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market-farming - Re: Working share advice

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Subject: Market Farming

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  • From: Joan Vibert <joan AT windwalker-farm.com>
  • To: market farming <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Working share advice
  • Date: Sat, 06 Jan 2001 08:41:53 -0600


In our first CSA year we offered, up front, a discount for a working share.
As I recall it was 25% off if they put in a morning a week (basically four
hours). This was done partly to satisfy their "gardening fix" and partly to
dull the impact of a weekly "vegetable expense". By the end of the season
there were only two members who had taken advantage of this and several
members with great guilty consciences who were embarrassed to face us. They
paid off the difference, kind of, but I decided not to do that again. In
fact the next year we didn't really offer a working discount unless someone
specifically asked about it. Part of the way into that year one of our
members, a single woman, lost her job and since she had been one of the
reliable workers from the year before she was offered free veggies until she
got back on her feet. This is what I believe the CSA should be all about.
She became our only truly reliable worker and, except for the heat of
summer, would put in a day a week and had real ownership in the farm. The
other worker from the previous year took a lot of heat from her husband for
spending too much time at the farm.

The best efforts we had in regard to getting help from our CSA members were
work days which we always followed with a pot luck dinner. Kids were welcome
and encouraged to help as appropriate. This is how we always planted our
garlic and potatoes, one year we put in 800 strawberry plants in an
afternoon. We tried apply the same idea to getting maintenance items like
weeding help done but it never went over.

I would just be careful about an upfront discount. If it is merely a weekly
offer, work that week-get a discount, then its doable. Most people don't
need any more guilt than they are already carrying around regarding what
doesn't get done - and you don't want to be the focus for that additional
guilt. Many of them already have it because of the veggies that rot in
their fridge!

We always had this dream about bringing out low-income mothers and teaching
them about growing and cooking fresh vegetables in return for garden work.
But we never found any who might have been interested.

Joan VIBERT
Windwalker Farm
Ottawa, Kansas







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