Highwater Farm’s Liz and Rachel Freierman on farming, food, and social justice in the New Hampshire food system

This interview is part of the NH Food Alliance’s and Ink + Light Creative’s Field Photos Project, a photo-interview series telling the story of New Hampshire’s vibrant and diverse food system. Explore more from the Field Photos Project here >>

Liz and Rachel Freierman gained farm experience driving draft horses and wrestling lambs. They shaped their values

Liz and Rachel Freierman with their two children at their farm, Highwater Farm, in Bartlett, New Hampshire

through connecting with a variety of people in the food systems those farms were a part of. In 2019, Liz and Rachel felt ready to venture off on their own and Highwater Farm was born. Located in Bartlett, smack in the middle of New Hampshire’s Mount Washington Valley (aka “the Valley”), Highwater Farm uses organic practices to produce vegetables, berries, and flowers for its local community. In addition to regenerative farming practices, the duo emphasizes equity, sustainability, and community within their farm. Liz and Rachel attribute their two children as sources of inspiration for Highwater Farm as a leader in the agricultural community, present, and future. 

I spoke with Liz and Rachel about how they work to increase equity within their rural community in Northern New Hampshire. This work includes providing opportunities to marginalized communities. The duo discusses offering SNAP to provide their food at fair prices, paying reparations to oppressed communities, and networking with other queer farmers in the state. Throughout the conversation, it became clear that behind all their hard work is an aspiration to be regenerative and joyous.

Daisy Young (DY): Tell me a bit about how Highwater Farm came to be. What experience led you here and why have you stayed?

Liz Freierman (LF): I worked at a greenhouse and nursery as my first job when I was 14. It was a really great experience. I worked there through college on and off. Through that, growing really became a part of me. I’ve always created gardens everywhere I’ve lived, even when it was just for a short time. I have always been very into self-reliance and environmentalism, so growing food for myself and for others has become important to me. With the birth of our first child, it transitioned from a hobby into more of a job since it was something I was able to do from home.

We had been growing food for ourselves and then transitioned to commercial growing about five years ago. We started off growing on land that we were renting, until 2018 when this property fell into our laps. [The land] really helped us see a vision for farming as one of our main sources of income and as a lifestyle. That is when Highwater Farm was born. This will be our fourth growing season here. We are slowly getting bigger and bigger.

 

Harvesting lettuce at Highwater Farm in Bartlett, New Hampshire
Weighing carrots at Highwater Farm in Bartlett, New Hampshire

 

DY: It’s great to hear Highwater is growing. How have adaptations that Highwater Farm made throughout the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to this growth?

Rachel Freierman (RF): COVID was our second year selling commercially on this property. Previously we had been selling at a farmers’ market and only a little bit of wholesale. The farmers’ market closest to us—which we had been going to—shut down and the other ones didn’t feel right for whatever reason. So we pivoted and created an online sales system. That was a big adaptation in order to meet the needs and access of our customers. We also did a weekly drop-off, in addition to people picking up from the farm. That was a good way to continue to build our customer base and still be able to get veggies to folks in what felt like a safe way. We also opened a farm stand on our property. What drove how we set that up was thinking about social distancing. Having it be self-serve felt comfortable to folks.

LF: It felt successful that year; we grew our sales beyond what we had been doing at the farmers’ market. That first summer [of COVID] people were avoiding grocery stores. And, the community we were serving is fairly far from a grocery store. We were meeting people in their towns and community to cut out a trip to the grocery store.

DY: So the pandemic shifted your operations a lot! Has Highwater faced other industry challenges?

LF: Our main challenge as a business has been finding the markets to buy our product. We produce a lot of stuff, so growing is not our limiting factor. It’s finding people to buy what we have grown. Where we live, there’s a very large tourist population. That offers a huge benefit because there’s a huge influx of people who are eager to spend their money. But what they want is different from what a local community wants. They are looking for different types of food, sometimes at a different pay scale than the locals. Finding ways to meet and interact with the two different communities is a challenge. We are looking to increase sales at our farmstand and trying to reach the locals to tell them that this is a place that you can come to.

RF: Part of what motivates and inspires our farming, despite challenges, are our two little kiddos, one is almost 2 and the other is 4. At the same time, having a lack of childcare in the Valley is also a huge challenge and impacts what we are able to do. There is some choice to that. We value having them as part of the farm and that comes at a cost sometimes in terms of our productivity.

 

The Freierman family harvesting at Highwater Farm in Bartlett, New Hampshire
Harvesting carrots at Highwater Farm in Bartlett, New Hampshire

 

DY: I love hearing about how your children inspire both of you in your work. Tell me more about that.

LF: I like what Rachel said about our children as really big motivators for us. A story that came into my mind:

In the Fall, I was cooking dinner, and our children both love to help with that. I was rattling off the next few steps for whatever meal I was cooking. Asa, who was three at the time, had been stirring something but then disappeared. I was busy working and wasn’t paying attention to where she had gone and then five minutes later she came back and had this huge bouquet of kale. She came and plopped it on the counter and said “I got the kale!” I hadn’t even told her to do it! I had just mentioned that we needed kale. She knew where it was in the garden and felt empowered enough to get it. She knows how to harvest kale, which leaves to look for, and so that was a cool moment for us to see our knowledge passed on. That’s what we hope for every day, teaching them how to interact with the natural world, how to nurture things, and to have respect for all of that. 

RF: We definitely are not in this for the money. A big driver is around the quality of life and the values that we are upholding. Asa being able to figure that out, think for herself, and know how to do it, exemplifies all of those pieces.

DY: I have a big-picture question. Imagine Highwater Farm in 10 years, it’s thriving. How have you both, and your business, grown in your community?

RF: We see ourselves continuing to be in positive relationships with the community and our land here. We see ourselves continuing to build relationships with folks around us, local businesses, customer bases, and our neighbors. Hopefully having a larger network of low-income families and folks who are able to access food from the farm. A big part of our farming practice is thinking about how we can be sustainable and have regenerative practices. Seeing the land we are farming on be higher quality after we worked and farmed it. Feeling like what we are doing is sustainable, not feeling burnt out, but still finding joy in growing vegetables. We both deeply believe in loving what you’re doing. If it becomes something that we don’t enjoy and love, then it's not going to be sustainable for us. Still having joy is important.

DY: Speaking of regenerative practices, you place a lot of emphasis on reparations for Black, Indigenous, and communities of color (BIPOC). Why is this important to you and what work are you doing now?

RF: We are both white and our place of entry into this work comes from immense privilege in our skin color, our upbringing, and the financial stability that we come from. We feel it’s extremely important to recognize that the land we farm was stolen. We are on Abenaki land, part of the Wabanaki Confederacy. As white people, we continue to benefit from 400 years of racial inequities and enslavement. Each year, we contribute a portion of our profits to a BIPOC farm and an Indigenous group in the region. Soulfire Farm’s website has an awesome reparations map that we have linked on our website, so we’ve used that as a base for finding groups to donate to. We try to focus particularly on BIPOC farms that are relatively local to us and who are interested in receiving reparations. There is an Indigenous group in Maine that we have given to, as well as the Indigenous New Hampshire Collaborative Collective. It also feels important as an educational piece. We make a contribution as a farm each season, and throughout each season we have tried to have special donation events at the farm stand. This past year, on the weekend around Indigenous Peoples’ Day, 50% of farm stand profits were given to Indigenous New Hampshire Collaborative Collective. An important piece for us is educating the community, especially because most of our customers are white and come from a place of privilege.

 

Washing carrots at Highwater Farm in Bartlett, New Hampshire
Weighing tomatoes at the Highwater Farm in Bartlett, New Hampshire

 

DY: I heard that you are working with UNH Extension to build a queer farmers network in New Hampshire. What is the mission behind this group and what will Highwater’s role be?

RF: I have been working with Olivia Saunders and others from UNH Extension as part of the Farmer and Rancher Stress Assistance Network (FARSAN). It is funded with  federal COVID money to help relieve stress amongst farmers and ranchers. I have helped create a New Hampshire Queer Farmers Group, which is really about bringing together queer farmers. Especially for folks up here in the North Country, it’s an unconnected network. There’s not a ton of queer community, let alone amongst farmers. We are trying to build that out, because there are queer farmers in the state. It’s about building connections, supporting each other, learning from each other, having fun, and sharing resources. We have had one in-person gathering, virtual gatherings, and another in-person event coming up. It’s something that came out of FARSAN,  but we are hoping to continue into the future because it feels important to have that community. Right now, my role is behind-the-scenes; get everyone in the same place and step back and let it all come together.

LF: It’s always been important for us to be out and use our farm for a platform to help people understand that we are here. It’s a logical partnership and place to be in to continue to raise awareness. 

DY: I read in the Conway Daily Sun that the Mount Washington Valley Farmers’ Market was created in part because the two of you identified a need for affordable, healthy food in your area. Can you tell me more about this need? How do you work to make your organically grown, local products affordable for food-insecure people? 

RF: Thinking about and addressing food inequities is a big part of our mission. It’s something we really value in this work, part of what inspires us to grow food and fill a niche in this community. The farmers’ market was super important from the get-go. We were super fortunate to find a bunch of other willing volunteers in the community to come together as an incredible board that runs the market and works collaboratively. Something we always knew that we wanted to incorporate was the ability to accept SNAP benefits. In New Hampshire there is also a program called Granite State Market Match, which doubles EBT dollars for local produce, so we worked to incorporate that too.

We are looking into how we can continue to market those services and make sure that the information is out there for the farmers’ market. We are also looking to ensure that our board is representative of the populations we are serving, including folks from lower-income communities or other populations so that all voices are heard.

We try to do this on our farm too. We partner with the Bartlett-Jackson Food Pantry and have vouchers that their patrons can use at our farm stands to get free fruits and veggies each week. We also offer a sliding scale, as well as subsidized CSA shares. Those are funded from our farm, as well as from folks in the community, so we have opportunities for folks to contribute to that fund to support equitable food access.

 

Tomato harvest at Highwater Farm in Bartlett, New Hampshire
Tomato greenhouse harvest at Highwater Farm in Bartlett, New Hampshire

 

DY: I love the collaboration with the Bartlett-Jackson Food pantry. Is there other collaborative work you are proud of and want to share?

LF: We recently started working with a local brewery, getting their spent grain about once a week, and using it to make compost. Up until this opportunity presented itself, we had half-heartedly been composting, making large piles near the woods and not putting much time or thought into them. We felt like we couldn’t produce as much as we needed so it wasn’t a high priority. We found out about this opportunity through a local organization that helps connect growers called the Mount Washington Valley Eaters and Growers Association. They passed around this email that a brewery was looking for a local farmer to take their spent grain, so we got in touch. We set up a compost system that allows us to compost through the Winter. 

Because we are now into compost, we saw another opportunity for a compost project working with the Composting Association of Vermont. We are working with them to develop a better system to collect food scrap waste at a community scale. It was a domino effect, seeing how one thing influenced us and shifted our focus. Composting is now in the farm’s top 10 priorities—if not higher—all because of local connections.

A cool thing that we are going to start doing when we begin the food scrap composting is that CSA members can drop off their compost when they pick up veggies. Their food waste that comes from our vegetables is coming into our compost to help grow more plants that they can eat. Everything is connected when you keep it small.

DY: Wow! Highwater really has come a long way. What advice would you give new, especially young people, who are looking to enter this line of work? Where can they look for help?

RF: For us, working on a lot of different farms was a great experience to figure it all out. We worked on a permaculture farm, an educational-based farm, and a subsistence farm. We worked on a sheep farm where we learned how to drive draft horses and wrestle baby lambs to weigh them. It was a lot of fun, it was a great experience, and it helped us narrow down what we wanted to do. Before jumping in, we checked if this was actually something we wanted to do. There’s a lot of investment of time, money, and energy in starting something up, and that’s not something to be overlooked.

LF: We have been blown away, especially in the last couple of years, by how many resources are available to farmers. It feels different than other industries; there are people literally sending us emails asking to help us. All of the Extension services and people whose jobs it is to support farmers. We have received grants, professional services, and skill development opportunities. There are so many people out there trying to help farmers be successful.

DY: What is the importance of eating local? What can communities and individuals do to support local food systems?

RF: From an environmental perspective, cutting out steps in the chain of where your food comes from and how it gets to you is really important. It’s important to us that we are doing what we can to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Being able to provide local produce to folks feels like something. From the perspective of keeping money local, as much as we are anti-capitalist here, we live in a capitalist society, so keeping that money local is important. Personally, I like to know where my food comes from—seeing who grew it, how, and where—you get that when you buy and eat locally.

Find out who is making food near you. The Mount Washington Valley Eaters and Growers Association puts out a farm guide every year that lists all the different farms in the area, what they grow, how to get their products, and where to find them. There are other resources like that—statewide lists of farmers’ markets exist in newspapers, the NH Department of Agriculture, Markets and Food—there are all kinds of lists. First step, do the research about who is around you, and how you can get your food, and second, go to visit those places.

 

Harvesting delicata squash at Highwater Farm in Bartlett, New Hampshire
Pumpkin harvesting at Highwater Farm in Bartlett, New Hampshire

 

Highwater’s farm stand will reopen to the public in June. You can also explore the Mount Washington Valley Farmers’ Market on Tuesday afternoons from June 21-October 11. Highwater’s 2022 CSA is sold out, so keep tabs to sign up for the next CSA season via their website, Facebook, and Instagram.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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