Interview With Max Kirks: A Glimpse Into the Life of an Organic Farmer
My interview with Max ended up being largeley a response to the first question that I had for him. After going in depth with this question, some of the others felt less necessary to go into, as he partially answered them in his first response. The main emphasis of this interview was to discuss how his education at Fort Lewis impacted his decisions with his farming career, heres what I found…
Ben: How has your education impacted your decisions with regards to farming?
Max: I started out in the environmental studies program and learned a lot about ecological problems and doom and gloom right off the bat. I didn’t know what to do about the overwhelming aspects of it. Taking environmental anthropology put the human element of all of this into focus. It showed me how we got to this this point through learning about culture and how our landscapes are a reflection of culture. I felt like I was learning the secrets of the world through human knowledge and environmental knowledge, and the common ground between all of it was agriculture. Initially didn’t want to get into farming, until senior year doing colloquium project on food hubs. Following this I did my senior thesis on quinua production and how organic farmers grow quinoa. I proposed that colorado needs to grow more quinoa.
I tried to get into the peace corp for sustainable agriculture, and got rejected so I started looking for internships after college. I moved to Norwood for 6 months and that was my first real experience with farming. I remember walking around my first week at the farm out there living in a trailer, waking up at the asscrack of dawn, and realized I love this lifestyle and working with my hands. Organic farming is very academic, technical and physical, so organic agg met all my needs that I was looking for. I wanted to get back into the academic world, but had the opportunity to start my own business, and over the past 3 years of doing that I feel like im still learning as much as I would in school, all while creating important contacts like the environmental center and restaurants and CSA’s. In the future I want to keep building upon those connections, a lot of them are FLC alumni and want to work with them more and have interns and inspire them to do what I am doing. I couldn’t do what I am doing without Fort Lewis College
Ben: Its really inspiring to hear your story, and how you adopted your lifestyle. I am curious to hear what the largest barriers were for you when getting your plot started during your first year on the field.
Max: For me the biggest barriers were, lack of education and the learning curve that comes with organic farming. In particular, I had to work really hard with the crop planning and business planning, I had no training. You don’t learn that through doing an internship at a farm, and I didn’t study business. These are things I am still working on and trying to dial in on. Access to land was a huge issue for me, I am just renting land so over the next few years I am going to have to adapt, or find somewhere else to farm.
Ben: I cant even imagine trying to run my own business on top of the long days of physical labor that comes with farming. Props to you. I know that you already touched on this a bit in the beginning, but I want to ask you why you do what you do?
Max: A huge driver for me was wanting some sort of counter cultural form of freedom. Getting into agriculture I fell deeply in love with nature and wanting to be outside. So its a mix of that and wanting to do something against status quo, and envisioning a better future and building upon things we’ve learned in the past. Being your own boss and making your own decisions has given me so much freedom and I’ve fallen in love with it.
Ben: Max, thank you so much for your time. I feel like I have learned a lot just through this short conversation, and would love to help out on the farm this summer.
Max: You bet, Ben. We’ll be in touch.
