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A Woman's Touch Runs More Farms

Jo-Hana Youngs Gooth and Paula Youngs Weir run Youngs Farm in Old Brookville. (Newsday Photo/Peter Yang)

By Patricia Kitchen | Staff Writer

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THERE'S NO GLASS CEILING on a farm -- at least not any more. The number of woman-operated farms has increased from 1-2 percent to nearly 20 percent of all farms on Long Island in the past 30 years, says William Sanok, agricultural program director for the Cornell Cooperative Extension in Riverhead. Some are run jointly with spouses.

Women's leadership roles come not so much from a concerted lobbying effort as from a shift in market forces that places more emphasis on the work they have traditionally done, namely the paperwork, customer relations, cooking and farm-stand management.

Business savvy has replaced brute strength as the skill most needed to run a successful farm, says Sanok. "It's not as gender specific." He points to one woman who runs an herb farm and gives classes in floral arrangement using herbs. And another woman who runs a bedding plant farm with her husband -- she served as president of the national trade association for bedding plants.

Besides the overall acceptance of women in leadership roles, what has led to this shift? Local farmers now cater to local customers, retailing instead of wholesaling as they did before the rise of supermarket chains. These local patrons are the ones farm wives have been catering to all along at small roadside stands, Sanok said.

Only some stands aren't so small any more. In fact, some are downright gourmet. Just look at Youngs Farm in Old Brookville, run by two sisters, Jo-Hana Youngs Gooth and Paula Youngs Weir.

The farm has been in their family since 1893. While their father and a hired manager oversee cultivating, the two sisters run the farm stand, the sole outlet for the 17-acre farm's produce, along with homemade pies, soups, jams, cookies and breads. Sales in pies surpass that of vegetables, says Gooth.

Working in the office much of the time, Gooth says, "I don't even get to see daylight." But she points out that the kind of work she and her sister do is not unique to their generation: "This is how my mother was, and how my grandmother was."

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