Who Farms in Vermont? See the Comic!

Who Farms? Oral Histories from Vermont’s Diverse Community of Farmers

UVM Center for Sustainable Agriculture and UVM Humanities Center, 2022

Comics by Eureka Comics

Between 2017 and 2022, I participated in a unique project that sought to complicate the common stereotype of Vermont farming as conducted by middle-aged white dairy farmers. Much has changed in recent years as migrant workers and resettled refugees have arrived, young people have sought to enter the field, and paradigms such as sustainability and raw milk have sought to redefine the business and landscape management aspects of farming.

Our process was collaborative, relationship-driven, and emergent, involving oral history interviews and visits with some farmers who don’t fit the stereotypes: an Abenaki seed saver and gardener, a white couple who have raised a small herd of cows to produce raw milk, a young couple who launched a small vegetable and animal farm, two Mexican farmworkers on a large-scale dairy, and two Burundian refugee farmers who grow vegetables for subsistence.

The project was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and some generous donors. We created videos, comics (drawn by the amazing team of Rick Veitch and Steve Conley at Eureka Comics), and a teaching manual for use of these materials in middle schools. You can access all of that material here.