UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #1446
MORTIMORE, LAURA 

MORTIMORE, Laura 
Owner of Orange Cat Community Farm (Lyndon Station, WI).  It is a FairShare CSA Coalition endorsed farm.  By the time the interview was conducted, there is a total of 53 farms endorsed by FairShare.

Website: http://www.orangecatcommunityfarm.com/Site/Welcome.html 

Interviewed: February 9, 2015
Interviewers: Dadit Hidayat and Erika Jones
Length: 1 hour and 39 minutes

Partnership: This oral history interview is conducted as part of the Public Humanities Fellowship partnership between the FairShare CSA Coalition and the Center for the Humanities, University of Wisconsin-Madison.  The Fellowship is part of Engaging the Humanities, a multiyear project generously supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that creates opportunities for UW-Madison graduate students and faculty to broaden the impact of their research through workshops, seminars, programs, and visiting scholars, in addition to the fellowships.

Description: Background; Community Supported Agriculture, CSA, sustainable agriculture; 
Farming at “home” and alone; Growing, Wisconsin landscape, and native plants; Connecting through communications and stories; Outdoor community.

00:00:25	Interviewer’s introduction.	
00:01:24	Introduction: the farm (the year when the farm started, farm size, speciality, business mix, and CSA members) and roles in the farm.	
00:06:12	Born and raised in Reedsburg WI.  Parents still live in town.  Farming at “home” is the big reason.  She does everything by herself, but admitted that it would be impossible to farm without family support 	
00:06:54	Her dad grew up on a farm in IL, but went to a med school instead.  Feeling lucky that her family really respected; everyone in the community knew her, and always ready to offer help when she needed, labor or equipment.	
00:09:46	Briefly out of WI.  After studied horticulture at UW-Madison, she went for an internship on an organic vegetable in MN and Seattle WA, worked in Madison WI area organic farm for 3 years [in Vermont Valley], then back home in Sauk City.	
00:11:29	Each farm provided different experience.  One farm was very small with zero mechanization, and lots of hand.  The farm in MN was similar in size like her current farm, utilized some equipment but mostly still by hand. When working in WI was eye opening with over 1000 CSA boxes, required efficient way of working. 	
00:13:11	She has some mechanizations, it just works for her.  Love to be involved in every level of what’s happening, but it would be nice to be a bit more mechanized to have less physical pressure on her body and her workers’ body.	
00:15:27	Currently have two full-time interns, 1 part-time employee working 20 hours a week.  During growing season will have 10 workers shares.  Her parents come and work about 20 hours a week, now that her dad retired.  Overall, about 4 full-time equivalence, plus her.	
00:17:18	Personally enjoy managing the labor at the farm, but it takes up a lot of time and energy.  A little mechanization would be helpful in moving the business forward.  But it is a balance to figure out.	
00:19:10	Laura Intuitively loves plants and growing plants since she was a kid, potentially what led to studying horticulture in school.  Thinking about landscape architecture, did it during her freshman year, was not hands-on enough.  Went to work at a farm the first year she was an intern, enjoyed very much, the growing, the hard work, the sun.  The CSA fits in naturally, the business model, perhaps influenced by the previous farms she used to worked at.  Selling at a farmers’ market was initially an option, but there were not enough markets nearby.  CSA fits in really well as a business model.	
00:24:22	Every farm she has worked at has been an organic farm; she was trained to grow vegetables organically.  Wanted to provide healthy food to community, and community is on board. 	
00:25:55	She thought her market has a perfect mix in Sauk County in Reedsburg, Baraboo, Dells, Portage, and Mauston; a combination of small urban and rural areas.  She still needs to do a lot of education about CSA and particularly about organic farming.  But there’s a lot of people looking for organic produce.	
00:30:49	No big rift between organic and non-organic [farmers] in the community; she likes everybody, all farmers, regardless of their farming methods.  She does not want to make assumptions [about organic and non-organic farmers] so that she could bridge a gap that she is representing [organic community] in expressing the love to the land.  Participating in the Fermentation Fest in Reedsburg has helped make a lot of good bonds between art, culture, and agriculture.	
00:35:27	She thought that there wasn't a real goal or huge vision in her life, becoming a farmer, working towards it, and finally fulfill it in some way.  For her was just trying to stay and keep heading on the path that felt right.  She admitted that she was very anxious and fearful person, especially had to deal with those during the first couple of years in running her own organic farm.  She felt the universe laid it all out in front of her, and she would take the leap and jumped in and start her own business. 	
00:38:55	It was at the time when the stock market crashed, it was kind of a buyer’s market.  She started to investigate “what it would even mean to purchase a farm,” being curious about real estate.  Parents suggested her to travel with a close friend who is a realtor, brought to a few different places, and the last trip was to this current farm in Cherry Lane that she thought immediately was perfect in many ways.  But she did not come to purchase a property, just curious about buying a property, she turned down buying the place.  Two months later her parents bought the place.  	
00:46:19	For a year after this purchase [spring 2008] she did not market, though had two CSA members.  Finished out her work at Vermont Valley in the fall of 2008, and moved up at the farm in winter, under severe anxiety, and started to care the soil organically.  The following year started CSA with 25 members, went to farmers’ markets, and joined FairShare for its growers’ community.	
00:50:48	Working at three different farms before starting her own was helpful in understanding different ways of doing CSA, and growing.  Grateful about that knowledge base.  The aspect of creating the business was a lot of work.	
00:52:43	Her passion is mostly about vegetable growing, WI landscape, and its native plant communities.  CSA is a great way to share them directly with people, sharing the enthusiasm, and the food.  She hopes that the exposure [of her enthusiasm] could make people think differently, even if it is just a little bit.	
00:56:58	Local food movement is just one facet, there are so many facets to it [her enthusiasm in growing, WI landscape, and native plant communities].  But particularly the idea of locality] is what resonates with people, as well as trust and relationship’s quality.	
01:02:57	It is hard to to build strong connection with all CSA members.  She tried multiple ways, including with farm events, to get more interactions with members and among members.  Not enough people to come out.  Got a lot of nice emails that keeps her going throughout summer. 	
01:04:32	Pickup sites in Reedsburg and Baraboo are the sites with the most members combined.  Other sites are a small swimming pool, gym and health club, connected by her swimming teacher when she was a kid.  Her parents house was bought and the new owner is willing to host a site.	
01:06:36	It’s hard to say that people picking up at the farm are the ones whom she has more connection with than others.  She does not always meet them.  But she feels she ends up interacting with them more [in term of quality] because she catches them, or they see her working at the farm.	
01:08:06	Newsletter is where mostly how she is connecting with members.  Also put notes in the box to explain about the vegetables, some details such as that the beans are really wet or a little muddy.  She really likes to communicate, be herself and honest when sharing what she loves and what she loves about it, that’s her strategy.  Also send favorite recipes and photos.  More than a couple of snapshots, but zooming in macro photos showing the morphology of little tiny baby eggplant, for example.  It is about putting out her personalities and her loves in farming.  Some people [CSA farmers] strive to have members come down at the farm as a pick up point [also to see what she's doing], but difficult to get all the members to come out to the farm.	
01:12:51	She invited members to come out to her farm, but for some occasional events.  Tried to have something last year that people could do actually interact with the farm such as garlic harvest but was unsuccessful.  This year, plan on doing a pea pick, in addition to the regular big farm tour.  One of the better attended event was a Sunday evening yoga at the farm.  One of the CSA members was a yoga teacher, came out and did yoga on the lawn, followed by a bonfire and made pesto.  Mostly organized by worker shares, and need to pare it down since it was too many things going on during that evening.	
01:14:21	She also did a silent auction at the pumpkin pick, usually get a lot of people out to raise money for the Partner Shares program.  A fun way to engage more with the farm as opposed to just telling people about the Partner Shares program.  Considering about requiring people to come out to the farm. 	
01:16:25	About her self-identify, she thinks more about farming by herself than being a woman farmer, partly because there are many other women.  There’s certain skill sets that she does not have, such as the mechanical aspects or equipment knowledge, but they are not necessarily about a gender issue, because she knows some other woman farmers know better.  It is the most challenging part for her, farming alone, but she has learned so much just about life by farming alone.	
01:22:43	She would enjoy having a partner in the business, though it’s always a challenge to think about how that would pan out.  For what she has right now, it works for her, the size of the farm and the income she’s making off the farm.  Unsure if it would be adequate in the long term, for example if she were to have a family.  But having a business partner would enhance her life by sharing some of the process and vision.	
01:26:36	Started the farm and she has become so much more comfortable with herself.  She does not have time to internalize all of “her million other interests.”  But she managed to play tuba in a community band, she has always played tuba in high school and college.  Her love with Wisconsin landscape leads her to do lots of canoeing in the summer, the who Baraboo River in one stretch every weekend.  She would stop going to the farmers’ market so that she could go canoeing on the weekends.  She also goes hiking, mostly in the area.  She really likes to know her landscape in a detailed kind of way.  She has gotten a little more into deer hunting in the fall, picked up squirrel hunting this past winter. 	
01:30:40	Lots of outdoor activities, she has a nice community, there’s always people out.  She feels blessed with this “outdoor” lifestyle, able to draw people from the community.  The most recent 4th of July event [at her farm] was fun, a lot of people over, and cooking.  She really enjoys cooking as something that she could not all summer long, too busy.	
01:35:02	The orange cat, her cat, was born at the first farm she worked at, always had a good bond between them.  Named the farm after her cat because she has been part of the farm from the beginning. 	
01:38:39	Closing