End of the Season Reflections
/Our CSA season ended with crops still to harvest in the fields. While this is not what was planned and certainly not what we preferred - as it has delayed some green manure sowing - it gave us the opportunity to harvest for a farm gate of sorts, pricing our produce with market value prices. And through that exercise, I feel that Peter and I were able to truly reflect on all that we love about running a CSA and changes we need to implement to further our vision of a financially viable small scale regenerative farm.
We view this year as a successful season as we continued to achieve and/or work towards our goals as a farm and a community. The farm continued to strive for a biodiverse, balanced ecosystem where the health of the natural system continues to improve, our natural resources are respected and enhanced and the food we harvest is of a high quality and nutrient dense. Although we did encounter a new pest this season which affected the eggplants to such a degree that we barely harvested any, for small scale intensive vegetable farming, our crops were relatively pest and disease free.
The community continues to support our endeavours locally through our CSA selling out each season, the chefs with whom we work were pleased with the produce they had ordered and really loved working with it in their kitchens and a wider audience of chefs continually contact us interested in our produce. In this financial year, 53% of our income came from restaurants, 43% came from our CSA and 4% came through consulting and seedling sales. Our CSA accounted for 50% of our total labour while the restaurants account for 50%.
Currently any profit made in a season is the wage paid to Peter and myself - we do not pay ourselves a weekly wage. This financial year, Peter and I earned approximately $19/hour if you estimate that we each work 35 hours a week for 48 weeks of the year. Both Peter and I can work 60 hour weeks during Jan, Feb, March and April so this estimate of our weekly hours is very low. But even with that, Peter and I are earning less then we pay those whom work with us.
We also carefully reinvest profits back into the farm- adding infrastructure and tools to help make the farm efficient. As we are making a new five year budget this Winter, some of the big projects we are trying to incorporate are: a solar system so that the farm is providing its own electricity; Recovering poly tunnels which help us mitigate cold and hot temperatures and help us grow more variety throughout the season; and We are hoping to construct a dedicated “retail” shed so that the current packing shed can be used to dry more of our seeds.
Lettuce seed in the field
Let us now look at the price of our CSA share compared with the market price of what is in the box each week. While each week the produce varies and some weeks there was more in the box then others, we estimated throughout this season that on average our CSA members received $70 worth of produce for $50. As we had 50 CSA members this season over our 30 week CSA, each week we were offering our CSA members a $1000 discount, $30,000 over the CSA season. If we had had this income, Peter and I would have earned $27.80/hour.
Giving a discount to our CSA members has always felt like a great way to give value to our CSA system as our members do not choose what is in the box each week and have committed to a season of produce which does not offer a lot of flexibility. Our CSA is a vital component in the total health of the farm as it helps insure that we stick to our intricate crop rotation plan which prioritises the health of our crops and the nutrient density of our produce. Through our CSA and the chefs preordering their produce, we have very little food waste on our farm which is commendable!!
This season we added seed growing to our farm which is a wonderful addition for so many reasons (a post of its own is forming about our seed work). Getting this seed to other growers is an important step in that endeavour and in order to best provide other biodynamic and organic farms, we need to certify our farm so that the seed we grow is certified biodynamic. We have begun the certification process which is time consuming and comes with added costs.
In addition, this season we would like to be able to offer one more part time jobs on our farm as we move away from offering unpaid internships to offering people who would like to learn more about farming a paid position for their labour.
The additional labour will help us to plant and maintain more insectariums around the farm where our beneficial insects can breed and prosper as well as researching, constructing and installing bird and bat houses around the property.
We share all of this with you as we are entering our ninth season running this small scale market garden. Before we began Transition Farm, we set a ten year goal to fulfil all of our sustainability indicators (you can view them here). Each year we look carefully at our season, our successes and areas we need to grow more, and we ask ourselves how we can incorporate changes to further achieve our goals. We also revisit and at times redefine our goals, reinvigorating our work with purpose and vision.
We are continually asked to make our produce available to more of the public through a farm gate. And while this would allow us to charge market value for our produce, the decision needs to be made considering more then just the financial gain.
We have identified the following positives to our CSA program:
directly supporting our community through
offering affordable, nutrient dense produce,
building a regenerative ecosystem,
offering education about what localised, regenerative farming can look like;
offering an equal share for every CSA member (whether you are first in the door or last);
Allowing the farmer to balance the produce desires of our members with crops that fit into our intensive crop rotation program as opposed to growing crops based solely on those that sell the most;
Balancing the commitment of both the farmer and the CSA members by providing good value in exchange for pre payment;
Providing the community a direct connection with how their food is grown;
Engaging the community to directly support proactive measures that can help mitigate climate change through their financial support of our farm;
Ideally the cost of the share should be based on the cost of the production.
And then we have been thinking about the pros ands cons of a farm gate:
Offering more of our community access to the food grown on our farm;
Offering choice and flexibility to those whom support our farm;
Providing the farm with market value income which reflects the quality of the produce;
Would be first come first serve;
Might mean there is waste each week;
Would change the way supporters interacted with the farm - with choice of what to purchase.
In addition to weighing up the CSA versus the farm gate, we also have many more restaurants who would like us to grow for them.
We are sharing all of this with you, our current CSA members as we would like to know your thoughts on how we move the farm towards financial sustainability. We will be sending a survey in one day with some options. Please take the time to think over what we are asking and answer honestly. We would really like to know what you think!! Please also email us if you feel that you can express yourself better in that way.
This has been a successful year! and we know that next season can be too! Thank you for supporting this farm and the model of small scale farming we are building!!
Sincerely,
Robin and Peter
Green manure crop sprouting in one of the poly tunnels
