Meet Hayden Kessel | Farmer + Rancher + Maker + Art Director

We had the good fortune of connecting with Hayden Kessel and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Hayden, how has your work-life balance changed over time?
My superpower is mixing business with pleasure. This spring I billed hours from my campsite, but it wasn’t that long ago I was spending thousands I didn’t have on prerequisite undergrad classes, struggling to memorize 40 similar baroque and renaisance era paintings of “virgin and child.”

I knew I wanted to build useful things, conceptual and physical, but art school wasn’t cutting it. I dropped to pursue artisanal internships and trade based jobs; over the past decade I have became a proficient farmer, knifemaker, metal fabricator, leather craftsman, carpenter, sewist, and graphic designer. It seemed the more I learned, the more I could transfer toward the next challenge. While I struggled with underemployment and self-employment, I could usually leverage my multidisciplinary skills into new employment opportunities or custom, limited-run products.

I’ve been shoulder deep in a cow’s uterus and watched my horse float through 4 foot brush wrangling cattle in the backcountry. I’ve had the pleasure of crafting logos, websites, and marketing for my employers, allowing my immersive experiences to guide my graphic creativity. I’ve stitched cool custom leather goods in the morning and skied in the afternoon. I now hunt down opportunities for these kind of balances: some immersive, some pendular, all rare and wild.

Part of this superpower is curiosity. I crave new things and experiences and I choose to value learning in a playful way. That is to say, when you can convince yourself that you’re having fun digging a hole, or at least get through it with peace of mind, taller orders like building a brand or crafting a jacket become a similar, rewarding experience.

it’s not all sunshine and roses, and it’s not like I never get crushed. I rest significantly when I can. But generally speaking, cultivating a psychology that celebrates and rewards investigation, exertion, determination, and creation has been my pursuit.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I’m a great #2. I have owner-mentality and excel when I can help guide organic company growth in creative ways. Your family ranch will have a decent instagram and well-written story before I’m gone. Your restaurant will have a more authentic presentation after my audit. Your clothing line is going to look nicer. Your brand will be better.

The tougher parts of my career have been getting paid enough, life seems to be increasingly expensive. I have sacrificed a lucrative journeyman welding path in favor of a more colorful day-to-day, and year-to-year. But I wouldn’t be defaulting on student loans if I was welding pipelines. Also, generalizing is not a great way to sell specialized help, so I take pay cuts in favor of new challenges and building relationships with employers who see my power and who are willing to take a chance on me.

I’ve learned a lot of transferrable skills, and it’s given me great “big picture” awareness for design. Whether you’re building a hog chute or a dining table or an advertising campaign, you really can use the same design process to render a measurable solution across multiple disciplines.

I want people to find joy and to remember that we’re sovereign. This modern constructed world has a lot of boundaries. Thin veils of inspiring words, idealized structure, order, and safety are just that. Challenge these boundaries, push through them. Everything goes out the window when there’s no food at the grocery store.

The single easiest and best way to positively impact our future is to buy a seasonal CSA farmshare from a local farm or cooperative. Beyond this, fortify the relationship with your food and consumables. Pay a farmer near you, start a garden, make one less microwave meal per week, buy a pig for your family, take a shoemaking class, buy a sewing machine on craigslist, melt plastic for your 3D printer, buy a shirt from a small company that builds in-house… There are a million ways to take small steps toward the future but you may want to look to the past for examples of how to do it right.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Head over vail pass and check out the sprawling foothills and regenerative efforts in the North Fork Valley, and spread out of the 720 to find where your food is grown, where the trout are plentiful, where the columbines bloom.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
What are we if not made of everything we have experienced? I am on the shoulders of my mentors, peers, and colleagues. Matt and Emma at Farm Runners are delivering local produce and brilliantly widening the bottleneck between farms and customers. Princess Beef Ranch and Ira Houseweart in Hotchkiss, CO shared their resources and friendship with me for years of knifemaking. Cold Mountain Ranch and the Fales Family paid me to learn beef cattle while I got to sublease a knife shop on their land from Sean McWilliams Knives. Don Andrade let me live at his house and learn to make knives. Cold Mountain Craft’s Trevor Washko bought me a ski pass and put me up in an apartment for a winter while we overhauled his leather brand. Harrison Topp of Topp Fruits and the Culbertson family at Fortunate Fruits provided me with huge professional and personal growth. I found deep inspiration in Kristen Kimball’s The Dirty Life (book) described a powerful force of a man Mark Kimball, lead farmer at Essex Farm. EnviroTextiles’ Summer Haeske is working hard to source textiles more responsibly.

I have concluded that a more localized food and product web is crucial for a healthier, independent future. These are the folks I look up to, who I have learned from, who are doing it.

Website: www.haydenkessel.com

Instagram: haykessel

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/haydenkessel/

Image Credits
1st Image (two figures walking by black airplane): Kyle Stansbury Photography sewing machine: Robert Rifkin happy pig farmers: Tom Kaye Photography rest of the images are by Hayden Kessel