25 Hours on Goranson Farm
A story I pitched, photographed, and wrote for the Maine Farms Journal, Since I started working full-time at Goranson Farm in 2014, I’d been dying to show people what actually goes into it. This was my first real attempt at that—photographing the full cycle of loading for one farmers’ market all the way until setting up at the next day’s market. 25 hours, with about 4 hour’s break to sleep. A typical Friday-to-Saturday schedule for Jan Goranson. My only regret is there weren’t two of me, so I could have shown more of the many moving parts that worked together to support 100-ish acres, 20-ish full-time employees in season (June-October) and 10-ish year-round employees, depending on who you counted. It’s a little bigger now. I guess I also wish I could have had a camera that was better in low light. But I do now!
I did this project in September 2017, about five years into the massive transition of growing the farm, spearheaded by Jan when she realized her kids were serious about farming, and the business would need to support three households instead of one. They gradually went from a team of mostly family members, local teenagers bound by school schedules, plus a couple of lifers who did things their own way, to a full-time, adult, professional team of skilled people who stayed through the seasons. Those lifers took their teaching skills and stepped up to apply it to training a real culture of attention and care among new workers. The kids grew up and took on management roles. The farm rented more adjacent land and joined more markets. I got set up with them in 2011 for a community art project and started living and working there seasonally as a farmhand in 2014.
It was a crazy time! For me, the greatest marker of the transition was the death of Hans, the family’s beloved Aussie dog and the boys’ childhood guardian. There was a year without a dog on the farm, and it was the hardest one in terms of growing pains, too.
By the time I was pitching this project, there was a new dog, Lila. I was with them when we drove up to visit a breeder in New Portland, Maine, in December of 2015 and pick her out. And by the time of this story she was my best friend on the farm.
Things have changed a lot since this, too. Lila is 8 now! I don’t live there anymore, and I only work for them in a marketing role. They still do five markets a week all summer, and three every Saturday in the winter. Everyone is 7 years older now, and we’ve weathered a pandemic and devastating personal losses. The boys take on more each year and Jan continues to keep things going. They rent even more land to maintain a 7-year ley rotation to care for the soil while still producing to meet year-round customer demands. We donate more than 10 tons of food a year through gleaning organizations and food banks. The farm now pays almost $20/hr, offers PTO, does end-of-year profit sharing, and is working to figure out employee health insurance.
Someday I’ll do this again, maybe in video form. For now here are the photos that I submitted to my editor, Ellen Sabina, back in 2017, in chronological order.
You can see the story if you join Maine Farmland Trust as a member for as little as $10. The Maine Farms Journal is an annual print publication mailed to your door.
