Hilary - Burlington, VT

(pc: Abby Portman)

“My name is Hilary Martin, and I am co-owner of Digger’s Earth Collective Farm in Burlington. At our farm, we don’t have a group insurance option. We are 5 co-owners and we are left to our own devices to find healthcare coverage. And we’ve all found it through what is now called Vermont Health Connect. And, it has been sufficient for us in covering basic healthcare needs. But one of the challenges for us is that we don’t have workers comp for ourselves as owners. We’re required to, so we do have that for our employees, which we are happy to provide, but worker’s comp coverage just isn’t financially viable for us. That combined with no paid sick days on our farm means that should a farm-related injury happen, we have no way of addressing that as a business. I do have one farm partner who is no longer a farm partner because she had chronic pain issues and just couldn’t afford to continue farming because she needed to attend to her body and needed to find a job with benefits where she could get the care that she needed and farming is physical and she couldn’t do those things at the same time. And maybe that’s just a reality of farming that we need to find what our bodies can handle, but to me it seems like there could be a better way.

To be it seems like there could be another way. If we had healthcare for all, Medicaid, where we could continue to work and seek all the different therapies that are necessary to strengthen our bodies, repair, heal our bodies, have the necessary surgery, there are ways that we can make it work but if it’s financially prohibitive it means that people have to choose their bodies over their own livelihoods, which is unfortunate.

And, I think that in some cases you see people choosing to work less so they qualify for Medicaid, so that they continue having healthcare, and I’ve considered doing that myself. But, I love to work, farming is my job. I don’t want to not be working, and I have the privilege of having a healthy flexible body so I haven’t needed to do that. But I can certainly imagine the scenario where I would just be like, you know what guys, I’m not gonna come to work for half the time so that I can make sure I get my treatment, 100%, you have to choose that. But, I think that poses a significant challenge to the viability of farming in our state, producing enough food that we need for ourselves, and taking care of each other. One piece of our healthcare - and I think as a society we’re getting better at this - but acknowledging that mental health is a huge piece of our physical health, and I would like to see that more a part of farming culture. Proactively taking care of our bodies, our psyches, our emotional health, because farming is so demanding psychologically, and it’s demanding of our families, and demanding of so much of ourselves, that it would be so great to have a more holistic approach to healthcare. And, I think it’s hard to do that within the current subsidized healthcare system; it’s pretty limited in some cases. So I think healthcare for all would be so useful to increasing our productivity and sustainability as an agricultural community.”