At Amber Waves Farm in Amagansett, They’re Not Only Growing Produce, They’re Growing the Next Generation of Female Farmers
Alina sits down with Katie Baldwin, co-founder of Amber Waves, to discuss what makes this non-profit, 34-acre farm so special
On Friday night, I went to a beautiful dinner at Amber Waves Farm in Amagansett, my favorite hamlet in the Hamptons.
Nordstrom Endless Summer Dinner at Amber Waves, Source: BFA
I reconnected with friends.
L to R, Rickie De Sole and Selby Drummond, Source: BFA
L to R, Alina Cho and Katie Couric, Source: BFA
L to R, Joey Wolffer and Tamron Hall, Source: BFA
Ate a delicious meal…
Nordstrom Endless Summer Dinner at Amber Waves, Source: BFA
And got a lesson in what Amber Waves is all about.
Nordstrom Endless Summer Dinner at Amber Waves, Source: BFA
It’s a 34-acre farm — a non-profit — that serves as a teaching ground for the next generation of farmers — many of them, female.
It’s also a market where you can get everything from fresh produce and fresh flowers to egg sandwiches and spring rolls.
I was so intrigued by what I learned that Friday night that I just had to know more.
So, I tracked down Katie Baldwin, co-founder of Amber Waves.
L to R, Katie Baldwin and Sarah Wetenhall, Source: BFA
We talked about how Katie got interested in farming, why she thinks women are turning to farming and why the whole world is her audience.
FROM THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS… TO FARMING
ALINA CHO: How did you get interested in farming?
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amberwavesfarm/?hl=en
Let’s just say, it's not an obvious choice.
KATIE BALDWIN: It's not. It did feel like a hard left turn for me. I graduated from USC with a degree in International Relations, and I wanted to take the policy direction. I worked at the Council on Foreign Relations for a bit after school, and while I was there, I was interested in food policy. I wanted to understand the foundations of farming and where food was coming from. I really had an aha moment. I was eating many meals a day, and I didn't understand our domestic food system.
ALINA CHO: Interesting.
KATIE BALDWIN: And that was my inspiration to take a year-long apprenticeship at a farm. Amanda [Merrow, my Amber Waves co-founder], her dream was to go abroad and do a micro-finance project, but she needed some field experience, and so she took the apprenticeship to gain that. But what ended up happening is that both of us saw that we could make a tremendous impact in our own community food system.
ALINA CHO: And how did that lead you to [co-found] Amber Waves?
Source: Amber Waves Farm
KATIE BALDWIN: We were probably six months into our apprenticeship together, picking chard, and we thought, “You know what, we love this. Wouldn't it be fun to start our own farm?”
Source: Amber Waves Farm
After examining what was being grown on the eastern end of Long Island, [we saw that] there were many fruits and vegetables, vineyards, hops for beer, a really robust food shed. But nobody was growing small greens for culinary purposes. So, we met a wonderful friend, a baker named John de Cuevas, he had had a sourdough starter since the '70s and was passionately interested in funding a project [to grow] locally-grown wheat, so he could bake a local loaf of bread. So, that was the start of Amber Waves. We started [in 2009] with a $25,000 grant.
ALINA CHO: Wow.
KATIE BALDWIN: And we leased nine acres from the Peconic Land Trust for several years. And that got us going.
TRAINING THE NEXT GENERATION OF (FEMALE) FARMERS
ALINA CHO: Let’s talk about your apprenticeship program.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amberwavesfarm/?hl=en
It started in 2012 and since then you've trained nearly 50 farmers.
KATIE BALDWIN: The program is a nine-month intensive where you join us for paid skills training, it's a paid position.
ALINA CHO: Right.
KATIE BALDWIN: We subsidize housing and you come to the farm to work and learn every day.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amberwavesfarm/?hl=en
ALINA CHO: Wow.
KATIE BALDWIN: We hope that an apprentice learns enough through the course of the season that they're hooked. They fell in love, like we did, and they want to become farm managers at other farms or start their own farm. Or what we're seeing is some apprentices aren't wanting to be directly associated with an agricultural job. They want to start their own restaurants; they want to start their own apothecary. So, this has become an exciting entrepreneurial program.
ALINA CHO: Oh, interesting.
KATIE BALDWIN: We’re at a critical decade. Most of the farmers in the country are reaching retirement age.
ALINA CHO: Ah, right.
KATIE BALDWIN: And the new generation of farmers — there aren't enough of us, yet.
ALINA CHO: I'm not surprised to hear that, sadly.
KATIE BALDWIN: What we're seeing is mostly women are joining us, and they are coming from a variety of backgrounds across the country. People have reassessed what they want their purpose to be, what they want their contribution to be and how they can make the most effective change for their community.
ALINA CHO: Right.
KATIE BALDWIN: People looked at grocery store shelves in March of 2020 in New York and they were empty.
Source: The New York Times
There was a pause, an assessment of, “This food system might be a little more fragile than we thought.”
ALINA CHO: Interesting.
KATIE BALDWIN: With respect to women, I’m not exactly sure if it's that Amanda and I are attracting more women to our farm specifically because it's women-founded, women-led, with 15 managers who are all women or if it's a trend across the country.
ALINA CHO: Well, I was just going to ask you that. The fundamental question is why more women, you know?
KATIE BALDWIN: I have a five-year-old who comes to the farm once a week with her elementary class and the five-year-olds in her class draw pictures of farmers. And those farmers are wearing dresses and they have long hair and they're women.
ALINA CHO: Oh my gosh.
KATIE BALDWIN: I guess the iconic image of what we have traditionally thought of as our farmer for the last several decades looks a little different now.
350 VARIETIES OF FRUITS, VEGETABLES AND FLOWERS
ALINA CHO: I was really surprised to read that you grow 350 varieties of fruits, vegetables, and flowers.
Source: Amber Waves Farm
That's quite a lot.
KATIE BALDWIN: It is quite a lot to keep track of. It is one of the most complicated living puzzle systems to both plan and execute.
Source: Amber Waves Farm
It wasn't just growing a single variety of cucumber. Let's make it culinarily interesting and grow seven different varieties of cucumbers: a lemon cucumber, a Japanese cucumber, a Persian cucumber, a pickler, a slicer. And that applies to tomatoes and carrots and every other vegetable you can think of.
Source: Alina Cho
ALINA CHO: Wow.
KATIE BALDWIN: And having the opportunity to have that conversation with the eater about, "Wow, I've not ever seen a lemon-yellow cucumber before. Tell me about it." Or “I have not ever seen an orange Turkish eggplant. Let's talk about it.”
ALINA CHO: It inspires a conversation.
KATIE BALDWIN: It inspires a conversation about food that makes people curious. And I think if we can capture that curiosity, then they become curious about, “Well, where does my food come from? Who's growing it and why does it matter?”
“EVERYBODY EATS”
ALINA CHO: What is it that you love most about farming?
L to R, Amber Waves Co-Founders Katie Baldwin and Amanda Merrow, Source: Amber Waves Farm
KATIE BALDWIN: Originally, I would have said the physical nature of the work. I had never had a job where you were outside physically moving 12 hours a day, and it was hard, but you were in the sunshine and in touch with nature and it felt good.
ALINA CHO: I'm sure it felt gratifying.
KATIE BALDWIN: So incredibly gratifying to be able to produce something.
Source: Amber Waves Farm
ALINA CHO: Right.
KATIE BALDWIN: My role has changed over the years. It's evolved into meeting people and knowing that the whole food system is based on eaters and the community. We often joke. We're like, “Okay, guess what? Everybody eats.” So, we have a really, really big audience.