The economics of the CSA share

At one time in the history of the CSA movement, the conception of what a CSA share meant was that the farmer makes a budget at the beginning of the year, divides it by the number of shareholders the land can support, and that is the price of the share.  The farm itself may be owned by a group of consumers who hire the farmer to manage the farm for them, or the consumers might contract with an existing farm to grow their vegetales for them. The customers have a "share" of whatever the farm produces; it's a nice and simple idea and the vision of a cooperative and mutually beneficial economic arrangement between eaters and growers.  This problem with this vision of how community-supported agriculture should work is that there have been few if any farms that actually structure their shares this way.

I worked on my first CSA farm in 1995.  By that time, what many farms were offering and calling a "CSA share" was really more like a subscription service than a real "share" of the farm's total harvest.  Customers pay at the beginning of the season for the promise of vegetables every week.  The inflow of cash early in the season is beneficial to the farmer, and the customers share some of the risk.  Many already-existing farms got into the CSA market as a way of diversifying their marketing. There were also a great deal of idealistic young farmers who saw a CSA as a great way to start a farm, and then found that it was harder than they thought to provide a steady stream of vegetables every week (some of those young farmers are in their forties now and are still going strong). This type of arrangement is great for both the farmer and the eater; there is a real connection between the two, and the risk-sharing and early payment are a real boon to the farmer.  But it does differ from the older conception of a consumer-driven Community-Supported-Agriculture.

At this time, there is a wide variety of share types ranging from the urban box share where the farm drops off a box of produce somewhere in the city to an online ordering system where you customize that box. Some farms maket purely through a CSA-type outlet, others mix CSA with farmer's market, restauant sales, or wholesale sales by the truckload. What all of these share types have in common is that they are a way for farmers to sell produce and not so much the cooperative relationship between farmers and their eaters that was at the heart of the original CSA vision.  What the farmer grows and puts in the share is a decision of the farmer based on what they can grow well and what they think their members want to eat.  And the price is based on supply and demand; what other farms in the area charge is more important than the actual cost of production.

Our own farm is a hybrid, as many small farms are.  When we came to North Amherst in 2006, we thought we would transition over time to do all of our marketing through CSA shares.  The share format made sense for a farm that had been successfully preserved by community effort.  Our original business plan called for us to grow to 400 or 500 shares and stop going to farmers market by the third year.  We tried for a couple of years to advertise our shares widely and wean ourselves from farmer's market, but were unable to attract more than our current level of 250 to 300 shares.  We found that with all of the great CSA farms in our area, people shop very judiciously, and our base of people who like what we do and who are in our neighborhood is somewhat fixed.   Our share price is constrained by the price other farms charge; and while we might be able to achieve some economies of scale and reduce our costs by selling to a larger base of CSA members, we haven't been able to increase that base.  We also have found that some of our loyal customers who shop at our stand at market try a share for a year or so, and then go back to shopping at market because that fits how they want to do things better.  So we have kept going to market, but our goal has always been to sell most of our produce at the farm.  It has always seemed silly to us, with 10,000 people who live within a mile of our farm, to pack everything up, drive 3 miles to the center of town, unload everything, sell for a little while, and then pack it all back up again to go home.

Our current project to build a farmstand on the site springs from our hope that we can bring together all of our marketing into a single unified effort.  We hope that if we pour all of our energy into that one effort that is accessible to more people, we can increase the total output of the farm, and achieve more of those economies of scale.  By increasing our marketing volume, we can also grow more of those crops which are more profitable for us and let other farmers specialize in things they do well. This doesn't mean we will be turning the farm into a monoculture, by the way.  We just might leave potatoes, for instance, to a larger farm who can afford the specialized equipment to really crank out potatoes more efficiently than we can.  We have started this year buying potatoes from Atlas Farm, who sells them more cheaply than we can grow them.  We are contributing in this way to increasing the efficiency of our local food system.  And even a larger farm like Atlas has many different crops and is rotating their land through a diverse cropping system.

We are excited about the potential for this new farm stand to increase how much of our community we reach, while also providing a more sustainable income for Dave, myself, and our crew.  And we haven't even started talking about phase 2, which would be starting a kitchen to cook some of our great food for you all to take home to eat!

Meet the Farm Crew Part 2: Maggie (Margaret Ranen)

Margaret Ranen is our home-grown apprentice. She attended Wildwood Elementary School and first visited Simple Gifts Farm as a high school senior. Ben Wells-Tolley (many of you probably remember him!) showed her around. Margaret and many of her Amherst friends have worked at farms, as the farm economy depends on gigajoules of young people’s energy. Her parents have patronized our stand at the Amherst Farmers’ Market for years, and when she staffs the CSA and market, she knows many of you.

She worked on the weeding crew at Brookfield Farm near her home through high school, and weeding – especially herbs and carrots – is still her favorite job. As an apprentice at Simple Gifts Farm, Margaret deeply appreciates the opportunity to learn every single day. For example, she notes, every apprentice has a particular crop to scout every Wednesday, when UMass Extension specialist Lisa McKeag visits to survey the farm for crop pests and disease (Margaret’s crop is potatoes, host to many interesting and annoying pests). She had also never driven a tractor before this year, and now knows that she loves tractor work. She operates the John Deere 5055, with which she uses the finger weeder (see here for more on this awesome implement) and the plastic layer. Experiencing the full farm system also has its surprises; she hadn’t considering how much time goes into processing the produce post-harvest – indeed, much time is spent at the wash station.

As we wade through bright stems of chard, I ask Margaret for her perspective on the growing up in Amherst.  She said that she really appreciated the abundance of the local agricultural scene.  She also has been disappointed in the lack of connections between the colleges and the local community.  She felt that from both sides.  As a youngster, there were many resources from the colleges that were inaccessible to her;  as a student at Hampshire, she felt that her and other students’ experiences suffered from the isolation from the local community.  She has been excited to see the real connections between Simple Gifts Farm and UMass students as we host classes and have a number of students who have shares at the farm.

Margaret is quick to catch on to all the new skills needed to navigate a farm season, and brings a good sense of humor along, too. In her spare time, she loves to sing and play guitar, on her own or with her family (her dad is local celebrity David Ranen, chorus director at ARMS). As for cooking up the farm’s bounty, beets are her favorite: “I love them so much.  Our beets are beautiful.” She loves them steamed, fried, shred in salads, baked . . . all the ways are good.

As I’m about to head in from the field to begin my own work day, Margaret has one more thing to say. “Something I really, really appreciate at this farm is that. . .  when you are in your 20s, you are always worrying about what is next. This job forces you to be in the moment.” Whatever does come next, we know Margaret will bring her quick wits and kindness to the task.

Meet the Farm Crew Part I. Keith Neijstrom

It’s 7:30 a.m., and the farm crew is in full swing, picking peppers. Keith Neijstrom carefully plucks ripe peppers and places them in his bucket. It’s a far cry from his life a year ago, working as an Industrial Hygenist at a corporate environmental consulting firm in Syracuse, NY. It was a good job, but after seven years, he was ready to take a chance and try a new career. An apprenticeship was the natural way to give farming a try and to gain the knowledge needed to decide whether it is the next step for him.

Of all our apprentices, Keith stands out for how deeply he engages with the education offered. The day-to-day practice of farming is a rich learning experience; Keith takes this farther by documenting farming techniques and projects with photos and notes. He also reads agricultural books and bulletins in his spare time, and is a dedicated participant in the CRAFT (Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training) program; Simple Gifts is one of 17 farms that offer apprenticeships and take turns hosting farm tours and educational programs each season. He has experienced several apprenticeships – mainly while in college at the Rochester Institute of Technology – and he feels that the experience at Simple Gifts Farm has more general applications than others.

Overall, learning vegetable growing techniques is the most valuable thing he’s learned, says Keith. He also appreciates getting experience working with tractors and tractor-driven implements (his assigned tractor is the Farmall 140 that we use with the basket cultivator), and projects like building the new greenhouse. He enjoys the animals, too, particularly how excited they are when you come to feed them in the morning. Although the pigs are really selfish, “I don’t blame them for that,” he says.

By now, we’re in the caterpillar tunnel, harvesting tomatoes. The alkaloid smell of tomato plants fills the long archway filled with foliage and ripening fruits as the discussion turns to the farm community. I’ve noticed that farm-kid Rachel has developed a friendship with Keith. “I think she’s cool,” he agrees. He also particularly likes how the barn cats greet him early every day at morning meeting, and again when he returns home at the end of the day.

In his spare time, Keith enjoys tinkering – he is learning bicycle repair, and his creation “Picnic Table Man” greets the crew in the farmhouse yard. He also enjoys NFL football and movies. For cooking, he prefers hardy favorites like carrots and potatoes.

After this apprenticeship, Keith is torn between returning to environmental consulting and continuing the farming dream. Land in central New York is affordable, and with careful management, he thinks he could get started. Organic practices that prioritize soil health, and zero waste principals, would be guiding sustainability principles of his operation. Whatever his next steps are, we know they will be carefully considered. In the meantime, we are glad to have his steady presence at Simple Gifts Farm.

June crop report

As of June 15th, here's how things are looking in the crops department:

Strawberries:
We usually get 3 good weeks of strawberry picking, with a not-so-great week on either end.  The crop is looking great so far, after the first good week.  Don't wait too long to get out and pick--the season always comes and goes so fast!


Cucumbers and squash:
We are just starting to get a trickle of cucumbers out of the hoophouse.  We brought a few pounds to market on Saturday (there just weren't enough to give every shareholder 1 cuke), but we are hoping to have enough to put them in the share soon.  Out in the field, the first few baby squash and zucchini are trickling in, which means that we might have full-size squash by the end of the week.

Onions and Garlic:
 We had a nice success with our early spring onions.  Those plants were started in flats last August, planted in the field last September, and then over-wintered under the cover of an old piece of greenhouse plastic.  They over-winter onions for spring harvest a lot in the South, but this is a new system for our latitude.  We hope you enjoyed them! They're all done now, and we will have scallions for a little while before we have some "superstar" white bulb onions coming in, probably by mid-July, to hold down the allium.  Our garlic is looking the best it has in several years. We had lost our garlic seeds a few years ago to an infestation of root knot nematode, and the varieties we bought in to replace them where just not big enough.  It looks like the seed we bought in last fall from Next Barn Over may be hitting the spot--the stems sure seem to be sizing up nicely!

Carrots
We had another overwintering success with our carrots this year.  Many of you probably saw the little "low tunnels" in the fields off Pine Street that we had out there, buried in the snow, all winter.  There were some little tiny carrot seedlings in there that took off growing once things warmed up this spring.  There wasn't 100% survival, and there are a lot of weeds, but 4 long beds of somewhat sparse and weedy carrots should still be a lot of carrots!  If they are big enough, we'll start digging them this week.  Our first spring-planted carrots are also doing nicely--they have been weeded and thinned, and should be ready about 3 weeks after the overwintered carrots.

Tomatoes, Peppers and Eggplant:

We have a bunch of blight-resistant varieties in the field this year, including some plums and cherries in the pick-your-own area.  After several years in a row of problems with late blight, we are trying resistant varieties.  We will also be keeping up with our organic disease control program, but we don't want to spray even the organic materials in the PYO section.  And with luck, maybe we won't have as wet a summer, which would hold the blight at bay.  But we should have a decent supply of tomatoes regardless.  We have a few peppers and eggplant in the hoophouse and in the field, too; those plants are looking very healthy and advanced. We are building a heated greenhouse this year, which will be used to produce some extra-early tomatoes--this time next year, we may be picking tomatoes!

Kale and Chard:

Our kale was hit by a wicked outbreak of Cabbage root maggot.  This little fly goes and lays its eggs at the base of cabbage-family plants.  When the eggs hatch, the maggots go and eat the plant roots!  We lost a whole planting of cabbage to the buggers (no roots, so the plants just wilted and died,) but the kale was just weakened.  We are sparingly picking leaves off of the kale plants, and hoping the second planting, which was planted after the influx of root maggot flies, will be a little more vigorous. We also had a big problem with an insect called leafminers in the chard, along with some plantings of spinach, and beets.  The leaf miner larvae burrow through the leaves of plants in that family (Chenopodia, for the botanically inclined).  They usually cause a little problem, but this year it was bad enough that we had to strip a bunch of bad leaves off of the chard and start over. We think that these two pests were partly worse this year because we didn't put row cover on those early greens because of the relatively warm weather.

Lettuce:
 Both the salad lettuce and the head lettuce are fantastic this year!  We are getting just enough rain to keep it nice, and we are so pleased with the way our finger-weeder keeps the weeds down--we have lots of nice lettuce lined up, and haven't weeded it by hand at all! 

Simple Gifts Farm Holistic Goal January 2015

 1.      Quality of Life (includes physical, emotional, spiritual wellbeing; financial wellbeing, relationships, challenge and growth areas, life purpose/contribution)

We want a challenging and stimulating, but not overwhelming, work environment; one that has the ability to evolve over time with changes in our circumstances or interests; both for us as owners and for our employees. We want our employees to be active participants in this environment.

We want our families to be economically secure, both now and into the long distant future, even if the farm isn’t their main economic generator

We want our families to have a good quality of life as far as our time and emotional and physical support, have a fun place to live and be a part of, a wide variety of quality food, be part of something that is well known and well thought of in the community.

We want to make a positive difference in peoples’ understanding of food and agriculture in many different circles of people, including our customers, community, other farmers, young people interested in farming…

       2.      Beliefs, Behaviors & Systems (what must we do to create the Quality of Life, above?)

Have clear systems of organization and operation of the farm that:

 Can evolve over time as needed,

      Keep the purpose and principals of the farm foremost in all of the key employees’ minds,

Are clear and easily picked up by those taking them up,

Keep routine work as routine as possible,

Empower all on the farm to make decisions as necessary and be accountable (in a clear, safe and respectful manner) for their decisions’

Foster communication systems that create and foster the above.

Have system for planning and monitoring each enterprise (production enterprises and sales enterprises) for appropriate level of profit and adjusting enterprise as necessary. And, monitor and evaluate each enterprise for contribution to (or detraction from) our Holistic Goal.

Farm in a way that –

Improves the productivity of the land continuously and indefinitely,

Produces healthy food and other products,

Connects our customers to the farm.

Get various groups of people onto the farm and involved with it as appropriate. Involve ourselves with other groups and bring our experience to them.

Create a farm that is bounteous, vibrant, and fun.

        3.      Vision Statement (a description of our asset base in the future to sustain the Quality of Life we want)

Behavior – We must be hardworking, honest and ethical, creative, and good communicators.

                  We must be loving supportive family members and active members of our community

Landscape – The land around us will be stable, healthy, and productive.

Community – We will live in a diverse, thriving community with know us and love to interact with us around the food we produce and they eat. We will also be a vital part of a community of other like-minded farms and organizations which support them.

Here are the stats from Weather Underground!  This winter is even colder than the Polar Vortex!		Temperature
	Average Daily High	Average Daily Mean	Average Daily Low	Lowest
February 2015	24	13	0	-17
February 2014	32	21	11	-15
February 2013	35	28	20	-10

Climbing the pyramid

I like to think of winter growing in terms of a pyramid.  The higher up you go on the pyramid, the more protection you are providing to your crops.  The deeper into winter you go, and/or the less cold-hardy the crop, the higher you need to go on the pyramid.  This year, we are making an effort to harvest as much as we can from lower on the pyramid in order to save our peak for later in the winter.  The lowest step on the pyramid can be...No protection at all!  We have been harvesting kale directly from the field, and the kale for this week's share will still be from the field.  We've talked to growers who harvested outdoor kale into January even last year's Polar Vortex.  We wanted to do that, but we didn't plant enough!  Not to worry, though, we have 1200 row feet of kale in our caterpillar tunnel.

This year, we have a new low step on our pyramid.  We are putting in some "low tunnels;"little mini-greenhouses which you may have noticed as you drive by on Pine Street.  We spent some time sourcing the materials, so they didn't go up as early as I would have liked.  I think they may be especially useful for extending the season on lettuce, arugula, and spinach from the field in late fall.  But we have put them up over our fall-planted carrots.  These were seeded in late October, and we expect them to germinate over the winter and be ready to harvest in May.  We also have some kale, lettuce, arugula, and totsoi that we hope to harvest in March.  Here are some pictures of the construction process.