Work Experiences

During our interviews, I asked Rosemary several questions about her previous work experiences and how they lead her to farming.

(We have been talking about music school.)

"What did you do after that?"

"After that.  Um…I moved closer to the country into an apartment with a friend and started working in a horse stable...That was my job in the country.  You know, after huh (laugh)  OK, now I’m gonna’ get..."

"After you left music."

"Closer, [to working outside] yeah. I was actually still taking flute lessons, and that’s when I stopped taking flute lessons, I realized I just wasn’t dedicated to being a virtuoso anymore. (laughs)  I started working with horses...And…I..."

(tape stops)

"It stopped.  She just said, 'having a fun time being on my own for the first time,' in case you didn’t catch that."

    *****************************************************

"So what did you do, um, um, with the horses, did you feed ‘em, er…?"

"Yeah, I fed them and rode them some, and turned them out to pasture, groomed them.  Just different things, tacked them up, you know put their saddle and bridle on, and took them out to wash them.  I worked in a couple different horse stables…for… probably just a couple years ‘cause I started getting asthma…from the dust.  And it kinda' got to a point where I really couldn’t do it anymore, cause I would just get asthma."

"Did you already have asthma?"

"No...I never had it before that."

"That was the first time you ever had it?"

"Yeah."

"Do you have problems with it now?"

"No, I don’t."

"Just horses."

"Once I quit the horse job, I never was really around stables anymore.  And now, I use hay as mulch in the garden, and I don’t have any problem.  Picking up hay and then putting it in the barn, or in the machine holder, gets very dusty.  (cough)  Every once  in a while, I’ll feel a little bit, but if I wear a dust mask, I’m fine.  But, if, when I as 19, if I had done that I would get asthma really bad...But…And then I realized I couldn’t… I decided that I wanted to work with horses, this was before I got to the farm-kind of idea, but that, I realized that I couldn’t do that, so I had to do something else."

"Is that when you decided-you went to what?"

"I went from the animal kingdom to the plant kingdom."

"Plant kingdom, right.  Is that when you moved here?'

"No, I was still in my tw-early 20’s then.  Um, I got a job in a nursery, I did that for a while.  In a greenhouse I had a job in a greenhouse, nurseries.. and then I started doing gardening for people, you know, for around people’s houses..."

"In people’s yards?"

"Yeah, I started doing, and I was house cleaning then, that’s right, I forgot that. I started a small house cleaning business, just myself, because you could make decent money for a young person...Yeah, it’s hard work, but, yeah, I did that for 2 or 3 years.  And then I started going outside and getting gardening jobs instead of cleaning a house I would clean a garden."

"‘Cause you really wanted to be outside!"

"Right.  (laugh)  Getting outside."

"So you started gardening, and you were cleaning houses, and then how did you get from ga..."

"Well, I met Ron, is a lot of it.  At that point I was doing gardening and I had a part time job in a greenhouse nearby and he had a landscaping and tree surgery business as well.  He had a couple of employees.  And so we started going out.  And we…and then eventually we just combined our businesses.  We became one business, and I worked for him.  And, um, I learned a lot from him, cause he had a lot of training on tree surgery, and a lot of training on landscape design, which I never had done before.  So, then we did that for quite a while, quite a number of years."

"So he taught you about landscaping and trees?"

"Yeah, he taught me how to draw up designs."

"Designs for what?"

"For like a foundation planning around a house.  Or, design a garden, or design trees and shrubs and that kind of thing.  (tape whirling) Design, not design trees, but design what trees are gonna’ be planted where...So that I looks nice around the house or somebody’s back yard, you know, a garden with shrubs and maybe a couple of trees, ya’ know, or they might have a bank that they want to look nice with wildflowers and trees or something like that.  We actually [would make a] drafting table draw of like a bird’s eye view of the property with the house, and maybe the big trees over there, and then you put in your idea of what plants  go.. would look nice where.  So you try to get a nice interest of plants that are, ‘ya know, low shrubs under the windows so they don’t grow above the windows, that kind of thing.  And color, like nice fall color, and maybe some flower, ‘ya know things that will flower at different times of the year."

"So sometimes, um, in buildings, or I don’t know, schools or something, they’ll have like, daffodils, because they come up early, and then all throughout the springtime, there’s different flowers all the time."

"Yeah."

"So they must plan it."

"Yeah, that’s right.  Perennial plants don’t bloom all summer, they have maybe a two, three, or four week blooming time, so when you’re designing a garden you look at all the different times of the plants and the different colors and different heights, it’s a real trick, because you wanna’ have the tall plants always in the back.  You wanna’ have a variety of color throughout the season, so it gets tricky, it’s a lot of fun, though."

"Wow.  Do you have a garden, with flowers?  A flower garden."

"Kind of, I mean, I have a garden over here, um, on the patio, and there’s flowers, and herbs, a lot of the CSA herbs, you know, you worked in that…"

"I did work in the herbs [when I worked on the farm in the summer of 2003 as part of my CSA work hours.]."

"So, um did you get, did you have like any other education, you went to music school, and then you got a lot of education from Ron, about landscaping.  Did you have any other?"

"Yeah, I took horticulture... I did, um, I took night classes in Philadelphia."

"On horticulture?"

"In Anbore, actually.  Yeah, like fruit growing and landscape shrubs and trees and things, and then I went, when I moved away to Wisconsin, I went to University of Wisconsin for a year and a half and studied horticulture.  I went to Longwood Gardens, they had some classes.  I just took…"

"Longwood Gardens, is that in Wisconsin?"

"No, that’s in Pennsylvania, when I moved back to Pennsylvania, I took classes there.  I went o Wisconsin to school, and then I went to Colorado, and lived there for a year and a half on a farm (cough)  that taught  um, homesteading, building construction, and mechanics, machinery  mechanics.  And I went there as a student for a summer and then I went back as sort of a staff/intern for a year, and did that.  And then I moved back to Pennsylvania.  So that was all in my early 20’s, I guess."

"You did a lot!"

"Yeah, yeah, it was fun."

"So what is homesteading?'

"Homesteading is I guess living off the land as much as you can.  So you-there’s tons of skills involved that, ya’ know, anything from cutting your own firewood to raising all your own food as much as you can, you know, raising livestock, making cheese, and vegetables and fruits, and making soap, you know you can, having sheep and spinning wool and weaving, you know-you can ah-all the different life skills that you need to survive is um, involved in homesteading.  And it’s pretty difficult to do a complete job by yourself, ah-even 1 family, I don’t see how you can, you really need a whole community of skilled people, we’ve lost a lot of those skills, so, we do what we can, ya’ know, we know how to grow and preserve food and…um, I cut my own firewood, and so…Yeah.  (clears throat)  So we try and use as little as poss[ible] ya’ know, try not to spend a lot of money, basically, and have (this part of the tape is undistinguishable) including your needs for fun, without a lot of money.  That’s why I play music, ya’ know, it’s a great free way to have fun." (laughs)

"What lead you to become a farmer?"

"Ya’ know, when I was little, and we-the first books we read in school were Dick, Jane, and Sally, I don’t know if you had those.?"

"Oh yeah, 'Run, Dick, run.  See Sally run.'”

“'See Spot run.'  They used to go to their grandparents farm in the country, and they used to ride a pony, and they used to swim in a pond.  I remember really loving that whole idea and wishing that I had grandparents that lived on a farm so that I could go…So I was in grade school, I guess when I-that was the beginning of it.  And then, reading those books on natural lifestyles and being a teenager, oh, and when I was in…a senior in high school I used to cut school with friends, and the first thing we’d do was go right out to the country, and just hang-and just walk in the woods…"

"Um-hum, and just hang out in the woods."

"In the country, yeah, I just loved it out there.  It just seemed like the place to be.  It is the place to be.  I mean, it-having lots of nature around you is the place to be, not, ya’ know, I think cities could be designed that way, ya’ know it (…) a great community could be designed with nature all around you.  And I think that’s the way we wanna’ be."

(At this point, the tape eats some of our words.)

"So, after-so you went to Colorado and studied homesteading, and ma…chine stu-mechanics…"

"Mechanics?  Mostly I did the gardening there.  And also, they did um, wilderness trips as well.  I learned kayaking, and backpacking, and stuff, in the Rockies."

"And you were there, and you were a staff member."

"Yeah. I was there as a student for the summer and a staff for…a year."

"Um-hum. That’s neat. Did you come back-went back to Pennsylvania?"

"Yeah, I did. I had a boyfriend, at that time, so I..."

"Was it Ron?"

"No, it was a different one.  This was when I was twenty…two, I guess, and..."

"That was before Ron?"

"Yeah, met Ron when I was twenty…nnnine.  [I was in] Pennsylvania for that. And that’s when I did all the…working in…nurseries, and greenhouses, and house cleaning, and gardening, and all that thing, and a year and a half or so later I met Ron."

"You must have been with your boyfriend for a long time."

"Yeah, about 6 or 7 years, and something like that."

"Um-hum, that’s a long time to me."

(Rosemary laughs.)

...