'Growing Farmers' On The East End

Despite threatening rain clouds overhead on Thursday afternoon, farmer Katie Baldwin cut the engine on her tractor and glanced around.

Out from the nose of her ride were 40 acres of Amagansett fields, plentiful with row crops, cover crops and freshly tilled soil, not to mention a few crows eyeing the tomatoes.

It’s a common agricultural scene, Ms. Baldwin relayed over the telephone, and has been for hundreds of years on the East End—where the soil is rich and the growing season is long.

But there are new faces in the fields these days, she said. As the Californian native peered over the land, she noted that every farm worker was under the age of 25.

“There are four farms working out here and this really captures the spirit of what’s going on in farming right now,” said Ms. Baldwin, who runs the 24-acre Amber Waves Farms with her partner and friend, Amanda Merrow. “There’s a great young group of people out here that we call ‘The Tribe’—a really young, hard-working group that are trying to make a living farming and having fantastic dinner parties. I think the spirit of it certainly has kept me here and I hope will attract more people to this place.”

As long as there are farms, the youthful migration will continue, according to experts. The premise served as the catalyst for Michael Halsband’s most recent project, “Growing Farmers,” a nearly 16-minute-long documentary produced in conjunction with the Peconic Land Trust. The film delves into the next generation of Long Island farmers, the challenges they face and the industry’s future on Long Island.

“Initially, we set out to make a five-minute film, but I always knew that would be impossible,” Mr. Halsband laughed during a telephone interview last week. “In five minutes, you can barely make one point and we had many points to make. And we really wanted to support those points with people’s stories.”

John v.H. Halsey, founder and president of the Peconic Land Trust, has a story to tell. And it’s his tale that opens the documentary.

During his childhood in the 1950s and ’60s, there were roughly 1,000 acres of farmland between Southampton Hospital and Mecox Bay, Mr. Halsey reported during a telephone interview last week. He grew up on Wickapogue Road, playing in the fields every chance he had, he recalled, and as soon as he received his working papers, he joined the crew at a local potato farm before moving to the West Coast after college.

In 1980, Mr. Halsey came back to Southampton for a visit. And what he saw horrified him, he said.

“There was a ‘For Sale’ sign on the farm next door—a 10-generation farm,” he recalled. “I knew the family very well, so I called them up and said, ‘Gee, what’s happening?’ They said, ‘Well, John, our parents have passed away and we have a $2.2 million federal inheritance tax. We have to sell the farm in order to pay that tax.’”

The rapid increase of land value in the 1970s put many of the local farms in jeopardy—not because of what they were, but because of what they could be, he said. In other words, the land’s development potential.

At the age of 28, Mr. Halsey knew he had to take action, he said. Three years later, he moved back to the East End and incorporated the Peconic Land Trust, which strives to conserve Long Island’s working farms and natural lands by, in part, helping new farmers get on their feet.

“The fact is, there is a place for new farmers to go as long as we’ve got the acreage available,” he said. “There’s tremendous competition for protected farmland out here and, sadly, not only by farmers. What this film really highlights is how we’re approaching the challenge.”

The documentary’s producer, Hilary Leff, interviewed farmers on the North and South forks, and Mr. Halsband trailed them with his Canon DSLR, capturing nearly 30 hours of footage on a $50,000 budget—from the growers getting down in the mud to selling produce at various markets.

“Oh yeah, you can’t not get dirty, especially if you’re kneeling on the ground and trying to follow everybody wherever they’re going,” Mr. Halsband said. “I think part of my job is always getting dirty. I’m going where everybody else goes. I was stomping through fields and all that dirt, and then getting in close with all the vegetables. It was fun. It’s fun stuff. There’s no end to their work. There’s just a beautiful rhythm to it. I just disappeared into everybody’s passion. I got to be a fly on the wall, especially with the Amber Waves girls.”

The women of Amber Waves met for the first time in April 2008 during an apprenticeship program at Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett—owned and operated by the Peconic Land Trust. Ms. Merrow, who was 23 at the time, picked up the then 27-year-old Ms. Baldwin and her two bags from the local train station. She was the season’s last apprentice to arrive.

“I was living in the city, at a crossroads of what to do next and I was looking for something to create, something more tangible,” Ms. Baldwin said. “At the end of the day, I just really love food and I really love to eat. The interest was driven by not knowing where my food was coming from and I would go to the food market in Union Square and those people just looked so genuinely happy. I just wanted to explore what they were doing.”

The leap paid off. The two women hit it off right away, Ms. Baldwin fondly recalled. Though they were from two completely different places (Ms. Merrow grew up in rural Vermont, Ms. Baldwin in California), their spirit was the same, she said.

“Before I showed up, everyone was like, ‘Who is Katie from California and will she fit in with the crew?’” Ms. Baldwin laughed. “I jumped right in to the Quail Hill fruit orchard, pruning peach trees, hanging high up in the trees, yelling to one another and learning about each other. It was a pretty wild first day. I’d never done that.”

After one year, Ms. Baldwin and Ms. Merrow fell in love with the land and decided to stay. But instead of working on another farm, they ventured out on their own.

“We were audacious enough and naïve enough to think we could start our farm after working one apprenticeship,” Ms. Baldwin said. “At first, people were surprised to see two girls running their own organic farm, but now, it’s very common that many young women are getting into this. Farming demands all aspects of your intelligence and patience. You have to be agile and creative and efficient and inventive in that you’re working with the natural landscape. I’m out here right now because I’m trying to beat the rain.”

Breathing in the humid afternoon air, she mused, “I’m on a Balsam tractor. This guy is a beast: 110 horsepower. Woo hoo!”

She burst into a girlish giggle. “Bigger than any tractor Amanda and I have,” Ms. Baldwin continued. “It’s a grown-up tractor. We’re going to graduate to this. All of this, it all makes me happy. This is how I know I love what I’m doing. I’m just smiling, sitting on my tractor. I was laughing about it right before I picked up the phone. I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else.”

The short documentary “Growing Farmers” will make its world premiere on Sunday, October 7, at 11 a.m. at UA Theater 3 in East Hampton. Tickets are $15 and include a screening of World Cinema documentary, “Herman’s House.” Catch Michael Halsband, Hilary Leff, Bryan Futerman and Scott Chaskey during a free “Rowdy Talks” panel and casual breakfast on Monday, October 8, at 10 a.m. at Rowdy Hall in East Hampton. For more information, visit hamptonsfilmfest.org.