[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 166 (Thursday, September 24, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5858-S5859]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       RECOGNIZING GOLD SHAW FARM

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, agriculture has always been at the heart of 
Vermont's economy. For generations, families across Vermont have made a 
living through agriculture, tilling our rocky soil and raising 
livestock on our hillsides. Farming in Vermont has always been a 
challenging yet very rewarding way of life. Now more than ever, it is 
clear to see the obstacles faced by farmers. I would like to take a 
moment to recognize Gold Shaw Farm, a farm founded by a husband and 
wife team in northeastern Vermont. Morgan and Allison Gold, the owners 
of Gold Shaw Farm, have found a very interesting way to meet these 
challenges, supplement their agricultural income, adapt their 
practices, and share their work with the world.
  Morgan and Allison Gold moved to Peacham, VT, and established their 
farm in 2016. On their 150-acre plot, the Golds raise chickens, geese, 
ducks, and sheep and cultivate a variety of vegetables and berries. 
Soon after they started farming, the Golds began filming their daily 
activities and posting them on YouTube. The farm may be small, but over 
the years, Gold Shaw Farm has amassed a very large and loyal fan base 
that tune in regularly to watch as Morgan and Allison collect eggs, 
chase ducks, and play with their dog, Toby. Some of the farm's fans 
have even driven all the way to Peacham to buy eggs and visit the farm. 
With the help of their growing audience, the Golds hope to expand their 
farm into a larger sustainable operation. Starting and maintaining a 
farm is challenging work, but in the Golds' model, we see innovative 
and creative ways to not only document farming experiences, but share 
those experiences with the world and hopefully inspire a new generation 
of farmers. I look forward to tuning in to watch their progress.
  Earlier this year, the Golds were profiled in The New York Times, and 
I ask unanimous consent that the article, ``In a Wistful Age, Farmers 
Find a New Angle: Chores'' be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Aug. 7, 2020]

           In a Wistful Age, Farmers Find a New Angle: Chores

                            (By Ellen Barry)

       Peacham, Vt.--The sweet smell of hay rose off the earth on 
     a recent evening, as Morgan Gold strode across his farmyard 
     in heavy boots. He crossed the paddock, scanning for new 
     eggs, water levels, infected peck wounds, rips in the fence 
     line.
       But mainly--let's be honest--he was looking for content.
       Though Mr. Gold sells poultry and eggs from his duck farm 
     in Vermont's northeast corner, most of what he produces as a 
     farmer is, well, entertainment.
       Mr. Gold, who is short and stocky, with the good-natured 
     ease of a standup comedian, does his chores while carrying a 
     digital camera in one hand and murmuring into a microphone.
       Then, twice a week, like clockwork, he posts a short video 
     on YouTube about his exploits as a neophyte farmer, often 
     highlighting failures or pratfalls. Keeping a close eye on 
     analytics, he has boosted his YouTube audiences high enough 
     to provide a steady advertising revenue of around $2,500 to 
     $4,000 a month, about eight times what he earns from selling 
     farm products.
       This part of New England is rocky, hilly and isolated, and 
     generations of small farmers have cast about for new ways to 
     scrape out a living: the sleigh rides, the alpacas, the 
     therapy ponies, the pick-your-own hemp. It is a new thing, 
     though, to make farm life into reality TV.
       Mr. Gold, 40, has learned the hard way--he tried to take a 
     month off last winter--that any gap in his YouTube 
     publication schedule results in a steep drop-off in audience. 
     So he keeps a running list of themes that could be fodder for 
     future videos. It reads, in part:
       Should I Feed My Dog Eggs?
       Don't Trust This Duck
       My Homestead Is a Dumpster Fire
       What Does My Guard Dog Do All Day?
       He has learned, through trial and error, what works with an 
     audience. The sheepdog-mounted GoPro didn't work. (``People 
     were like, 10 seconds and I was puking,'' said his wife, 
     Allison Ebrahimi Gold.) Slow, sumptuous drone footage of his 
     sun-dappled 150 acres, land porn for wistful cubicle 
     dwellers--that definitely works.
       Character development works, as demonstrated by Mr. Gold's 
     most popular video, ``Our Freakishly Huge Duck (This Is Not 
     NORMAL),'' which, as he would put it, blew the doors off. 
     Slow-motion footage of waggling goose butts, set to a bouncy, 
     whimsical orchestral soundtrack, works.

[[Page S5859]]

       But few things compel audiences, he came to realize, more 
     than a real-life setback. He came to this realization last 
     summer when a mink broke into his duck hutch, leaving its 
     interior spattered with eggs and blood and feathers.
       ``It was one of the most depressing days of my life,'' he 
     said, adding, ``but at the same time, I'm thinking, `How is 
     the audience going to react to this sort of thing?' ''
       The next videos, which featured freaky night-vision footage 
     of the offending mink, helped boost Mr. Gold's YouTube 
     audience toward the 100,000-viewer threshold. And it helped 
     him understand his own place in the universe of farmer-
     influencers, which tilts heavily toward the how-to genre.
       ``The storytelling part is what I'm good at,'' he said. 
     ``I'm not that good at the farming part.'' It is a paradox 
     that the less financially viable small farming becomes, the 
     more that Americans want to experience it firsthand.
       This idea is as old as the dude ranch; video streaming of 
     farm life is only the most recent iteration. Amy Fewell, the 
     founder of Homesteaders of America, said the number of 
     farmers who earn substantial income off YouTube channels is 
     steadily climbing, and now stands at around 50. Some of them 
     earn money through product endorsement deals, like Al Lumnah, 
     who posts videos five days a week from his farm in Littleton, 
     N.H.
       It's a lot of work: Mr. Lumnah wakes up at 3:30 a.m. so he 
     can edit the previous day's footage in time to post new video 
     at 6 a.m., which his 210,000 regular viewers, who are 
     scattered as far as Cambodia and India, have come to expect. 
     ``People will say, it's lunchtime here in Ukraine,'' Mr. 
     Lumnah said.
       Others, like Justin Rhodes, a farmer in North Carolina, 
     have parlayed a giant YouTube audience into a dues-paying 
     membership enterprise--he has 2,000 fans who pay annual fees 
     of up to $249 for private instruction and direct 
     communication, via text message. ``We don't sell a single 
     farm product,'' Mr. Rhodes said. ``Our farm product is 
     education and entertainment.''
       Mr. Gold, who moved to Vermont and started his YouTube 
     channel four years ago, has not reached that point. He still 
     has a full-time job, as a marketing executive for an 
     insurance company, and so far has refused the endorsement 
     deals. He has built up his flocks of chicken, geese and ducks 
     to 100, and is hoping to add cows next spring.
       He's certainly captured the interest of the farmers who 
     surround him in Peacham, said Tom Galinat, a neighbor whose 
     family farms 550 acres.
       Farmers here struggle to eke out a living from a rocky, 
     uneven soil and hostile climate, and they are astounded--in 
     some cases a little jealous--to discover that Mr. Gold is 
     internet famous, he said.
       ``He's found a way to way to monetize farming with less 
     physical labor,'' Mr. Galinat said. ``Some guys are like, 
     this is silly, since he's farming 20 ducks. But at the same 
     time, he's making more than other farmers who have 500 acres 
     of land.''
       But Mr. Galinat, who is also Peacham's town clerk, counts 
     himself among a younger generation of farmers who are 
     learning from Mr. Gold.
       ``He has taught me I am no longer selling hay, I am selling 
     a lifestyle,'' he said. ``He's really selling himself--his 
     emotions, his opinions, his downfalls, his successes. Boom! 
     That's it, that's the way forward.''
       As Mr. Gold's audience has grown, he has at times been 
     taken aback by the enthusiasm.
       Several dozen viewers have driven all the way to Peacham 
     and knocked on his door, hoping to buy eggs or talk about 
     ducks, something his wife described as ``really 
     distressing.'' ``Morgan is so vulnerable on film,'' she said, 
     ``that people assume they know us as people.''
       Most of it is nice, though. Viewers send handcrafted 
     accessories for his outbuildings, like a plaque that says, in 
     elaborate lettering, ``Ye Olde Quack House.'' When one of the 
     Golds' barn cats was hit by a car recently, at least 50 
     viewers offered cash to cover her medical bills.
       Samier Elrasoul, a nursing student in Howell, Mich., is so 
     devoted to Mr. Gold's videos that he got a vanity license 
     plate reading QUACKN, in honor of the catchphrase--``Release 
     the Quacken!''--that Mr. Gold exclaims when he frees his 
     ducks from their hutch in the morning.
       Mr. Elrasoul, 34, says the videos inspire him because he, 
     too, has a dead-end job--he works as a supervisor at 
     Starbucks--and he, too, harbors a dream of changing his life.
       ``Seeing some guy just like me, just dropping everything 
     and doing what he's passionate about, was very encouraging to 
     see,'' he said. ``I'm like, wow, he's living his dream.''
       For others, Mr. Gold's farm has provided a haven in a 
     difficult time. Charlotte Schmoll, who is 6 and lives in 
     Portland, Ore., spent days at the beginning of lockdown 
     watching Mr. Gold's videos over and over. She announced last 
     month that she, too, plans to raise ducks in Vermont.
       ``One of the questions that comes up when we watch shows 
     is, `Is this real? Did this happen?' '' said her mother, 
     Julie Schmoll. ``That's one of the things she liked about Mr. 
     Rogers, and maybe she likes about the duck farmer, that he is 
     also quote-unquote true, or real.''
       Mr. Gold does wonder, sometimes, about what it means, in 
     the long term, to make his life into a story. When the cat 
     was hit by a car, he found himself reflexively converting the 
     event into a script, and stopped to ask himself who he was 
     becoming.
       ``It's like, how much is the experience and how much is the 
     packaging of the experience, and how do you distinguish 
     between the two,'' he said. ``Because you almost go, `I had a 
     duck die, let me think about the first act here, and the 
     second act.' ''
       And still, the show goes on. Late on a recent evening, Mr. 
     Gold was putting finishing touches on a video about his dog, 
     Toby, who has never quite grown into his intended role as a 
     duck herder.
       Early drafts of the video had focused on how much the dog 
     had improved.
       But there was something dishonest about that, Mr. Gold 
     realized that evening, as he and Ms. Gold flung themselves 
     around the paddock, trying to catch birds with string nets, 
     while the dog looked on placidly, thumping his tail.
       Now, in the gathering dark, Mr. Gold was rewriting the 
     ending to one that emphasized his acceptance of the dog's 
     true nature.
       It's always difficult to bring closure to a video, Ms. Gold 
     said. It was almost 9 o'clock, and she was hoping to go 
     inside.
       ``You have to create an end,'' she said. ``Because the 
     truth is, we do this every day, so there's not really an 
     end.''
       But Mr. Gold, for his part, was pleased.
       ``I love it when a story has a good moral,'' he said.

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