Community-supported Agriculture. I say those words at least once a day. It’s our farm’s organizing factor. It makes up the majority of our sales. On the most basic level, it’s a direct-to-consumer model of distributing what we grow. It requires more from our members than, say, a purchase from a grocery store on a whim. They pay for a season’s share of vegetables up-front, which helps us cover the up-front costs of growing. It’s a commitment to us, and that comes with our commitment to them. Our wellbeing and the survival of the farm business relies on both sides holding up the bargain: we will grow and deliver, and they pay for it and pick it up.
Contrary to local lore, we are in fact not a cult! We are made up of individuals who all come from different backgrounds and hold different beliefs. There’s no ritual branding or initiation. There’s no MLM, pyramid scheme structure to it. We aren’t the food purity police. You don’t have to evangelize and convert people to our farm. All are welcome, as long as you treat people with decency and kindness. Groundbreaking in this world, I know.
There are times when we can chat and get to know each other, especially when people pick up on the farm. I love when folks come to market and introduce themselves, let me know they just signed up for CSA, and hit me with their burning questions. On the other hand, sometimes we just see their names on the backend, or engage on social media.
But is this all there is to community? Or are we supposed to all be able to join hands and recite poems together under a full moon to “be in community” with one another?
Community is a slippery concept. In corporate-speak, it can mean anything or nothing. In youth culture, it may just mean a friend group that gets along well (until they don’t). Online, it’s just a smattering of people who share a special interest. I tend to subscribe to Daniel Quinn’s theory of community laid out in his book ISMAEL. He describes a community as a group of people who rely on each other for mutual benefit. They don’t have to look or live like each other, agree on everything, and sometimes, they don’t even have to get along that well. Each member contributes something, and each receives something, which keeps the community operating.
Recently, I’ve been enjoying the online discourse around parenting and the “village”, which is just another way of saying localized community. Robina Khalid, midwife and owner of Small Things Growing on substack and other channels, sums it up well:
“Having a village is not the same as having unpaid labor.”
She talks about how people today long to be taken care of, to have help with raising the kids and recovering from birth, to have someone to rely on to watch the house and take care of the animals when you’re out of town.
What Robina points out is that, when someone says “there is no village”, what they are often experiencing is an unmet need that capitalism doesn’t fulfill. It’s natural that we would lament those unmet needs. What we aren’t talking about, however, is the help that we aren’t offering. The investment we didn’t make in that community we need, before we need it.
I get it. It’s easy not to notice when we’re pretty self-sufficient, as we are taught to be in this society. It’s easy to suddenly miss the reciprocal nature of humans when we’re down, and in need. Just to forget to return favors, check in, or offer support when we’re doing fine. In community, as with other things, sometimes you don’t know what you got till it’s gone.
What I’m noticing is how this conversation applies to more than just parents of young kids; it applies to everyone, as any one of us can become disabled at any point. Most will experience vulnerability at some point in life, if able to live to a big age. Taking big steps, making big changes, starting a family, starting (and finishing) a project, sharing creative work with the world, all of these times are vulnerable for people. This also applies to small business. This applies to building a career as a writer, or any other profession that includes taking clients. Sustaining a community means that members of that community are getting needs met in order to keep showing up. Part of that includes finances.
Even so, after 10+ years in agriculture, I still feel icky when it’s time to charge for produce, products, and services. Many people in my farm community I consider friends as well. I like to foster abundance, to feel generous, to pay it forward as much as possible (sometimes, to the point of burning out).
It can also feel awkwardly intimate buying from people you know. Reading a book knowing that it came straight from the mind of a friend or acquaintance can be nerve-wracking. Purchasing a necklace somebody spent hours to make, only to have it break in a week so they never see you wearing it. If I buy something once, will they be disappointed if I don’t buy something every time? If I need to cancel my subscription, have I burned a bridge?
It can feel like the exchange of money makes it less meaningful, even though it should be the opposite. Imposter syndrome easily creeps in. I look at my 3 paid subscribers, for example. One of whom is my best friend. When money is involved, I have to ask myself if I’m providing enough value. Are my offerings relevant? Useful? Interesting? Am I allowed to be human, make mistakes, and learn from them? Am I able to give grace for others doing the same?
Here’s the thing: the tough times are the hardest times to ask for support. It’s easy to look at all the worthy causes in the world and say, people should be supporting that, caring about that. Why should I ask anyone to care about what I’m doing? Let alone pay for the product of my labor.
It’s a valid question that we should be asking, but we also have to be willing to accept the answer. In my soul-searches, I’ve found diversified farming time and time again to be at least part of what needs to happen to build a better world. One that would require less extraction, less exploitation, and more equality. There’s value in that, and people recognize that now more than ever. It’s worth being paid for, to be able to continue. I want that for all farm workers. Yet, the truth is, even those of us lucky enough to work for ourselves, most are barely scraping by. The farm laborers are not only except from the federal minimum wage, but as the majority of them are immigrants/Mexican/Indigenous people, they are also under threat of ICE raids. It does not have to be this way. Most people in the US don’t support for-profit mass incarceration, especially of little kids. Yet, here we are.
In writing a novel, it can feel pointless within the poly-crisis situation we are living in. I’ve found the gas to keep going in no small part because of the writing community - authors and publishing professionals who share their wisdom, experience, and struggles. Literary Agent Cece Lyra of THE SHIT NO ONE TELLS YOU ABOUT WRITING podcast often says that fiction matters in world devoid of empathy, as novels are the closest one can be to walking in another person’s shoes. Her observation is borne out in the data:
“…it is important to highlight the studies’ conclusions: improved empathy levels obtained through reading fiction texts lead students to care more about their peers, as well as other people around them.”
-The relationship between reading and empathy: An integrative literature review
So, for now, that has to be enough reassurance to get myself to a completed manuscript. Writing the story of a survivor of child sexual abuse navigating a dystopian future, facing climate change and class warfare, getting revenge, and something better, offers no guarantees. No one asked me to do this. And without support of community who cares about these issues, it will end up like most manuscripts. Unpublished and unread. Without #metoo and the Epstein survivors, without the legacy of LOLITA, without feminism, without fans of the “good for her” trope, without climate activists, without class conscienceness, and without the hard work and courage of other writers and publishing professionals building community around books, this book couldn’t exist.
In creative industries as well as farming, we don’t have a business without community. We also don’t have strong communities without meeting people’s needs to show up, participate, and share in the shaping of that community.
As a small business, we invest in our community all we can. We donate hundreds of pounds of surplus every year and thousands of dollars worth of seedlings. I offer my chicken’s eggs unwashed and free for the farm crew. We participate in local events, offer technical assistance for home and school gardens, and advocate for causes to protect our community. We participate in farming mentorship programs to help more beginning and aspiring farmers find success. It’s the best feeling in the world. It feels like the way it should be.
However, the only reason we can do that is because enough people who can pay us, do. Our neighbors, our friends, our acquaintances, and some who we may have never even met in person. They are all our community. And while we the masses give our money away to Amazon, Google, OpenAI, and others to make more billionaires (and trillionaires) who don’t taxes in this country, we often get uncomfy when it comes to spending money on our friends’ art, small businesses down the block, at a show featuring local bands, or at community events.
Let’s not see our friends’ labor as having a “hook-up” on what they produce. Let’s not shy away from investing in the communities we want to see thrive. If we treat our communities like an ATM, we’ll end up over-drafted. And then we wonder why there isn’t much left of the community, the mythical villiage, when we need it.
The steps we’ve taken to remedy this so far include:
Cancelling amazon prime
Cancelling spotify
Making a monthly budget that includes “reading/art/shows” as a line item.
Adding a line item in that budget that includes fundraisers/mutual aid.
Bartering when possible
Prioritizing accessibility in our farm offerings through payment plans and Fairshare Coalition’s Partner shares program
Engaging with content my community is putting out
Dealing with friction - going out of our way, needing to communicate and problem solve, trading quality against convenience.
This shift doesn’t happen overnight. But each one of these things are worth a try, even if one at a time.
As far as I’m concerned, our customers are my community. A community that is defined by the mutual benefit of everyone who contributes and receives. I’m more interested in keeping our customers, getting to know them, and working with them to improve than gaining more. And I recognize and accept that our farm might not be “it” for everyone. But those who choose us as their farm, who keep coming back - we have a good thing going. It’s hard to build, easy to lose, and we won’t take that for granted.
Our community is also not limited to our paying customers. It includes worker shares, donation recipients and those who facilitate the donations, Riveredge Nature Center who supports us in maintaining access to the land where we grow, fellow farmers, our newsletter subscribers. My community also includes my readers, fellow writers, and other literary professionals. It includes my child’s teachers and fellow parents. In community, we are not requiring perfection of each other. We are not scamming or trying to deceive anyone to gain an upper hand. There is no strict “in group” vs “out group”. We all give and receive different things based on what we need and what we have. It’s not just a friend group that hangs out with each other. It’s all of us doing better when we all do better.
In in the current age of unregulated AI that makes content indistinguishable from reality, it’s high time we dig deep and support REAL people, REAL community. You don’t have to join a cult to do it. Take a look at your budget and see where funds can be moved around to support those in your community doing work you want to see more of in the future. Show up to a farmer’s market, book club, or craft fair, attend locally organized events, get a library card and use it, or hell, buy a book.
It doesn’t have to be a huge investment to mean a lot. You may even help keep someone in business while so many are losing their jobs in droves.
Thank you to all the people who have believed in our farm and/or showed up for me in the past 10+ years since I moved to Wisconsin and developed a frontal lobe :) I am incredibly blessed in the community department, and I still have a lot to learn about it as well. Cheers to the rev, and may we all find our home in the better world to come.