sharing a garden

One of my jobs is managing the Goodwood Community Centre garden. Some days it feels like a real job, most days it doesn't. On the best days I get to potter around with volunteers - harvesting, planting, weeding, pausing and thinking, wondering and wandering. I get to hang out with the playgroup kids and parents - getting our hands dirty, feeding the worms, making juice and building a scarecrow.

I get to teach and I get taught, regularly. The thing about gardening is the thing about everything. There are a million ways to do something and they are all the 'right way to do it'. Without strength of conviction, or a helluva lot of experience this can get kind of tedious. Our garden is a shared garden. People work together on plots, growing vegetables and fruit. Some people turn up every day offering to lend a hand. Others pass by the garden and call out their advice or their idea. One man, who has grown his own vegetables for most of his 90-odd years comes by every few weeks and passes on some wisdom. When to cut down the scarlet runners, how best to trellis the peas, when to plant potatoes. The idea of a shared garden makes sense when lots of people contribute but it can be hard to know which decisions to make, which direction to take. My idea of a garden is quite possibly a little more chaotic and rambly than someone else's. 

There is a patch near the road which is covered in dandelions and Californian poppy. Some people think this is a weedy area that needs clearing. But when I look at it I see abundance and I see food! A lady who works just across the road comes by regularly with a knife and a plastic bag and collects the tender dandelion leaves for her dinner. Since being in Greece I learned that this is called 'horta' - wild greens - and is a traditional and common food. She cooks them up with a bit of olive oil, lemon juice and salt and pepper. I think she is one of the few people around here who recognises this nutritious food and cooks it on a regular basis. The Californian poppy is a plant that we cultivate carefully at the herb farm where I work and to see it growing so vigorously without any intervention is exciting. But to many this bunch of green is just a bunch of mess that needs tidying...so what to do? Who's advice to take? Who should be making these decisions anyway? What's the point?

I can get a little hung up on it all and end up in a kind of self-reflexive paralysis. Which isn't great when what I need to be doing is turning the compost or harvesting lettuce or sorting out the shed. Then it dawns on me. This is what it is about. Not the quantity of veges we grow, or the efficient functioning of the worm farm, it's not about how neat everything looks or how well timed our plantings are. The garden is as much a playground of ideas as anything. A place of focus where people can contribute, can argue, try new things, test something out, make mistakes, eat, get distracted, meet someone new, learn something, forget what they learned and just a place to hang around in. Especially if you don't really have anywhere else to go.  And yep, I really want to encourage people to compost, to grow vegetables, to eat vegetables and fruit (and try varieties they have never heard of) but that's just my own agenda. The Goodwood garden has it's own life. It's animated by whoever plays and works in it, by the plants and trees, by animals and birds and insects - some so tiny we just have to have faith that they are there, by the wind, the rain and the sun. It takes different shapes over time, different hues and atmospheres. 

My friend Sulyn says that as a gardener she is merely an editor. And in a shared garden that is particularly so. Though some days are frustrating and I feel like I'm getting nowhere and doing nothing and beating my head against a wall it is probably on these days that something really is happening.  Maybe not something I can sum up in a paragraph, something that looks all rosy, wholesome and 'sustainable' for funding bodies. Nothing I can really quantify. Nothing I can properly evaluate. But something, nonetheless. Contradictions are rife, values and priorities are bouncing around and into each other...people are interacting. Activity! And it's complex and it's exciting and it's frustrating and it just happens. 

 And I'm just an editor, so I won't get ahead of myself.

Crooked Carrot - a Community Supported Kitchen

I was lucky to spend a day in the kitchen of the Crooked Carrot CSK  (that's Community Supported Kitchen) with my friend Mahra as well as Johanna, one of the three members of the enterprise. 

The small kitchen, just outside Ithaca NY, gleamed with pots and ladles, jars and colanders - and the possibility of the ingredients of the day. The kitchen is housed in the farm building of Stick and Stone farm and is a very bucolic place to prepare food.

The CSK is part of the Full Plate Collective and is especially aimed at members with produce shares;

"By pairing our share items with in season vegetables, our share supports your healthy home cooking. For example, in early summer your CSK share might include arugula pesto to toss with sautéed summer squash, Greek-style dressing for baby salad greens, fresh herb aioli as a dip for new carrots and cucumbers, and pickled turnips to eat as they are. Most share items are ready-to-eat as a simple meal, and our newsletters will provide recipes and ideas for ways to combine your share with seasonal vegetables and other local products." 
                                                                                                   - Crooked Carrot website

This morning, for the eating pleasure of the CSK members we would be making blackberry and blueberry custard and a black bean and cucumber salad. But first, to the garden. 

We walked along one of the farm roads in search for blackberries. I was looking into the fields for the rows of brambles when Johanna said, 'over here, we are picking wild blackberries today'. Carefully, with varying levels of deftness, we plucked the ripest berries from the tangles of thorns. Back in the kitchen we washed and mixed these with blueberries. 

I had never made custard before and was really keen to know the method. The smell of the vanilla bean infusing the slowly heating cream definitely whet my appetite. Mahra and I worked carefully together pouring the cream mixture into the bowl of egg yolks, whisking slowly and steadily. 

There are many admirable things about the Crooked Carrot CSK. Firstly they are committed to allowing seasonal produce to shape their fortnightly menu. If cucumbers are weighing down the vines outside then they become a central player in a salad. An abundance of kohl rhabi becomes a delicious pickle, a glut of tomatoes is carefully transformed into a hearty pasta sauce for dinner. Less than perfect fruit and vegetables are often used to make delicious dips, soups and lacto ferments. This thriftiness if nothing new, but in a society that wastes 40% of the food produced for consumption it is certainly radical enough to warrant honorable mention.

"Since getting deeply immersed in the local foods movement, Silas (one of CSK founding members) has dreamt of a new model for food service: a model where the craftmanship of his favourite chefs and the progressive values of Community Supported Agriculture could meet the everyday food pragmatism of his mother - who fiercly put complete meals of wholesome food on the table, seven nights a week"
                                                     - Crooked Carrot website

Another admirable aspect of this CSK is their approach to packaging. Well, 'packaging' is maybe not the best word. All of the meals, dressings, dips, desserts etc. that are dispatched to the members come in a glass jar with a crooked carrot printed on the side as well as a label. These jars differ in size and shape, depending on what they are being filled with.

 The members are required to return these jars which are washed and reused for the next round of goodies. Zero single-use packaging for pre-prepared food is so rare these days, at least in our culture. My friend Sam recently told me about buying yoghurt in China, which came in reusable ceramic bowls. We have a long way to go. Convenience need not be synonymous with wanton waste. I often dream of the day where all bought food is dispensed, bulk style, directly into our own containers which we bring from home, carefully selected for the ingredients it will hold. 

Many food coops incorporate such systems into their shops. Source Wholefoods (Hobart, Tasmania) is one. It is really satisfying and curiously personal to bring along your favourite honey jar, since emptied and now being filled once more with a luxuriously thick flow of amber  -  your breath held while you concentrate on timing it just right.

The foods just looks great in the jars too.

 On this day we also made a delicious black bean salad with juicy cucumber, onion, just picked corriander and a wonderful herby dressing which reminded me of the centrality of balance (and chemistry!) in good cooking.

 I was pretty happy when lunch time rolled around. We feasted, with the Stick and Stone crew, on a smorgasboard of fresh salads, dips, two kinds of aioli, ferments, stewed fruit and yoghurt. I never appreciate lunchtime as much as when I am working and this was a meal to inspire all meals. Thanks for having me, everyone. 

Four Season Farm

We were heading up to Maine anyway so we dropped in to have a look-see at Elliot Coleman's and Barbara Damrosch's farm, Four Season, in Harborside. I have been working my way through Coleman's book "The New Organic Grower" after it was multiply recommended and was really excited to see the place in person. What I have found especially useful, in my current work, is Coleman's focus on making efficient use of well-designed hand tools. 

Please note the little bits of tubing on the rake. Instant row marker for seeding.

 This works for the scale that Coleman and Damrosch are farming. After being on such big organic farms I was suprised to hear that Four Season Farm is only a little over an acre yet produces so much food and for the majority of the year. It's not called Four Season for nothing and producing food through the Maine winter is no mean feat. When we visited it was all sunshine and honey bees but over the darker months the temperature averages between 20 and 30 degrees, and that's Fahrenheit, folks. That's a nice range of -1 to -6 Celsius. Needless to say these guys make good use of greenhouses. And these are either unheated or minimally heated during the growing season.

It is probably obvious that I aspire to be a farmer and there are lots of reasons why. One is that farmers are some of the most genius people I have met. And they need to be. They need to constantly and creatively problem solve, adapt and invent. In one of my new favourite books "Shop Class as Soulcraft",  Matthew B. Crawford, amongst other things, talks about the immense satisfaction he gets from fixing motorbikes. Indeed this realization was the main impetus for writing the book;

 "This book grows out of an attempt to understand the greater sense of agency and competence I have always felt doing manual work, compared to other jobs that were officially recognised as 'knowledge work'. Perhaps most suprisingly I find manual work to be more engaging intellectually".

I've been working on a farm for a few months now under the guidance of two farmers, both very experienced and just two of the smartest people I have had the pleasure of knowing. They are able to approach a problem with a wealth of theoretical and experiential know-how that extends not just what could be done but how to actually do it. Like, how to use tools and make tools especially for the job. Watching them work makes me want to go back to high school and pay attention to mathematical and physical principles. But I might just keep working on the farm and learn that way...the view is nicer. But back to the farm.

I present to you Exhibit A: The Tilther. This little gem was conceptualised by Coleman and combines existing technologies, culitvator and hand drill, to create a nifty little machine that can be used safely (no petrol fumes from a rotary hoe, for example) and with less energy in a greenhouse to gently cultivate beds to prepare for re-seeding. I'm guessing you could recharge the drill battery through solar or other means if you had that rigged up.

Four Season is also home to about a couple of hundred chickens, around half of these are layers and the other half are meat birds. We saw this neat set up for rotating young chicks around pasture.

They also have a couple of pigs. It seems like a farm on this scale would struggle to manage any bigger livestock (and provide feed and good habitat for them). Speaking of scale, we were able to ask a couple of questions about the composting system. There is a sizeable area dedicated to composting, but apparently it is difficult to produce enough material for the area that is under cultivation, so compost is also brought in.

An aspect of the planting design on the farm which is both beautiful and educational is the progressive plantings of one crop in a particular area. Like these onions. It's like a living flowchart. You can see dug onions curing on the ground at the back, the next couple of nearly-done rows just pushing themselves out of the ground and young green shoots in the foreground. This is immensely satisfying to see. From my backyard gardening experience I know there is a fair amount of faith/hope involved, especially in sowing the tiniest of carrot seeds, for example. It's like, 'sure, these will become carrots, uh huh, ok...whatever you say". I think I'll always find it incredible to scratch around a 50 day old carrot plant and find the impossible orange beneath.

I gave Elliot some Tasmanian Miellerie honey to say thanks for letting us look around the farm (he mentioned the Tassie honey when describing his last trip there). Luckily I had filled my bag with Gould's farm grown herbal tea and jars of the best honey I know. Being over on the other side of the world opens my eyes to things I've never seen before and gives me space to reflect on what's so good back home.

Chocolate fields forever...

Brooklyn Grange Farm - on a roof top in Queens, NYC

 I think we could be forgiven in that we were just a little lost when looking for the farm. In a neighborhood dominated by warehouses, mechanics, roadworks and general industry that sea of green that typifies a farm takes a little finding. And after walking around for a bit, looking around, looking up, scratching our heads - we found it. Here we are, obviously...

ok...

be a hero, take the stairs

live chickens...watch out

and thar she blows

Brooklyn Grange is a private business owned and run by 3 owners and is actually a series of farms. I visited their flagship farm in Queens but there is a second farm being set-up on a rooftop in the Brooklyn Navy Yard this season. There are only a handful of other roof-top farms in the city and these are mainly greenhouse and hydroponic set-ups. Have a look at Gotham Greens and Eagle St Farm. 

The produce grown on this roof is sold at multiple farmers markets and direct to restaurants.The farm itself spans across an acre of roof and is made up of roughly 1.2 million lbs of soil and over 20,000 linear feet of green roofing material. Yikes.

The all important work bench. I appreciate it's mega size

Tomatoes are one of their most important crops (over 40 varieties growing). The solanaceae family did seem to be thriving in these conditions.
 

The farm has one full time employee (as well as the owners who work at the farm), 30 interns (mainly college students gaining experience and credit who work 10 hrs/week) and a few volunteer apprentices.


It seemed to me that a venture like this would need a lot of investment to start off. Thanks to Michael who kindly gave us a tour and shared some history.

The funding came from the combination of crowd funding (via kickstarter) as well as private investment. The crowdfunding approach allows members of the public to donate any amount in order to get a project started. This allows a proactive (and somewhat cashed up) public to get something off the ground without having to wait for an often lumbering public bureaucracy to make the move. Michael mentioned that there has also been some really successful crowdfunded energy investment to pay for neighborhood-scale sustainable energy in the states.


Amy Cortese in her recent book describes this approach to social enterprise as "locavesting" and argues that "this peer-to-peer crowd funding model of aggregating many small sums promises to unlock new opportunities for investing in businesses whose needs are not being met by conventional sources". Through the Brooklyn Grange kickstarter campaign the donors were rewarded with gifts depending on how much they donated. This "thank you" could be a CSA share for a year, a single box of veges or a private farm tour, amongst other things. 

there is just a lot of sky when you farm on a roof

 So how does someone let you build a farm on their roof? Well, it turns out the landlord was looking for a green roof and there are incentives for building owners to 'use their land' in this way. First off they get $100,000 over 4 years in tax write offs plus they get rent from the farmers (a  previously untapped revenue stream). Presumably they also get some pretty serious cultural cred. Farming is so hot right now.

I was really excited to see some bee hives on the roof . Apparently two years ago the city changed the laws around bee keeping and now the only condition of setting up hives is that you register them with the city government. Look here for more details. There is no archaic by-law about how far the hive is from the nearest dwelling (like we have in Hobart, Tasmania) and this opens up the landscape for enterprising beekeepers. The  bees are a significant part of the Brooklyn Grange farm not only in terms of revenue from the honey produced but also because of their pollination prowess.

The roof also is home to a handful of laying hens. The eggs from these hens are sold, along with the produce at a weekly farm market actually held in the lobby of this building.These hens are as important for educating children and adults alike about eggs and keeping chickens, as for their contribution to the produce basket and their place in the overall system (e.g. eating weeds and turning them into eggs!). 


There is a lot that is surprising about a rooftop farm but something that really took the cake is the chocolate covered fields. You heard me. If you notice yourself getting a little hungry, drooling a little perhaps, when you are weeding, you are not alone. Brooklyn Grange makes use of a commerical byproduct to help add organic material, nutrients and a mulch to their beds. Direct from a chocolate company. Cocoa beans. And yep, it really smells like chocolate. Totally dreamy.

 

Ok, for those interested in the more nitty-gritty details of how you actually transform a roof into a farm here are some details from the BG website:

Can the building hold that much weight?

Our farm was designed and installed with the support of engineers and architects who assessed and approved the site. The building was constructed in 1919 and is built like a rock. The roof is made of a thick reinforced concrete slab, which is approved for loads far in excess of the 30 lbs per square foot of materials that we have installed.

"How is the farm built?

Before laying down the soil, we laid down a green roof system, distributed by Conservation Technologies. The system is as follows: a layer of root-barrier, which prevents our plants’ roots from penetrating the surface of the roof; a thick layer of felt; drainage mats with small cups to hold excess water from heavy rainstorms (the soil and plants wick this stored water up in dry conditions to keep our water use down), and finally, a thin layer of felt to prevent the drainage mats from filling up with soil.

What kind of soil do you use?

We bought our soil from Skyland in Pennsylvania, a green roof supplier. The blend is called Rooflite and is composed of compost for organic components, and lightweight, porous stones. The stones make the material lighter in weight and also slowly break down to add trace minerals needed by the vegetables. Our beds are about 7.5″ deep with 1″ deep walkways."

Stick and Stone Farm & the Full Plate Collective

I was able to visit Stick and Stone Farm which is about 10 minutes drive from Sweet Land, just outside of Ithaca, NY. SSF is part of a collective of farms called the Full Plate Collective. This is a really interesting approach to CSA and combines the produce from multiple producers in the shares offered to members. This approach supports smaller growers by giving them an access to resources and a guaranteed market as well as allowing growers to specialise in a particular crop (e.g. peppers) rather than having to generalise.. 

Being able to start at a smaller scale also can help provide a stepping stone for an apprentice farmer who wants to farm for themselves. This is exactly what Mahra is able to do – she is growing a variety of sweet peppers for the collective this season on Remembrance Farm. This setup means Mahra can access land, resources and advice and in exchange for the labour she provides for this crop she will get a share of the income received from the distribution of these peppers.

FPC offers summer shares and winter shares.The produce is distributed through pick-up days, where the members come to the farm to collect. These days are structured in a similar way to Sweet Land Farm – one bag of whatever you choose from selected crops, plus a selection of unlimited extras, as well as rotating u-pick crops. As well as the direct pick-up, members can have their share delivered (they don't get to choose the make-up of their share in this instance), either to their home or to a group pick up point. The delivery logistics are handled by Garden Gate and the price of this delivery varies (there is financial incentive to have your share part of a single group delivery, for example).

There are three main farms involved in the collective - - as well as smaller producers who offer bread shares (Wide Awake Bakery), prepared food shares (Naked Carrot CSK), mushroom shares () and more. Sara, who helps coordinate the collective also offers 'side-dishes' – e.g. a dairy share which allows her to carefully curate a selection of milk, yoghurt, butter etc. from local producers. I love this 'curation' approach to food. It certainly flies in the face of a supermarket which offers 50 brands of everything or jumbled together without any critique or coherance. And, like getting a recommended reading or listening list from a friend, it's an entrée into another person's tastes, values and experience.

We were only at the farm for a couple of hours but we were lucky enough to accompany Andrew on his chicken-run (members can also sign up for an egg share).  We started out by throwing out a tub of fresh greens ('seconds' from the CSA distribution) to placate/distract the ladies while we privateered their eggs. Andrew was clearly passionate about the flock and knew what every chicken-custodian should – who's ok and who you should just leave on the nest. Apparently the hens were getting a little on the broody side and were becoming more pecky during the harvest. This was the first time I have helped collect more than a hundred eggs at a time and the scale was satisfying.

The hen setup seemed really good. There are three movable chook-mobiles (my dumb phrase, not theirs). Two are nesting/roosting places and one is an area where the hens can scratch and forage. This has a pretty deep litter floor and various forage materials are scattered in there to supplement the diet and to accommodate what chickens do best – scratch! Next to the area where the houses, feeders and waterers are is a sizeable row of triticale– a hybrid of rye wheat. The chickens can graze on this crop to supplement the mixed, ground feed provided. Hmm...I'm running out of computer patience, so for now, here is a montage of the chicken 'shanty town'.

Good Life Farm

Ithaca is a really great (small) town. While having a coffee at The Shop we picked up a flyer for the 'Ithaca Free Skool” which listed all kinds of creative and mind-expanding activities delivered for free by community members. To cut a long story short we went along to the “Affordable Housing Forum” (in a park) which turned out to be convened by Matt Gordon – one of only about 5 people I actually have met in the area, who I actually played a couple of shows with last time I was in the area. Nuts. 
During a good discussion on the assigned topic Matt mentioned that he is taking a course on Sustainable Agriculture offered through the Groundswell Centre for Local Food and Farming (by the way, through a work exchange Matt is studying this without any hard currency transaction – awesome). This course, in Matt's impression, was like the perfect theory course to supplement a farm intern or apprentice's training. While you learn a ridiculous amount by just working on a farm you often miss out on important details or broader context and planning theory just because, well, you need to get those beets out of the ground now! So the small cohort that Matt is studying with gets to visit different farms around the area as well as listen to lectures and, presumably workshop ideas.

It was like every half hour or so Ithaca was just showing off how cool it was – upping the ante every time. I was pretty sure I wanted to live there after an hour so and was like “take it easy town, you had me at hello”.

Anyway, I digress. That night we went to a pub in Trumansberg and the only other people there happened to be the course coordinator of said farming course as well as the owners and farmers of the Good Life Farm, Melissa and Garrett. In the end we were invited to tag along with a Groundswell class who were visiting Good Life farm (Interlaken, NY) the next day. Like I said, we had been in the area about 2 days and this is the greatness that was transpiring.

While looking over the pages of frantically scribbled notes I took while at the farm I realise I am sort of holding my breath (breathe in) - I just don't know how to sum up this place in a blog entry. So I'll just add a little disclaimer here that the vision is massive, the processes complex and the ideas often beyond my tiny brain.

“they are like super heroes”

(Mahra describing Melissa and Garrett)

Melissa and part of their asparagus crop

The Good Life farm plan, in their words, "pairs perennial vegetable production with organic orchard management, high quality forage for poultry and horses, season extension and reduced fossil-energy systems. As we grow, our farm becomes more self-reliant and robust". What we got to see, on the tour, is just the tip of the iceberg. These guys are planning decades ahead and have three overarching goals that guide this planning;

1. Prepare for climate change - cultivate plants and animals that can cope with the only certain consequence of climate change -  unpredictable weather.


2. Energy descent - use fewer fossil fuels each year to farm. Initially on the farm there was huge capital investment - which equated to huge energy investment - but these investments were made with careful thought and will allow the rate of fossil fuel energy to steadily decline rather than stagnate or increase each year. A central aspect of GLF is they use horses to farm and produce all of the food for the horses on the farm.


3. Care for community - one way that this is manifested is through sharing resources (both material and immaterial) and in particular, the 'incubation' of another new farmer, who, currently, is Liz. Sharing also means having multiple generations of the farmers' families living on the land as well as knowing, in the first instance, what is being done and grown in the area and meeting what is needed (filling some of those niches - for example, a Spring CSA share).

"Our area has an abundance of good food during the other three seasons of the year, but we’ve noticed that Spring can be a lean time for local food availability.  Spring is a chancy time to predict growth and yield, and guaranteeing a harvest requires a certain amount of additional infrastructure.  While there are still many unknowns involved in growing primarily fresh vegetables for these lean months, we are ready to go for it! 

Our farm site near Cayuga Lake allows us to harvest earlier than many other regional producers.  Thanks to our early-producing site, our greenhouses, perennial crops, and our relationships with other producers, this Spring CSA offers diverse and nutritious food!"  
- from the GLF website

 During the farm tour Melissa shifted seamlessly between scales of consideration. In describing the turkey-forage system in the asparagus bed she touched on general principles of polyculture, ethics of farming with said turkey breed (and related tension and balance between experimentation and output), contrasting forage behaviour of turkeys and chickens and everything in between. This ability to hold multiple scales, theories and experiences in one brain is impressive and a little intimidating. It was a 95 degree day but I don't think that's the only reason my brain felt a little too hot. This is complex stuff and what Melissa and Garret are doing is simultaneously traditional and absolutely cutting edge.

For example...


We were lucky to get a tour of the "ice house" - GLF's approach to preserving fresh food without relying on non-renewable energy. It's a work in progress and it's very exciting. Ice houses, historically, have been a way to store ice and perishable foods over winter and summer months and work on basic principles of airflow and insulation. I say 'basic' though there is a lot to making it work in practice. The ice house that GLF is building makes use of thousands of re-purposed 1.25l plastic soda bottles filled with water to provide the cool-mass in the purpose built basement of the barn. 

It's mad scientist stuff and I am in awe. 

During the whole tour, while listening to Melissa, it became clear that she was acutely aware (and transparent) about what she was proud of and what she wasn't in terms of her decisions on the farm. She also seemed clear about what she was and wasn't willing to concede to. This also reminded me of Evangeline and Paul's "morality list" - deciding what and what could not be compromised in running Sweet Land Farm.


As Melissa explains, conceptions of permaculture typically focus on production on a smaller scale (less than an acre) and often relate to more of a hobby sized garden, rather than a scale that encompasses both sustenance and livelihood (i.e. farm business). 


The scale they are working with means that design is necessarily long-term and will 'pay back' over many years (rather than just in the next season). I hope I can revisit Good Life farm in 10 years to see how their brave and value based planning is panning out. I expect I would see things that will take my breath away and probably make my brain hurt even more.  

Sweet Land Farm - Trumansberg NY

"Farmers need a place to farm and make a viable living. Farmland needs to be enriched and nurtured so that it can yield bountiful harvests year after year. Members need a dependable source of vibrant, richly grown food. All of these needs must be kept in balance. Sweet Land Farm is a CSA-only farm, so everything that we grow is for you, the shareholders. This makes the above-mentioned balance nicely transparent"

(- SLF member's handbook)

We were lucky enough to not only volunteer at Sweet Land Farm but also stay on the property with our friend, Mahra.

This farm covers 34 acres - a third of which is used for growing annual vegetables, about an acre for perennials and the rest under cover crops. Currently the farm offers 350 summer shares and 150 winter shares. That's a lot of food for a relatively young farm.

Evangeline and Paul use a combination of elements to get their produce to the people. First of all, the members come to the farm. They are supplied with a bag (which they must bring each time) with which they can fill with whatever they choose from selected crops. This means the members, if they choose, could take a whole bag of chard or potatoes etc. or they can choose to diversify. There was a great selection when we visited, considering how early it is in the season. As well as the one-bag selection, members are able to pick from an extras section which is unlimited, though there are particular guidelines around this section (e.g. you can take as much as you can eat, but not as much as you want to share with others or preserve). 

On top of this there is also a u-pick list each week. These are the crops that you can harvest yourself and contain both unlimited and limited items. The week that we visited the u-pick list included sugarsnap peas and strawberries as well as unlimited blue cornflowers. Pretty dreamy. The u-pick element is great for a number of reasons. It gets people out into the farm and literally in touch with their food and how it is grown. It's a productive education for adults and children alike. It also transfers responsibility from the farmers to the members in harvesting those relatively time consuming crops and I think, affords those harvests the adequate time for real pleasure – in the picking and the tasting. Have you ever smelled a field of ripe strawberries in the summertime? It is worthy of some meditation.

The quantity of each crop put out for distribution is recorded which allows the farmers to track demands and trends of what's proving popular or not, and informs their harvest for the next week and their planning for the future. They 'tally so the customer doesn't have to'.  


During distribution days SLF also hosts other CSA's including Wide Awake Bakery ('best bread ever' - Colin), Crooked Carrot Community Supported Kitchen ( 'best kohl rhabi pickle ever' - Bridget), The Piggery (we tried their pulled pork sandwich - yep, best ever) and more. Each of these deserve their own post, which I'll hopefully get to.  
There is also an egg share on offer which includes a dozen eggs per week (you can buy as many shares as you need). The flock is rotated over fresh pasture every week or two - read more about it here.

SLF also offers a winter CSA share (impressive, considering the climate) and allows them to offer a niche product to the community. They are able to provide a good range of crops throughout both seasons due to effective root storage and the use of passive solar tunnels to lengthen the season for greens.

This kind of smart system design is based on years of shared experience in farming and particularly in CSA schemes. Evangeline and Paul are incredibly experienced and this wisdom permeates design and process. From the few hours we spent volunteering we could see the farm just runs well. The equipment is appropriate, the relationships between elements are considered and accomodated, even the feng shui of the distribution shed is great. And, from all accounts, the workers are very happy. This, I'm sure, is in part due to the commitment to tea breaks which seem to always include freshly baked treats and percolated tea or coffee. It is the basic things that make all the difference.

Paul, Colin and Evangeline - tea break

We felt incredibly welcomed by all of the team at SLF and were especially grateful for the time that Evangeline and Paul took to answer our many questions and share their hard-earned wisdom. My head was buzzing and after the information over-stimulation wore off I was left with a resounding impression of optimism, hard-work and courage. These guys have really done it themselves, building not only a home and a business but a multifaceted community asset. I remember looking across the fields at kids picking peas, at new young farmers working together and at community members getting excited about the latest harvest of harukei turnip and thinking, this really is something. It's definitely set a bench mark for the way I imagine a CSA of this scale. Thanks, ya'll.

As an aside, couple of pieces of equipment really caught my eye at this farm , so here are two odes to technology...

Ode to the Cool Bot

The Cool Bot is one of the cheapest and efficient ways to (electrically) power your cool room. The Cool Bot is a $300 'brain' that allows you to use a typical air conditioner in a cool room – as opposed to a fan based system that will be simultaneously generating heat (by the spinning fans) whilst trying to cool the air.

Without the Cool Bot an air conditioning unit would eventually freeze if you try to get the temperature below 60 degrees (f). The CB contains a thermostat controlled element that keeps the unit from freezing. The Cool Bot also bypasses the switch that an air con unit has to stop it from trying to cool below 60.  Evangeline and Paul have had great success with this unit – they have used it for 5 years straight without a hitch. So cool. You can read more about it here.

The Beauteous Barrel Washer

Here is another great design (which we saw in other farms in the area). 'Tis the Barrel Washer.

Paul said he saw this type of machine being used in an Amish farm to great effect and knew it was a priority on the capital investment shopping list.

It's used to quickly wash quantities of all kinds of root crops while rolling them along to eventually fall into the packing tub. Here it is in action. It's a kind of big investment but, from all accounts, certainly pays off.