If you met Jim Schultz at a farming conference, you wouldn’t place him as a relatively new farmer. In addition to having retired from a career in education, Jim is also an absolute fount of agricultural knowledge.
After a few minutes of chatting, you’d come away convinced that Jim is an organic farming educator somewhere, as opposed to a farmer who began his own operation after retiring from a different career.
An Uncommon Story
Although many people fantasize about leaving their desk jobs to start a career in agriculture, Jim not only took that leap but has found success on the other side. Red Shirt Farm is not a small, hobby operation (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
Rather, it is a rapidly expanding operation with big plans for the future.
Read more: Ready to start a farm? Make sure you do these 4 things first.
The Farm
Red Shirt Farm sits on 13 acres in Lanesborough, Massachusetts, in the Northwestern corner of the state. The heart of the farm is its no-till vegetable operation, which yields enough produce to support a 130-member CSA, a booth at a local farmers market and several wholesale accounts.
The farm also grows herbs, flowers, berries and fruit.
And Red Shirt Farm incorporates livestock into its farm ecosystem. The farm raises pastured pigs annually and breeds pastured chickens and turkeys for both meat and egg production. While Jim has been quietly improving and expanding the farm for years, more and more people have started to take notice.
ACRES USA recently profiled the farm in a cover story, and Jim is a not infrequent speaker for organizations like NOFA Massachusetts.
Read more: Can you grow organically with no-till methods? Yes, but there are a few unique considerations.
Keys to Success
For many growers (myself included), it’s tempting to mine stories like Jim’s for the keys to success. What were the specific decisions that enabled him to defy the odds of establishing a successful farming business? Perhaps his use of certain grants to fund infrastructure growth? Or access to particular markets?
The truth, as with many things, is that there are no straightforward answers.
I worked at Red Shirt Farm for two seasons starting in 2017. The farm was different back then, but it’s future successes also felt inevitable. During my time there, the farm built its second high tunnel, opened its first wholesale accounts, and grew its CSA membership by 30 percent.
And each of those milestones that the farm achieved came about from countless hours of Jim’s work. Myself and several other young people worked on the farm both of those seasons, and Jim handily outworked us every day.
Beyond just working hard, though, Jim also works “smart” in a way that I’ve seen few other farmers pull off. His substantial knowledge of regenerative farming means that he wastes little time on tasks that aren’t necessary. Maybe Joel Salatin was right when he said you can tell everything you need to know about a farmer by looking at their bookshelf.
Despite the many (many) challenges associated with starting a new farm business, Jim’s story is a testament to the fact that it still can be done—and even after retirement at that.
