Bridging The Gaps, An Interview With Farm Manager Mireya Katerina Tsironis Genius Michael And Carrie Kline, Talking Across The Lines podcast

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Bridging the Gaps, an Interview with Farm Manager Mireya Katerina Tsironis Genius

10d ago 1:00:34

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We present this field interview with Mireya Katrina Tsironis Genius made with Carrie Kline in April of 2025. Now in her early thirties, Mireya Genius is an organic vegetable farm manager in the Connecticut River Valley of western Massachusetts. She traces her involvement in agriculture to her childhood on the Isle of Crete where her parents had settled in a small traditional village with plenty of room for vegetable farming, which soon captivated her with its possibilities. She learned to raise chickens from an elderly half-blind woman, and became watchful of older people. Her pursuit of farming eventually brought her in conflict with old Greek male farmers who found her youthful enthusiasm annoying and her interest in driving a tractor out of the question. So she finished up her studies and looked to settle in other parts of the world before landing in western Massachusetts eight years ago to make a start in commercial farming. Mireya Genius came because here she can more fully express herself. She enjoys working in a group—it makes the time pass—and she was learning new farming practices from fellow workers. “People here in the fields were speaking Spanish,” she recalled.” They called themselves ‘Hispanics’ and knew the ropes. I learned fast. I was white and bi-lingual (Spanish) and assumed to have good leadership skills. So I progressed in my employment goals, even learned to drive a tractor! ‘Here,’ they said. Go ahead.’ No discrimination.” Yet she found people in Massachusetts slow to accept her socially and suffered acute loneliness for a time, often crying in asparagus fields, wondering what she was doing here. She fell in love with the workers she was soon supervising and came to find out the divide she was feeling was widespread. She decided to try to bridge the gaps dogging her work, for instance, that United Statesians in general don’t bother to learn about other people. “They just like to get things like coffee cheap, without knowing how it is produced, or the people who produce it. The same with nameless migrants working in the hot summer sun to grow the vegetables we eat. We don’t even know their names, living situations, social needs, or the threats of deportation that presently haunt them, whether or not they are legally in our valley. Many of them come for medical reasons. They like the quality of farming life.”

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