Food Justice Newsletter

Najee Quashie, Project Manager at NOFA/Mass, interviews Max Traunstein, co-owner of Kitchen Garden Farm. Max shares his journey from entry-level worker to co-owner, discussing the challenges and triumphs of farming as a first-generation, mixed-race farmer, his dedication to sustainable practices, and the sense of community that defines his work and life on the farm.

Sending warmth and gratitude to you and yours this season .

By: Najee Quashie

Take me back to when you started working with the Kitchen Garden Farm; how did the opportunity come about?

I’ve worked at this farm my entire adult life, more or less. I went to UMass, graduated in 2014, and was in Stockbridge’s single-food farming program. When I graduated in the spring, I wanted to get a job getting my hands dirty and working on a production operation because I was always itching for a physical experience.

When I was in college, I was renting a house in Sunderland, about two miles away from the farm. My roommate ran by the farm daily, and she said, ‘Hey, you should try and apply to this place.’ So, I interviewed with the farm in the fall of 2013, and I remember them appreciating my enthusiasm and energy, and I got the job.

Max Traunstein, co-owner of Kitchen Garden Farm.

Max’s First Few Years at Kitchen Garden

When working on a vegetable operation, you must get your hands dirty with various vegetable crops. For the first two years, I worked on the harvest crew, where workers harvest vegetables ready-made to order four days a week. Two years into picking and packing vegetables, I started working more with the production team that does all of the other operations leading up to the biggest labor step, which would be the last step of harvesting, washing, packing, and selling. I worked with tractors much more and continued learning about the steps leading up to harvest. This included working with seedlings in the greenhouse, field preparation, and weed and pest control.

After six years at the farm, the former owners put me in the manager role, where I led the team and took on the day-to-day operations. By then, I was taking on supply ordering, buying materials, and being a bigger part of the business.

Max’s Leap From Worker to Manager

Simultaneously, this commercial kitchen business was building up and growing. Lilly Israel, who became my business partner, was learning all the sales, customers, and markets and building that side of the business. Our volume through those years was growing tenfold, the crew size grew from eight to 30 people, and infrastructure was getting built. Part of it was that we were in these managerial positions and could grow into those positions and take over running the day-to-day business.

Fast forward to this past year, we’ve consistently run these two businesses under one name: the value-added commercial business and the farm. The value-added business surpassed wholesale vegetables in 2021, which was a huge process to get to where we are now. The previous owners recognized this great opportunity to hand over the reins to people who have been here for so long. I’ve been here for 10 years, and Lilly has been here for eight years. They were also burnt out from building this business, but we took a big leap.

Max is on a tractor-mount flail mower, hitching a ride to a nearby field.

Lilly and I attached ourselves to this farm because, at first, it was just a job. Over the years, as we took on more responsibilities, this place became a big part of our social lives, and with the culture of being around the farm, it was hard for us to imagine doing anything else as a career.

So, when the opportunity presented itself, it was a no-brainer. We told ourselves if we could do this, we should do it.

What does it mean to own land?

I never chased the idea of owning property. Ownership deterred me because I didn’t want to own that much land. It’s more about what this farm stands for and the things it produces, so the land ownership allows the farm to have enough scale, have a market presence, show that we can grow various crops, and care for the land. There’s a bit of stewardship in there, so it feels good to know that we can treat the land properly and adopt good soil conservation practices.

As part of this transfer deal, I had to move out of my living place because I was in worker housing tied to the farm. You can’t live in that type of dwelling if you’re the farm’s owner, so I bought a small house with my wife. That feels insane, but all of this happened simultaneously.

Max is picking daikon radishes to see if they are mature.

What race do you identify with? Does it play a role in who you are as a farmer?

I identify as Asian, but on a form, I would also put white because I’m half Chinese and half Caucasian. I tend to identify as Asian because of my outward appearance. I had a Western Massachusetts rural upbringing mixed with some hippy because I grew up in Sunderland.

Growing up, I wasn’t surrounded by much diversity, especially in elementary and high school. Generally, I was the only Asian person in my class. Every grade I went through, out of 100 kids, I’d be the only one, if not one of two, or one of five Asian kids out of the school system.

Max on His Asian Identity Playing a Role As a Farmer

It ties to my food identity. My mom is Chinese, and she was adopted from Hong Kong when she was a baby through the British embassy to Japanese-American parents. Her mom was in the Japanese internment camps, so they have a deep, rich Japanese-American niche history. I was raised with my mom’s food, and it was a very Americanized upbringing, but it was tainted with a lot of Japanese food. That always meant a lot to me.

Regarding the things I care about as a farmer, it’s funny to take over this business that’s got its hands in many different cultural foods, especially many Italian vegetables. The things that mean a lot to me are Asian greens and spicy foods. That ties well to this farm because hot peppers are a big reason for what Kitchen Garden stands for. We make sriracha our flagship product, which is significant because I like spicy food.

Make Molly Cry—Ten Years of Tears celebrates a decade of this sriracha, famous for bringing his wife, Molly, to tears with its intense heat.

Max’s Family Farming History

There is also a family history of farming, but I’m slightly disconnected from it. My great-grandparents were farmers in Fresno, California, where they would grow grapes. They had a full farming operation that they stopped running before the Japanese internment camps. It wasn’t like they got their land taken away from them forcibly, but I do think about that history, too. There’s an old video of them growing grapes, and they used to lay them out on tarps with their seeded grapes and make raisins with the seeds.

What are some of the challenges you’ve faced as a farmer? As a BIPOC farmer?

I’m a new first-generation farmer, and I don’t know if it ties to identity as much as being a young person. Western Massachusetts is full of family farms and lineages of people that farm. They have the land and machine resources, and it has built up over generations where you could pass things on.

We could only do this with the opportunity presented by being here and pursuing this passion our whole lives. Accessing the resources necessary to start a farm can be hard without being entrenched in a community. It’s a costly, capital-intensive business because you must spend a lot to make anything.

At our scale, you can’t just jump right in without millions of dollars, so we got this farm by leveraging the assets that the farm already had as collateralizing itself. What helped us was that a portion of the final sale was gifted to us, allowing us to buy the farm. Coming in without an opportunity like that is almost possible, especially at this scale.

What is the biggest win you’ve had as a BIPOC farmer?

As a BIPOC farmer, we have some markets closer to my identity. For example, some people are making kimchi products or taking Asian vegetables and manipulating them. We’re lucky to have some of those customers and be able to work with them. We have a customer who wants to buy a bunch of Napa, Komatsuna, and Yu Choy. We know it’s a good crop, but having people on board to buy it is important.

Tell Me About the Community you Farm In

We have our niche, so it’s mostly young people because a proportion of people are coming out of college, and some people have been here for up to five years. It’s a cool place to work. Many LGBTQ+ people farm here, so people from that group always want to work here.

Our strongest community tradition is having lunch together every day. We take an hour and eat food that someone cooks, allowing everyone to eat the vegetables we grow. We stock the kitchen with everything one needs to make big meals. We also have social events after work or on the weekends. Many are on the basketball team; we have movie nights and bonfires. It’s a tight-knit community, and it’s been established over a while that everyone is friendly and spends time together. It’s the number one draw when we sell people why they should work here, that the food will be good, and that you’ll meet many friends.

We donate to many shelter organizations because we have a ton of extra vegetables that we can’t sell. Rachel’s Table has been gleaning a lot for us this year, and that’s been huge. We’ve been giving them some first-quality stuff because we can’t get through it all.

Kitchen Garden’s sriracha is made by fermenting organic peppers with garlic, sugar, and salt, then cooking with vinegar before bottling.

If you could give one piece of advice to a BIPOC farmer hoping to become a landowner, what would you say to them?

Try to pursue every opportunity. Getting established in the farming community is challenging because there are so many entrenched people. You must persevere, try to talk to everyone, and establish those relationships. It’s important to have personal connections and relationships in this business. Getting people’s numbers and getting to know them is important. You can’t live in a bubble regarding the farmers around you and the people you need to work with to farm. Make a lot of friends.