were more community based with getting people introduced to farming who might not know much about it and could really push that educational interest of mine as well as the environmental science aspect of it.

Rick:

And then you did some more schooling in that direction?

Nina Berryman:

Sort of, nothing too formal.

So that first farm experience was a certificate program.

So it was pretty structured with classes and readings and hands-on experience.

And then from there, I went to Weavers Way as an apprentice and learned a lot more, again, in a very hands-on, 100% hands-on way.

Learned a lot from the farm manager and the rest of the farm team at the time.

And then since then, I've just been learning through my own trial and error at Weavers Way.

Rick:

Mm-hmm.

What was it that pulled you to Philadelphia?

How did that connection get made?

Nina Berryman:

Mostly the fact that my sister had also recently moved here, and we had spent years living on the opposite ends of the country, and we were like, hey, we should actually try to live in the same place again.

Wouldn't that be great?

But then in addition to that, I was researching all sorts of urban farming opportunities on the East Coast, and Philly really had the most going on, at least from a distance, from as far as I could tell, as I was looking at other cities.

And I was just really impressed by that.

And then also I just got lucky that one of the many places that I applied happened to be Philly.

Rick:

I see.

So right now you know so much about making food come out of the ground, but when you started, you really didn't know anything.

And you just learned it all, most of it, on the job.

Nina Berryman:

Yeah, definitely most of it was learned on the job.

I think all farmers do a lot of personal reading and research and visiting other farms is so helpful to talk to other farmers and see their systems and sort of try what they're trying.

And then I always go to a farming conference once a year with my coworkers called the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, and that conference is really helpful for learning things and meeting other farmers and gathering more ideas that way.

Rick:

Do you feel like that's a tribe that you feel connected with those people?

Nina Berryman:

Yeah, totally.

But it's also fun that every year it's a different and bigger and more diverse group of people as well.

Rick:

It's growing.

Nina Berryman:

Yeah.

And so it feels like a tribe, but it's also fun to know that there's new people here who I don't know and I'm looking forward to meeting them every year.

Rick:

You wrote somewhere that you're just always interested in learning new things about farming.

Can you give an example of something that you tried out last year and how it went?

Nina Berryman:

Sure.

In general, at both of our farms, we're trying to do a lot less soil disruption and we're using our equipment less to till the soil.

We're doing a lot more mulching and trying to experiment with low-till and no-till methods.

And that's really exciting and it's been going really well.

So we're planning on continuing to do more of that every year.

Rick:

And that is I ever knew about farming.

You see the plow, the plow is going through the...

And so is that a recent discovery or is that something that's always been around?

Nina Berryman:

You know, it's certainly a recent discovery for me.

And I think when I started farming, I also thought that the way that you farmed was with basic tilling and disrupting the soil.

And I always knew that no till was a type of farming.

But when I started farming, it felt like a very distant, impractical, and almost elusive technique that I had never seen a good example of it and hadn't read much about the benefits.

So I really needed to kind of try it on my own to realize and witness there were some benefits and then realize, okay, let's keep working on it.

But as far as like the history of agriculture and the history of no till, it's certainly been around forever.

Rick:

How has it been going?

Nina Berryman:

You know, it's been good.

It is a bit of a funny feeling to go back to a point of learning where something as basic as transplanting feels new again.

Because if you're transplanting, for example, in a low or no till system, it's very different than transplanting into a bed that you've recently tilled.

So to have that learning curve after farming for 10 years to think about, oh, how am I going to transplant into this bed that's full of a thick leaf mulch or maybe it's full of debris from the cover crop that used to be here has been humbling.

Yeah.

But again, fun and innovative to realize there's so many different ways to do things.

And I'm still a young farmer myself, even though it feels like, oh, I've done this for a little while.

It's a reminder that you never really you never plateau as an expert.

Rick:

You wrote that you have a giant spreadsheet for every vegetable with many, many columns.

Yeah.

Could you could you give an example of one of those rows and what is in all of those columns for that particular vegetable?

Nina Berryman:

I'd love to.

I love spreadsheets.

The whole farm is based on spreadsheets, which is not uncommon.

So, one example would be the first column might be all the vegetables that we grow.

Probably alphabetical.

About 60 different types.

And then each consecutive column will be a different piece of data that helps us get to the final number of how many seeds do we need to buy.

So, for instance, we might work across that row and the first would be...

Rick:

You want to pick something?

Nina Berryman:

So, let's go with broccoli.

So, we'll say we want our broccoli planting to be 120 feet.

That's the size of our standard bed length.

But there's three rows in a bed, so you multiply that by three.

But we plant it, say, at every 12 inches or even if it was...

Yeah, say we plant it at every 12 inches and you have to multiply that out to figure out how many plants you're going to have.

And then there's always a buffer.

So you maybe multiply that by 1.2 to have just a little extra in case some of the broccoli dies or some of it gets knocked over when it's on the table, when it's seedling.

And then we'll say, okay, we want to do that four times throughout the year.

We want to plant broccoli twice in the spring and twice in the fall, so you multiply it by four.

And then we think, how do we seed it in the greenhouse?

Well, we seed it in a flat that has 128 cells.

So we don't want to seed, you know, 12 and a half flats of broccoli because that's really awkward to seed.

You always just want to round up to a full flat, especially given the way that we use our seeder in the greenhouse, which is a simple machine to seed the whole flat at once.

It's much more efficient to seed every one of those 128 cells.

So then maybe we'll do the math to round up and make sure we have enough seed for each flat to be 100% full.

And then we'll have our final number of how much broccoli seed we need.

And then we'll go back to the seed catalog and say we need 5,000 seeds of broccoli, but they only sell it in 6,000 seed packages.

We have to then figure out which side's packaged to buy.

And so we do that with every single thing we grow.

Rick:

Is that system working pretty well?

Nina Berryman:

It is.

We've refined it over the years, so the massive spreadsheet holds water and it's doing app treating as well.

Rick:

What's something that went super great last year and something that really didn't go well at all?

Nina Berryman:

Well, it's much easier to talk about what didn't go well at all last year.

2018 was a tough year, mainly because of the weather.

We had record-breaking rainfall, and it really slowed the growth of plants, it caused a lot of rot, it caused some seeds to not even sprout if we were seeding them directly in the field.

And so we had to get creative, but we are good.

On the farm team, every farmer is creative and a good problem solver.

And when you plant lots of different vegetables, you always have a little bit of insurance in that diversity of different crops doing well.

But across the board, it was a tough year with the rain.

But on a brighter note, something that went really well was we have a fruit, nut, and berry orchard at Saul High School, and it was planted about seven years ago.

And it's finally beginning to come into maturity and some of the perennial trees are beginning to bear more.

And so we had our best hazelnut harvest ever.

It was, I think it was about 100 pounds of hazelnuts.

And prior to that, we had had very, very small quantities.

So that was really exciting to be harvesting something that's a protein base and a nut.

And we had more pawpaws than ever before, which is a rare but delicious fruit.

And a lot of our farm market customers were really excited about that.

Rick:

And for people who might not be familiar, can you just say what a CSA is?

Nina Berryman:

Sure.

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture.

And it's a method of food distribution where the benefit and the abundance of the farm is shared with the community members that have invested in the farm with a monetary payment up front.

And that allows the farmer to receive income at the beginning of the year when expenses can be high.

And it also ensures that there's this relationship where even if you have a really good year with one crop and a bad year with another crop, you have a predictable amount of income and it's much easier to stay in business from year to year with that type of financial support from your community members.

Rick:

You have an interesting set of choices when you decide for the CSA what you're going to offer.

Because on one hand, people have the things that they're familiar with that they want.

And on the other hand, there are all these other things that could possibly be grown.

How do you balance the standard from the exotic?

Nina Berryman:

I guess you could summarize and say we probably do two-thirds standard, one-third less common.

But a lot of it comes down to just what is doing well for us in the field, what proves to be more resilient in rainy days and times of more variable weather patterns.

So, a lot of it is based on just sort of the crop production and what does well for us.

But we also take into consideration feedback from CSA members and their survey, what they like, what they didn't like, and then the sales at the farm market or at the stores where people can be selective with purchasing exactly what they want.

So we'll look at what products we sold out of on a regular basis and plant more of those.

So it's a mix of what's popular and what people want and then what works for us as growers.

Rick:

Do you feel like you have a mission to broaden people's horizons or is that not really something?

Nina Berryman:

Oh yeah, we love taking on that challenge of broadening people's horizons.

It's just so much fun to introduce someone to a new vegetable and it's fun for us as growers too to try new vegetables and I think is part of the excitement of the CSA is to be introduced to something new.

Rick:

Do you have a favorite weird vegetable that you didn't know about as a kid?

Nina Berryman:

There's a lot of vegetables that I grow that I did not know about as a kid.

I'm a big fan of these turnips that we grow.

They're called hackerite turnips, also known as like a salad turnip.

So they're small and white and sweet.

And when I was growing up, I just thought a turnip was a giant root vegetable that really doesn't taste that good or wasn't that exciting.

And to learn that there's this different type out there, it's one of my favorites to grow and eat.

And I'm always excited to share that one with people.

Rick:

I go with my son, my seven-year-old son, Evan, to the CSA every week, and we both love just standing out there.

Could you describe a little bit what it's like at the farm for people who might never have been?

Nina Berryman:

Sure.

So the farm is at Saul High School on Henry Avenue, at least one of our farms is.

And you pull into the gravel driveway and immediately you'll probably see a ton of people in the parking lot, people picking up their vegetables with their families.

And then as you park and walk out into the grassy area, you'll see some picnic tables, usually some people hanging out in the grass, eating, playing.

And then the rest of the three-acre farm is on a slight hill.

And at the bottom of the hill, it touches the edge of the Wissahickin Park.

So there's trees on half of the perimeter of the park and the other half is what's lining Henry Avenue.

And as you walk down the hill and look down the hill, you'll just see rows of vegetables on your left and right.

A lot of them might be covered in white fabric to keep insects off, but the ones that are not covered, you can see leafy greens and you can see flowers blooming and lots of insects buzzing around, good insects and bad insects.

And then we have a couple plastic covered high tunnels for growing inside the tunnels to extend the season where you can grow a little bit longer into the winter than you would if you were just growing outside.

Rick:

I can picture it.

And what's always striking to me is you're seeing this wide open space and you have this vista of all this green, which is just something that you never see in the city.

Nina Berryman:

It is a little haven, I think, this green space where you can run around and smell the scents of nature that you might not get in other parts of the city or the neighborhood.

Rick:

And my son Evan loves picking fresh herbs.

I think he has become excited about fresh herbs because of belonging to the CSA.

And we love picking flowers every week.

Not every CSA has a You Pick component.

How does that work out for you?

Nina Berryman:

We think that the You Pick that we offer is one of our best characteristics as a CSA.

We know from feedback from our customers that people just love being able to pick their own herbs and flowers like you're talking about.

And it's really something special that we can offer as an urban farm because we're fortunate in that we have enough space for pretty sizable production even though we're in the city.

And customers can come to the farm and experience that farm first hand and pick the flowers and the herbs, whereas so many other urban CSAs are merely just drop off points from farms that are much more rural.

And so it is special to give people that opportunity to have a glimpse into the farm experience and still be accessible by the bus and be in the city limits and within people's small radius of transportation.

Rick:

And I think you wrote too that there were some things that you wouldn't be able to grow unless they were you-pick.

Nina Berryman:

This is definitely true.

So we think of the really high labor crops that would take us way too much time to harvest as good candidates for the you-pick section.

Rick:

Put them to work.

Nina Berryman:

Exactly.

For example, string beans or cherry tomatoes, which are just small and numerous.

So we wouldn't have the time to pick cherry tomatoes for 250 CSA members, but we can share the joy of picking cherry tomatoes.

Rick:

And it is a joy.

It is.

One of my favorite things.

And it's all organic.

Nina Berryman:

So we do grow everything organically, but we're not certified organic.

So we don't have that official stamp of approval.

Our perspective is our customers are our stamp of approval.

And we have such a public, transparent farm that if people want to know how their cherry tomatoes are grown, then they can come and see it and be a part of it and trust our growing methods that way.

Rick:

I don't know that much about organic farming.

But it's always seemed that that's going to add a layer of difficulty of figuring out, oh my gosh, where did all these bugs come from and what do we do?

Nina Berryman:

Definitely.

It has its added challenges of growing organically.

You can't just buy a pesticide and spray it and have your troubles go away.

But it's really important to remember that that simplistic solution in conventional farming is really short-sighted.

And if you look at the long-term effects of that type of farming, you'll realize that it's not really a solution and it will add more complications down the road.

So it's a matter of perspective if you're looking at the short-term or the long-term.

If you really want to compare which system is more complicated, they're both still complicated.

Rick:

And sometimes there are a lot of bugs and they just get some of the crop and that's fine.

And sometimes you really have to pick them off one by one.

Nina Berryman:

So our methods are varied.

We might pick off bugs one by one if it's really seems like an effective approach, which with larger bugs it might be.

We occasionally might use an organically certified spray.

So for example, one thing that we'll occasionally use is a product that's made out of clay, the same type of clay that you might have in like a foundation for makeup.

And it's the physical layer of that white powdery substance on the leaves that distracts insects and they don't like the feeling of landing on that leaf when it has that substance on it.

So it's a deterrent to the insects without just smothering them or killing them with a conventional pesticide.

So we might do something like that.

We also use a lot of row cover, which is a white thin fabric that you can physically put over your plants and have that be a physical barrier so insects won't land on them.

And then there is certainly just the approach of like planting a little extra, knowing there might be some damage.

And having a diverse amount of food really increases the diverse population of beneficial insects as well.

And sometimes they can just duke it out themselves.

Rick:

So somebody with a giant field of the same crop is going to be more vulnerable than you are.

I'm so intrigued by the high school students.

What's it like when a brand new freshman comes out in the field for the first time?

Do you see the same kinds of patterns repeated or are they all different?

Nina Berryman:

Certainly every student's experience on the farm is different.

But there's a range of experiences from what is this dirt?

I'm afraid of it.

I'm not comfortable with it.

And you really have to approach it from a perspective of how do we ensure that this student feels safe and excited about trying something new because that's not always easy.

Then there's the experience of maybe someone who is totally familiar with growing vegetables.

Maybe they have a garden or connected to a community plot.

They can really shine in their ability to identify things or comfortably plug into things.

I think a lot of the initial introduction to the experience on the farm is often best breached by taste testing and realizing that there's a fun flavor at the end of what might be a new and sometimes scary experience of like being around a plant that's kind of itchy or sticky or anything like that.

It is a really dynamic aspect of the farm is having teenagers be a part of it.

Rick:

Can you think of a particular person or two that you saw really change over the course of their time with you because of the work?

Nina Berryman:

Certainly.

We have the pleasure of working with some students at our farm market, which is very busy, lots of customer service, lots of questions, lots of things to learn on the register.

And it's often the first time that someone's had a job because we try to hire students that are obviously in high school at Saul.

And there's amazing change to see someone evolve from maybe timid and unsure and just unaware of the many dynamics of that position.

And then throughout the season, after working with us for eight months to see how comfortable they are and how they can answer customers' questions and introduce them to different aspects of the farm and really show off the fact that this is part of their school.

And they're really proud of that.

Rick:

Do they sometimes get back in touch after they're launched?

Nina Berryman:

I just wrote a reference letter for someone who graduated a couple years ago and was looking for a job opportunity at an arboretum and asked me to write a letter of reference.

So it always makes me happy when students get back in touch.

Rick:

And what's it like to do so much of your work with inexperienced hands between the high school students and the volunteers and the interns when they're starting?

Nina Berryman:

It's a mixed bag.

More often than not, it's a joy to share that experience with someone who's learning because hopefully they're having fun learning something new.

It doesn't come without its challenges of feeling like a broken record, explaining how to do things and realizing that sometimes if you did it yourself, it would be better and would have been finished faster.

So that requires a lot of patience, but it is definitely outweighed by knowing that that person, that volunteer, that student is hopefully leaving the farm with that positive experience and might come back.

And then when they do come back, they'll be a little bit more experienced.

Rick:

Well, I think it speaks so well of your interpersonal skills that you can kind of keep all of that in balance while doing all of this technical work as well.

Do you have a kind of a philosophy or just sort of a way of thinking about the people that you work with and what your goals or principles are there?

Nina Berryman:

Maybe a philosophy about that would simply be that no matter how limited someone's experience might be, everyone has something to offer.

We've had amazing conversations with people while weeding the carrots, and we joke that we'll solve the world's problems.

So it might be a life lesson from someone who has just a different life experience than you, or it might be insight into how to explain something differently the next time, so that you can yourself be a better teacher.

And certainly being a bit of a people person is a requirement of the job.

But I think that would summarize it, just knowing that everyone has something unique and beautiful to share and contribute to the farm community, even if it's not being the fastest leader.

Rick:

So from the high school students, are they sometimes surprised to see a woman in your position or is that history?

Nina Berryman:

That's a good question.

I think it's less surprising for the high school students and more surprising for some of our older customers.

Rick:

Does that issue come up much for you or not so much?

Nina Berryman:

I think it did more so when we were starting the farm at Saul about 10 years ago because there was so many interactions with people for the first time, explaining what the project was about.

And a lot of people would just assume that I wasn't a manager based on my gender, based on my age.

I can specifically remember someone sort of walking up to the farm and I forget what they needed exactly, but they walked right up to me and they said, you know, who's in charge?

I have a question for him.

I just looked at him very nicely and I said, well, I can handle your question.

I'm the manager here.

But that happens a lot less now.

I think part of it is people just know the farm better.

And also I think people's perspectives have changed on that even in the last 10 years.

Rick:

Yeah.

I mean, I think I know more women farmers than men, really.

Nina Berryman:

It's definitely a trend that you'll see in especially smaller scale organic farms that a lot more women are joining the ranks.

Rick:

I also read that even historically many farms were run by or greatly run by women and people just never really talked about it.

Nina Berryman:

I don't find that surprising to hear, although I hadn't heard it.

I think a lot of it might have to do with just outdated laws and cultural biases about the man being the land owner or the head of household or maybe even the person that files the taxes, such that these labels get applied inaccurately when maybe the labor was equally shared or maybe even the woman of the household may have been the point person behind the scenes.

Rick:

What do you wish people understood better about your work?

Nina Berryman:

I mean, there's certainly an awareness gap with the general public about just how much work goes into growing food.

So I guess I wish people knew more about just the reality of the challenges and the hours and how difficult it is to make a profit.

But on a brighter note, I wish also more people knew how much fun my work is, because I think there'd be a lot more farms and a lot more farmers, because it's really rewarding at the same time.

And I can't imagine having a job that I didn't like doing and even putting 40 hours a week into it, which sounds like nothing.

Rick:

Could you share a story of one of those times when it was really challenging?

Nina Berryman:

Well, this is, I don't know, maybe I'll come up with another story as well.

One thing that popped into my head is something that was just so unexpected.

The simple thing as being required to put together a budget on a fiscal year calendar, that's July to June, makes absolutely no sense for a farm.

And so because of that, I end up just doing twice as much work.

I'll do a budget that works for my season, January through December, because that makes sense for a farm.

And then I'll duplicate it for the organization that needs numbers organized on a different calendar year.

So that's a little minor anecdote, but it's an example of how surprising the challenges can be, because who would ever think that that would be added workload to being a farmer that's part of an organization.

Rick:

Does anything come to mind when you think of tomatoes that we don't really understand?

Nina Berryman:

Sure.

What comes to mind about tomatoes that many people don't understand is the plants will.

So, you might be working in the tomatoes all day long, then you'll look at your shirt and it'll be this like yellow brown dye that when you wash it, it does not come out.

It is a stain and it's just the oil and the micro fibers that are on the tomato plant.

And if you're working with them for long enough, they'll even dye your hands black and you'll think why are my hands this color and it's just because of the tomato plants.

Rick:

So could you maybe, I mean, I'm sure there is no such thing as a typical day, but it's July, things are rolling along in a certain way and you wake up in the morning at some time and could you just kind of take us through what a day might contain?

Nina Berryman:

Sure.

So, a typical day in July might be, for example, a harvest day.

We'll start at 8 o'clock at the latest.

Certainly some of the early birds on our farm team will get started earlier to try to beat the heat and we'll previously would have emailed the harvest list out to everyone on the team so we know how much of everything we're picking.

We'll translate that to our whiteboard so we can reference it easily throughout the day and start out with the crops that are most sensitive to heat, try to get them picked and cooled and water as fast as possible before the heat of the day sets in.

So maybe we'll start with salad greens and lettuce and mustards or something or I guess in July probably not mustards and then we'll move on to the heartier crops that can stand being picked when it's hotter out so we might move to eggplants, tomatoes, peppers.

Rick:

And this is you and who?

Nina Berryman:

So our harvest team in July would be a total of five people between the two farms.

So it might be two people at one site and three people at the other.

But because everything gets distributed and packaged and organized at one farm, everything from the other farm will get packed up, weighed, labeled, put in a truck and then we'll drive it over to the other farm and then we'll put it in the refrigeration there.

And then at the end of the day, we'll have to repack anything that's going to an outlet that requires like special packaging like a wax box and run our invoices and our orders through the registers so that everyone gets the right receipt for how much they owe us.

Rick:

And I say you'll take everything that you harvested and you'll divide it up amongst all the places that it has to go and figure out how much to charge them.

Nina Berryman:

Exactly.

So that's another spreadsheet.

So say a harvest spreadsheet might have carrots across the top and then each outlet will have a number for how many carrots we need to pick.

So we might pick a hundred carrots for the CSA and 24 bunches of carrots for each of our three stores and then 10 for the cafeteria.

So you have your total number of carrots that you have to go out into the field and pick.

But then when you bring them back to the wash station and pack them, you have to pack them accordingly to where they go.

And then everything that we harvest, we weigh so that at the end of the year, we know how many pounds of carrots we harvested as well.

Rick:

I'm not sure what question to ask, but I'm curious to hear a little more about the just the working with all the different groups.

Nina Berryman:

It's certainly true that we work with a lot of different groups.

And one way that I describe it is someone asked me once, well, what community does your farm serve, like, tell us more about that.

And I thought for a moment and I was like, well, we have our neighborhood community, the people that live near the farms.

We have our co-op community, which is very large and far reaching members of the co-op, that is.

We have our CSA community, which is smaller and a little bit more close knit, but not necessarily overlapping with the co-op community, might be, might not be.

Then we have the Saul High School community, which is teachers and students and parents.

And so it is really hard to think about the best way to be a resource for such a diverse group of people that gain such different things from our farms.

So I'd say they're all rewarding and challenging in different ways.

But the biggest challenge is probably trying to be of service to so many different groups that have so many different needs, because you can never prioritize one over the other.

You just do your best to be the most for as many people.

Rick:

How will things be different in five years?

Nina Berryman:

Things will definitely be different in five years, because we have a lot of unknowns with our changing climate.

I wouldn't be surprised if we're growing more food somehow, somewhere, meaning in additional acreage, because there is just so much excitement and so much demand for what we grow.

I feel motivated to try to feed more people, and I'm not sure how we can do that on our existing acreage.

So in five years, I think we'll have a creative solution to that, which may or may not be more acreage, but at least we'll address the issue somehow that there's high demand for all of our outlets could probably double what they're taking now.

Rick:

Really?

And land is not commonly available in the city.

Nina Berryman:

Certainly not.

Rick:

I mean, are there little plots here and there that you have your eye on?

Nina Berryman:

Oh yeah.

Every time I drive somewhere, I see a little either vacant lot or even a big front yard or backyard, and my mind always goes to, I could grow a lot of food on that.

Rick:

Are you connected with other, I mean, there are urban farms scattered about the city.

Are there organizations that tie you together with them or you know those people?

Certainly.

Nina Berryman:

Yeah.

And the Philly farming web is really diverse and it's growing rapidly and it's really exciting to be a part of it in this city.

The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society does a lot of work to support urban gardeners and farmers through their city harvest program.

Another really great network that's growing rapidly is called Soil Generation.

And it's a black and brown led organization that works to build resilience in the farming system and they are doing some really impressive work.

Rick:

So for people that don't know so much about your work, how would you invite them to find out more or connect or participate?

Nina Berryman:

I'd say the best way to learn more about what we do is stop by either one of the farms, especially on one of our monthly volunteer days, which is the third Saturday of the month, and lend a hand or even just walk around if you just want to take it in without getting too involved at first and talk to the farmers, ask us some questions, come back on a day when the farm market is open and taste test some of what we grow.

Rick:

And how would they find the address and the hours of the farm market and that sort of thing?

Nina Berryman:

All of that's on our website at weaversway.coop.

You can click on the farm tab and get details about our hours of operation and addresses that the farms are located.

Rick:

And people don't need to be connected with a co-op at all.

They can just come out and kind of see what's happening.

Nina Berryman:

Definitely.

Everyone's welcome to walk around, check it out, volunteer, and everyone's also welcome to shop.

They don't have to be a member to shop at the farm market either.

Rick:

Well, thanks so much for talking with me about all this.

Nina Berryman:

Thanks for asking such good questions.

Rick:

For more about Nina and Weaver's Way Farms, see the show notes or go to our website, nwphillypodcast.net, where you can also suggest a guest when you run into someone in Northwest Philly with good stories to tell.

If you like the show, please tell your friends, share on social media, and give us a rating on iTunes.

I'm Rick Mohr.

Thanks for listening.

See you next time for more stories from Northwest Philly neighbors.