Shannon Varley is a woman with a strong vision of owning and working her own farm, and she’s been on a mission to realize that dream for years. I feel so fortunate to know her and to witness her dogged struggle to achieve her dream of being a land-owning farmer. She is a generous and warm person with a genuine heart, and she is an inspiration. It’s Shannon who one day said to me, “Lise, you should start a blog.” So, here we are. Thank you, Shannon.
I’ll be telling her story in small pieces over the course of many posts. It’s a story of a dream, of persistence, hard work and luck, of tragic loss and of renewal.
In the four years alone that I’ve known and have been photographing her, I’ve seen her family go through many challenges in the quest to own their farm. Shannon has faced them all with inspiring grace and tenacity.
It took Shannon eight years of “searching and working and dragging animals up and down the East Coast” before she and her family found and purchased their own farm in Knoxville, MD—the farm, she laughs, out of which she’ll be carried feet first.
Shannon is married with two children. In the time I’ve known her, she’s lived in 4 different places and had a variety of farm animals: pigs, steer, chickens, sheep and rabbits (hope I’m not forgetting any) and two different gardens. Farming was never on her radar as something to do with her life, but over time she arrived at a place of knowing that farming was her true calling. She now feels that her role in growing and raising healthy food for people addresses many of the problems that we face as a country; at the same time, a farming lifestyle is how she wants to live and raise her children. It’s a life that is very hard, but feels right to her. At this point she can’t imagine doing anything else with her life, even though she often toys with the idea of returning to some kind of 9 to 5 job, because “Lord knows we could use the extra money!”
But how did she arrive at this point of knowing, was my question. She didn’t grow up with farming as a model, so how did she find her way to it? Did she choose her path, or was she led to it? How did she know it was her calling?
Shannon left her two-year stint at farming without a clear idea of what to do next. So like any good child of teachers, she returned to school. She had always felt that meaningful change in our food system would come about on the policy level, so school was the natural place for her to be. While at Vermont Law School working on her master’s degree in environmental law, she was unhappy being stuck inside. She was aware of the changing seasons and would think, “this is when I’d be planting such-and-such.” She was constantly distracted from her schoolwork by spending time outdoors, by a desire to watch the changing light and the sun’s position in the sky.
Shannon realized that all her time pursuing academic work was like checking off boxes (undergraduate: check; master’s: check), and she felt disconnected from what was intuitive and natural and right for her. After law school, feeling more lost than she’d ever felt, she returned to her parents’ in Pennsylvania to start job searching, hell-bent on finding a policy position in DC, even though that kind of work didn’t quite resonate with who she felt she was. She sees now that she just wasn’t listening to herself.
I’m sure we can all relate to that feeling of being lost in our lives and not knowing how to proceed. I think often about the question of whether we determine the course of our life or whether we are led to discover our path. When I listen to Shannon tell her story, I definitely feel she was led. So does she.
Shannon trades in her power suit for Red Wiggler
While helping a neighbor look for a program for her son, she came across
Red Wiggler Community Farm in Maryland, a program that integrates farm work and job training for developmentally disabled adults. That same day—really, the same day—she noticed an opening on Idealist for a farm manager at Red Wiggler, and despite the fact that the job didn’t entail wearing a suit in the corridors of power in DC, something about it felt right to her. You can guess what happens next, right? She gets the job and moves to Maryland in 2003.
Shannon loved her job and was able to take part in all aspects of the small operation, greatly expanding her skill set. She worked on the farm for five years. During that time she met her future husband, BJ, and pretty quickly they had a daughter. She was able to bring her daughter to work with her, which was a joy, and her job duties shifted into grant writing and other administrative tasks. By the time her son was born two years later, she was doing contract work for Red Wiggler from home.
By now she knew—deeply knew—that she wanted to be farming. Screw the corridors of power! She felt that farming was something she could do with the kids in tow and it would be a life that was right for her family. BJ had a business restoring barns, and Shannon felt sure that being the frugal people they were, they could live on BJ’s salary and get a farm going.
So what, exactly, does that look like? Starting a farm from scratch seems like an overwhelming and heroic proposition. Even more so when you have the responsibility of raising children. I’ve learned, though, that like everything else in life, you take it one step at a time and you learn as you go.
First step for Shannon: find some land.
After Shannon’s children were born, she again felt the strong pull to farm her own place. She knew it was the lifestyle that she wanted for her family, but she wanted to be having it on a farm she owned herself. She and husband BJ decided that they’d have a better chance of finding a large farm in Vermont, and it would be a more suitable place in which to raise their kids. They moved the family in the summer of 2008 but soon found that they were mistaken about the likelihood of affording the 100-acre farm to which they aspired.
Instead they bought a cottage with four acres. Shannon grew vegetables and started a farmer’s market in an open public space in town, inviting other farmers to sell there as well. That market is still going strong. From what I know about Shannon, I would have thought that the life she had in Vermont would have been her dream. And in many ways it was, but as her kids grew older, both Shannon and BJ missed having immediate family around.
Back Down the East Coast
Shannon uses her Volvo to bring feed from the barn down to the pigs.
BJ’s gift is restoring timber barns, and before they had moved to Vermont, he did a large restoration project for a family in Maryland. (I’ve seen the barn, and it’s a spectacular restoration.) That family contacted Shannon and BJ in Vermont to see if they might be interested in renting a neighbor’s 15-acre farm. The farm wasn’t far from where BJ’s family lived, so in 2010 they packed up and moved back down.
Once back in Maryland, Shannon called her farm Bella Terra Family Farm and grew vegetables and raised pigs, steer and chickens. She started a local CSA and also sold at three farmer’s markets.
It was during the time Shannon was renting the Maryland farm that I first met her. She spoke often and passionately about the importance of connecting willing farmers with good farmland, and about how hard it is for farmers to afford land.
I spent many days at Bella Terra, photographing Shannon as she worked and getting to know her. One of my favorite days was a foggy day just before Thanksgiving, when most of the images on this post were taken. Fog is one of my favorite weathers to shoot in. I love the softness, the quiet and the muted colors.
For Thanksgiving, Shannon had posted on the dining room wall a large piece of paper that read Grateful. She and BJ and the kids posted what they were grateful for. What a lovely annual tradition.
Farm Ownership: the Dream Remains
Shannon liked her little farm, but her dream for eight years had been to own her own place, not rent, and she couldn’t let the idea rest. Some people argue that a long-term lease is a viable option to get farmers on the land, but Shannon says she’ll never back down from her belief that from the point of view of financial sustainability and land stewardship, it’s essential that ownership be a possibility. She is passionate about this topic.
Finding good, affordable farmland is a challenge, though, because at least in this part of the world, land is sold at development prices, not farm prices. The part of affluent Montgomery County where Shannon was renting had once been rural farmland, but over time the farms were developed for people wanting the feel of the country only 40 minutes from downtown Washington, DC. In came the McMansions. Shannon’s little house and gently sloping property lay nestled among them, practically swallowed up.
The desire to own her own place was palpable, she told me, and sometimes it kept her up at night. But how on earth could they afford a place?
For eight years, Shannon’s goal was to own her own farm, and she and husband BJ visited, walked, and mulled over many, many farms for sale in Maryland, but nothing was quite right. Little did Shannon know that one particular trash-heap of a place would end up being her farm. On her first visit to the property, Shannon wouldn’t even get out of the car. All she saw from the car was a neglected, run-down property that had been completely trashed. Apparently whoever had most recently lived there had not believed in garbage cans but chose instead to throw trash anywhere around the yard. Months after buying the property, Shannon was still finding empty cake cartons in the woods behind the house.
In retrospect, Shannon now likes to say: “sometimes great opportunities are missed because they are dressed in overalls.” Despite her resistance, BJ had a hunch about the trash-heap place and kept bringing it up to her. (Hmmm, there’s that intuition thing again.) Except whoops…opportunity gone. Someone else had made an offer and the property went off the market. Soon, though, it reappeared at a reduced price, and Shannon agreed to at least have a get-out-of-the-car look at it. This time the yard had been cleaned up—a little—at least to the point where she could get her head wrapped around the idea and start to establish a vision for the place.
The Dump
What the property had going for it was a large barn in back that was in great shape. There was some fencing in place, a lovely little pond, and enough land for livestock. She thought that making a good farm out of it was conceivable, and they decided to go for it. They bid low, knowing how much work they’d have to put into the place. Eventually, after lots of back and forth, they secured the property at a reasonable price. That was in April of 2012.
The barn. Notice the McMansion neighbor.
Most important, and what made the deal even possible, was that they were able to finance the purchase for the value of the land alone, because the 1820 house was considered a tear down. “A dump” and “uninhabitable” was what the appraiser called it. The original house was a log cabin, with a stone addition added sometime after, all of which was covered with filthy layers of plaster and drywall. But BJ, whose specialty is restoring timber-framed barns and old houses, suspected that underneath the grime lay a sweet treasure.
But good grief, how would they tackle a job that Shannon said was “overwhelming and more overwhelming”? Shannon described what needed to be done as “the extraction of every inch of plaster, drywall, moldy insulation, flooring, snakes, and anything else that happens to fall out of ceilings or walls. It involves the extensive use of respirators and thick work gloves. It’s a nasty, nasty dirty job.”
And not exactly spending time outside tending to animals or vegetables. But still, a farmer has to have a place to live.
Removing the disgusting plaster from the original log cabin
Shannon and BJ had poured all of their money into the purchase of the farm, so they relied on friends and family for help. They had work parties, and on the first weekend alone, a generous group of folks got more done than Shannon and BJ could have accomplished in a month of weekends.
I wish I could say I was at that party to help and to document the process, but I wasn’t. I didn’t reconnect with Shannon until they were three months into the renovation. While they worked on the house, they lived in a trailer parked just up the driveway. The first time I went into the trailer, to use the bathroom, my thought was “Bless you, Shannon. I don’t think I’d last two days in here without losing my mind.” It was, of course, small and cramped, and they were two tall adults and two children. But to their everlasting credit, they survived 21 months living in that thing.
The house under renovation and a trailer to call home
This was the dining room during renovation
A dream come true
They moved into the renovated house right before Christmas in 2013. In Shannon’s words, “I will never, ever, ever take for granted again: living space over ten square feet, indoor plumbing, an HVAC system, and the pure bliss of being able to close a door.”
And was BJ right about the house? Was it indeed a sweet treasure? Yes, absolutely and completely. Shannon credits BJ with taking “decades of neglect and transforming it into a work of art.”
Fortunately I was able to be at the grand housewarming party in January of 2014, and I couldn’t believe the transformation. The original log cabin had been revealed; there was a huge and inviting kitchen with stone walls and a deck off the back that overlooked the barn; BJ had rescued a fabulous claw foot bathtub from a hospital in West Virginia; and the bedrooms upstairs were lovely and snug. It had become a dream house. And it was featured in the October 2014 issue of
This Old House.
The quote from Rumi written above the back French doors perfectly reflects Shannon’s spirit
Shannon’s dream had finally, thankfully, gratefully come true. Eight years of slogging through moves and renovations and mud and dirt and hard work and raising kids and animals and all of it—so much determination and grit. It was a joy to behold.
Now she could finally turn her full attention to her farm and building up its infrastructure.
Unbearable Loss: Shannon Varley Part 5
January 27, 2016 / Shannon
I visited Shannon a few times after they moved into the finished house. I got to see her give pedicures to her sheep (meaning: cut their toenails and get covered in sheep dung), watch a sheep shearing done by a traveling woman shearer, watch Shannon put in her family garden (a larger market garden would be planted the following year), and generally hang out with the pigs and sheep and chickens and listen to Shannon’s plans for the farm.
But on December 12, 2014, exactly 11 months after the grand unveiling of the remarkable renovation, the house burned down in a raging fire.
But a 9 to 5 kind of life doesn’t feel intuitive to her, and Shannon listens to her intuition. She’s learned through the years that when she approaches the world with a heart of love, warmth and trust, things really materialize the way they are supposed to.
vacant farm and asked if she could lease the farm and make a go of it. She stood on his doorstep and explained that she wanted to grow organic food and start a CSA, but Shannon could tell he clearly wasn’t listening to anything she was saying. He scrutinized her and said, “You’re not going to grow wacky tobbacky, are you?” After explaining that she would not be growing marijuana but was, indeed, just interested in growing vegetables—and after explaining what “organic” meant—he agreed to lease her the farm. Once she won him over (which I can imagine didn’t take very long), he became a huge supporter, loaning her equipment, plowing her fields. She had free range of his greenhouses. Whatever she asked for, he gave her. What a nice situation in which to learn farming!
Shannon quickly realized, though, that even with his help she couldn’t do it by herself, so she convinced a girlfriend from Malabar Farm to come join her. They farmed two acres, started a CSA in Columbus, sold to restaurants, and both had part-time jobs. For two years they worked their butts off, and Shannon enjoyed it. But she was young, was living in the middle of nowhere, and still wanted a social life, so she and her friend decided to move away from the farm.
