By Jennifer Nelson

I work for Gardens of Eagan farm. I just began my third growing season. I love my job.

I recall a typical week during the 2010 growing season: I planted kale in our hoop house and lettuce in our fields, harvested peppers, basil, kale and tomatoes, washed cucumbers and watermelons, packed up the van and went to the farmers' market, sliced watermelons, roasted peppers, sold a lot of beautiful, certified organic produce, recorded and tracked sales, updated our website and talked to a lot of people about our community-owned farm. The following week I repeated some of those tasks and added new ones, including teaching a class on how to freeze vegetables at a co-op in Saint Paul supporting the consumer education focus of the Organic Field School.

My co-farmers are a passionate and compassionate group representing a variety of backgrounds besides farming: education, social justice, international development, Fortune 500 management, faith community, oil refinery work, music, carpentry, at-risk youth advocacy, and much more. We are Brazilian, Mexican, Ukrainian, Slovakian and U.S. citizens.

We also represent incredibly diverse and varied skill sets, accomplishments and learning experiences, and we come together each morning as a farm team. We have varied levels of farming experience and fill different roles, including farm manager, harvest and production manager, pack-shed coordinator, field and operations managers, harvest team leader, market coordinator, and harvest team member.

We grow a lot of beautiful, delicious food, we advocate for better food systems and policies, teach folks how to grow it and other folks how to choose and eat it. Always, as we are farming and teaching, we are also learning. Most of us choose to work here because we believe in the value of locally grown, certified organic food.

We're here to learn how to farm, though a few of us just really like working here, being on a team, participating in kale-picking invitational tournaments, broccoli dance parties and World Cup soccer brackets. We work hard, get dirty, and go home with some freshly harvested produce to eat and preserve for winter.

Any farm, at heart, is its farmers. I recently spent time visiting with my co-farmers as we sorted tomatoes, ate our lunches and washed watermelons. Some themes emerged as we've chatted. We believe in the community-owned, established farm model. We want to work for an established farm with proven effective business practices and rich, mature organic land. We believe in the ideal of a co-op member community owning a farm. The community collaboration and resources provide countless local, organic food education and outreach opportunities. We are honored to work with soil that has been nurtured for many years, and proud of the quality food that we grow from it.

I want to learn to farm and I live in the Twin Cities. My personal experience includes returning from teaching and traveling in Ecuador in 2009 with a fresh new teaching degree and smile on my face. I sent a gazillion resumes into the cyber space of our weak economy to no avail. I rethought my pursuits. What do I really love? What can I do? I have experience with farmers' markets and I really want to learn more about farming. So I applied to be a market coordinator at Gardens of Eagan. Many of my co-farmers have a similar story.

I am a working adult and need to make an hourly wage. Gardens of Eagan chooses to pay its farmers a living hourly wage. Many farms offer internships with a small stipend and room and board, but only a small demographic of our population has the life circumstances to enter into that work relationship. Most of us have families, student loans and other financial responsibilities.

I write from a belief that our society undervalues work that benefits children and people, like growing the food that sustains us. Farms like Gardens of Eagan are taking steps to make organic farming a financially viable opportunity. It is a courageous, risky and extremely important piece in the creation of our new food system.

One day last season I was talking on the phone with Rhys Williams, produce buyer at Co-op Partners, admittedly in a bit of a panic with ten extra boxes of basil to sell. He reassured me, "At the end of the day, we're just trying to grow vegetables." Ah, the relief of simplicity.

Simply, we are trying to learn to feed ourselves and others who want to eat quality, locally grown, certified organic food. I speak for my co-farmers in saying we are thankful for the opportunity to learn to grow vegetables.

Jennifer Nelson is the Market Coordinator for Gardens of Eagan, a certified organic farm in Farmington, south of the Twin Cities, managed by the Wedge Co-op.