The Garberville Community Farm would like express our appreciation for all of the community support that made this last season a success. Thanks to all of the CSA members, together with you we had our best season yet. Thanks also to Chautauqua Natural Foods, Shopsmart, Rays, Amelia's, House of B and Nacho Mama for your enthusiastic support for local agriculture, and to all the local businesses who helped in large and small ways.
We enjoyed the company of this year's community gardeners, the Southern Humboldt Home School group, Gary Cox and Karen Trotter, Rachel Adair and Sam Epperson, Rio Anderson and Mia. We feel blessed to have worked alongside the many volunteers who helped to transplant thousands of seedlings and to bring in the abundant harvest.
Special thanks to Star Faroen, Amy Conway and Joe Wolf for your generosity in helping us to move closer to our vision of farming using appropriate technologies. And to John LaBoyteaux for your generosity in sharing your knowledge and providing valuable farming advice, many thanks.
Thanks also to the good people of SHEL, for helping to sharpen our focus on issues related to economic localization. And great appreciation to the board of the Southern Humboldt Community Park for your steady support for this project. You make this possible.
We are looking forward to next year's garden and welcome your participation. If you would like to receive our spring newsletter, or have questions or comments please call us at 707-223-4996 or email at garbervillefarm@gmail.com.
Blessings of the season,
John Finley and Lisa Solaris
Monday, November 24, 2008
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
CSA This Week
All CSA pickups this week will be on Thursday, July 3, here at the farmhouse. We will not be at the farmer's market on Friday the 4th.
This week we will have bunched carrots, bunched beets, rainbow chard, lettuce, cabbage and snow peas.
Many thanks to WWOOFER's Amanda and Kent who spent a few days working with us. They just got married and are spending their honeymoon traveling and volunteering on farms.
This week we will have bunched carrots, bunched beets, rainbow chard, lettuce, cabbage and snow peas.
Many thanks to WWOOFER's Amanda and Kent who spent a few days working with us. They just got married and are spending their honeymoon traveling and volunteering on farms.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
latest photos
The heavy smoke in Garberville has us hunkered down indoors and hoping for a breeze.
Meanwhile a few pictures of how the garden is growing.
the 3 acre irrigated market garden
10 acre dryland farm field is growing
the alchemical work-or compost into cabbages
Meanwhile a few pictures of how the garden is growing.
the 3 acre irrigated market garden
10 acre dryland farm field is growing
the alchemical work-or compost into cabbages
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Planting
A need for tractor repairs and the spring full moon frost put planting our crops on hold for a few weeks, but we are now back in action on the farm.
John, Lisa and Sam Epperson-Jansen working the planters- April 28
Farmer's Market begins this Friday! We will be there with certified organic starts for your vegetable, flower, and medicinal herbs garden. See you there!
John, Lisa and Sam Epperson-Jansen working the planters- April 28
Farmer's Market begins this Friday! We will be there with certified organic starts for your vegetable, flower, and medicinal herbs garden. See you there!
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
volunteer
One way to be involved with the farm is to drop in on Saturday mornings, from 9:30 'til 12.
Help out for a few hours, practice gardening techniques, share your own tips and observations. All volunteers are welcome to take home a bag of veggies from the spring garden.
Flats of lettuce in the greenhouse. march 30
In late March we are still in the midst of transplanting and are just beginning to set plants out in the field.
Help out for a few hours, practice gardening techniques, share your own tips and observations. All volunteers are welcome to take home a bag of veggies from the spring garden.
Flats of lettuce in the greenhouse. march 30
In late March we are still in the midst of transplanting and are just beginning to set plants out in the field.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
CSA Brochure 2008
WHAT IS COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AGRICULTURE? (CSA)
CSA is an agreement between the farmer and the members of the CSA to maintain a relationship for mutual benefit and support. The members agree to provide direct, up front support for the local growers who will produce their food. The growers agree to do their best to provide a sufficient quantity and quality of food to meet the needs and expectations of the members. CSA’s help keep small farms thriving and the up front cash flow provides the working capital that the farmer needs.
WHAT IS COMMUNITY FARM?
Each shareholder, as a member of the community farm, buys a share of the harvest. In return, the farm supplies a weekly share of organic produce. By participating you are able to connect with your local food source at a community level. Members are encouraged to help in the vision and maintenance of the farm during the community workdays.
HOW TO BECOME A MEMBER?
The Garberville Community Farm CSA produce share runs for 20 weeks starting in late May or early June and running into October. Shares come in whole and half sizes for single member households. We also offer a limited number of Work Exchange shares and Gift Share memberships.
WHAT DOES IT COST?
Whole shares cost $420 and half shares $225. Our Gift Share program enables you to purchase a share for a friend or family member or to help a community member in need. Payment plans available so please call.
HOW DO I GET MY SHARE?
Members can pick up their produce at the farm on Thursday afternoon or at the Garberville Farmers Market on Friday
THE GARBERVILLE FARM
The farm is located along side the beautiful Eel River within the Southern Humboldt Community Park. Comprised of a small ever-changing group of local farmers dedicated to the wholesome stewardship of the land and providing a local organic food system for our schools and community.
EATING WITH THE SEASONS
Here is a sample of the variety of fresh, seasonal organic produce to expect in your weekly share.
Arugula Onions Beets Potatoes Lettuce Peppers Carrots Melons
Bunch onions Squash Kale Sweet Corn Chard Beans Garlic Herbs
Broccoli Radishes Cabbage Tomatoes Flowers Cucumbers
Questions?
Call: 707-223-4996
CSA is an agreement between the farmer and the members of the CSA to maintain a relationship for mutual benefit and support. The members agree to provide direct, up front support for the local growers who will produce their food. The growers agree to do their best to provide a sufficient quantity and quality of food to meet the needs and expectations of the members. CSA’s help keep small farms thriving and the up front cash flow provides the working capital that the farmer needs.
WHAT IS COMMUNITY FARM?
Each shareholder, as a member of the community farm, buys a share of the harvest. In return, the farm supplies a weekly share of organic produce. By participating you are able to connect with your local food source at a community level. Members are encouraged to help in the vision and maintenance of the farm during the community workdays.
HOW TO BECOME A MEMBER?
The Garberville Community Farm CSA produce share runs for 20 weeks starting in late May or early June and running into October. Shares come in whole and half sizes for single member households. We also offer a limited number of Work Exchange shares and Gift Share memberships.
WHAT DOES IT COST?
Whole shares cost $420 and half shares $225. Our Gift Share program enables you to purchase a share for a friend or family member or to help a community member in need. Payment plans available so please call.
HOW DO I GET MY SHARE?
Members can pick up their produce at the farm on Thursday afternoon or at the Garberville Farmers Market on Friday
THE GARBERVILLE FARM
The farm is located along side the beautiful Eel River within the Southern Humboldt Community Park. Comprised of a small ever-changing group of local farmers dedicated to the wholesome stewardship of the land and providing a local organic food system for our schools and community.
EATING WITH THE SEASONS
Here is a sample of the variety of fresh, seasonal organic produce to expect in your weekly share.
Arugula Onions Beets Potatoes Lettuce Peppers Carrots Melons
Bunch onions Squash Kale Sweet Corn Chard Beans Garlic Herbs
Broccoli Radishes Cabbage Tomatoes Flowers Cucumbers
Questions?
Call: 707-223-4996
A Farm or a Garden?
Sharon Astyk runs a small CSA farm in the Northeast. She writes thoughtfully, fluently and often with great humor about issues of food security, with a passion that I share.
Here at the farm we have often had the discussion about what makes gardening different from farming? Is it the use of hand tools rather than tractors? Is it a matter of scale or of what kinds of plants one grows?
Ms. Astyk contends that it furthers our cause in pursuit of economic localization to expand our definition of what makes one a farmer. I enjoy this blog for her breadth of knowledge and vision, as well as for practical information.
Sharon Astyk
"Now I know this talk is supposed to be about “large scale gardening” but I keep speaking of farming. That’s because there’s an untenanted space between the word “gardener” and the word “farmer” that needs to be addressed. A gardener is usually someone who grows things for their pleasure, from the sheer joy of it. When we talk about farmers, we usually mean someone with a profession is growing food on a large scale. But somewhere in between them is the idea we need to grasp with language - that there could be someone who grows a lot of food to eat, but still takes pleasure in the act, who may sell food, but whose work cannot be traded on the commodities market.
Or perhaps we don’t need a new word, because we have one. In nearly every nation in the world small scale or subsistence agricultural producers are called “farmers“. In English, the word derives from the word for “earth,” as in “firmament” or “terra firma,” but it also shares its origin with the word “form” to mean “to shapes or creators.” . It occurs to me that right now, we need to become a nation of people who see themselves as creators rather than conquerors or consumers, people who see our central work as the maintenance and sustenance of the earth and human cultures. So I’d like to propose to you that for the purposes of this talk, we think of all our exercises in food production as a kind of farming. In fact, I’d be thrilled if you’d go on thinking of yourself as a farmer after we’re done here, because I think that habit of thought could be a powerful one for most of us.
Because it isn’t such an outrageous leap to imagine yourself as a farmer. It turns out that only in our highly commodified culture, which values only large scale agriculture at all, and even that not much, is a farmer defined as a big man with a big tractor who grows a thousand acres of corn and votes republican. In fact, he’s not a he at all - the average farmer, worldwide is a woman, and not a white woman at that. Even in the US, the only really fast growing segment of agriculture is that of independent women farmers. The average farmer in the world is a woman, farming 4 ½ acres, growing 15 different crops on them. They own no tractor and do most of their labor by hand, and their household has at least one outside source of income (that last part is the only thing that is true of most professional farmers as well - 70% of them must either hold a second job or have a spouse work outside the home to support themselves). And the average farmer world wide doesn’t look all that different from what American farmers used to look like. Because the average first settlers in the US farmed only 7 acres, and by the time that Thomas Jefferson was rhapsodizing about the democratic possibilities of a nation of farmers, the average farmer only had 10 acres.
What we are talking about, then, is a return to human norms, in which many people are involved in a subsistence economy, producing most of what they need, with enough to create a small outside income for the things they cannot grow or barter for. We have been conditioned by growth capitalism to see such work as endless drudgery, grinding poverty and misery. But in fact, as Veronika Bennholt-Thomsen and Marie Mies describe in their book _The Subsistence Perspective_ (a book I highly recommend, btw), most small polyculture producers value what they have, their independence and their strong cultural ties. We should think carefully before we assume that a subsistence lifestyle is a step down - because for many independent small farmers in the world, our dependence on the money economy, military and economic expansionism and outside things like fossil fuels look like a kind of vulnerability and dependence that would be intolerable."
Here at the farm we have often had the discussion about what makes gardening different from farming? Is it the use of hand tools rather than tractors? Is it a matter of scale or of what kinds of plants one grows?
Ms. Astyk contends that it furthers our cause in pursuit of economic localization to expand our definition of what makes one a farmer. I enjoy this blog for her breadth of knowledge and vision, as well as for practical information.
Sharon Astyk
"Now I know this talk is supposed to be about “large scale gardening” but I keep speaking of farming. That’s because there’s an untenanted space between the word “gardener” and the word “farmer” that needs to be addressed. A gardener is usually someone who grows things for their pleasure, from the sheer joy of it. When we talk about farmers, we usually mean someone with a profession is growing food on a large scale. But somewhere in between them is the idea we need to grasp with language - that there could be someone who grows a lot of food to eat, but still takes pleasure in the act, who may sell food, but whose work cannot be traded on the commodities market.
Or perhaps we don’t need a new word, because we have one. In nearly every nation in the world small scale or subsistence agricultural producers are called “farmers“. In English, the word derives from the word for “earth,” as in “firmament” or “terra firma,” but it also shares its origin with the word “form” to mean “to shapes or creators.” . It occurs to me that right now, we need to become a nation of people who see themselves as creators rather than conquerors or consumers, people who see our central work as the maintenance and sustenance of the earth and human cultures. So I’d like to propose to you that for the purposes of this talk, we think of all our exercises in food production as a kind of farming. In fact, I’d be thrilled if you’d go on thinking of yourself as a farmer after we’re done here, because I think that habit of thought could be a powerful one for most of us.
Because it isn’t such an outrageous leap to imagine yourself as a farmer. It turns out that only in our highly commodified culture, which values only large scale agriculture at all, and even that not much, is a farmer defined as a big man with a big tractor who grows a thousand acres of corn and votes republican. In fact, he’s not a he at all - the average farmer, worldwide is a woman, and not a white woman at that. Even in the US, the only really fast growing segment of agriculture is that of independent women farmers. The average farmer in the world is a woman, farming 4 ½ acres, growing 15 different crops on them. They own no tractor and do most of their labor by hand, and their household has at least one outside source of income (that last part is the only thing that is true of most professional farmers as well - 70% of them must either hold a second job or have a spouse work outside the home to support themselves). And the average farmer world wide doesn’t look all that different from what American farmers used to look like. Because the average first settlers in the US farmed only 7 acres, and by the time that Thomas Jefferson was rhapsodizing about the democratic possibilities of a nation of farmers, the average farmer only had 10 acres.
What we are talking about, then, is a return to human norms, in which many people are involved in a subsistence economy, producing most of what they need, with enough to create a small outside income for the things they cannot grow or barter for. We have been conditioned by growth capitalism to see such work as endless drudgery, grinding poverty and misery. But in fact, as Veronika Bennholt-Thomsen and Marie Mies describe in their book _The Subsistence Perspective_ (a book I highly recommend, btw), most small polyculture producers value what they have, their independence and their strong cultural ties. We should think carefully before we assume that a subsistence lifestyle is a step down - because for many independent small farmers in the world, our dependence on the money economy, military and economic expansionism and outside things like fossil fuels look like a kind of vulnerability and dependence that would be intolerable."
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Community Farm in the Redwood Times
Things are growing at the Community Farm
Mary Anderson, Redwood Times
03/12/2008
This year marks the fourth year that John and Lisa Finley have been operating the Community Farm across from Tooby Park. Lisa Finley says that every year it’s gotten a little better.
”We’re learning how to work with this land and in this climate,” she says. “We lease the land and the house from the Community Park board and operate it as a farm and also as a community project. We’re financially independent of the park. They don’t support us financially, but they support what we are doing very much. And the past few years, we have broken even on the finances.”
To interest more folks in farming and local food production, the Finleys are hosting an Open House at the farm on Saturday mornings between now and May. In exchange for working with John and Lisa doing the seasonal chores, participants can learn more about growing food and take home a helping of fresh produce.
”Right now,” Lisa says, “we will be sowing seed and transplanting. People can come and help us, pick up some pointers and take away a helping of whatever is growing in the field.”
It’s a chance to learn about the many techniques of gardening and earn your salad fixingsat the same time.
In the field greenhouse, Lisa already has flats of lettuces, broccoli and kale that will be ready for planting fairly soon, she says. She doesn’t expect any killing frosts, she says, and the plants she’ll be putting out are tolerant of light frosts.
This, of course, means that the farm will have fresh produce to offer before the Farmer’s Markets start up in June. In fact, she says, they have been selling fresh produce to local markets throughout the winter, thanks to their winter crops of chard, cauliflower, and kale.
The Finleys are also selling shares of the farm. Community Supported Agriculture is an important component of sustainable local agriculture.
”CSA is a way for people to be involved with the farm by subscribing to it,” Lisa says. “With a subscription comes a weekly share of whatever we produce. A full subscription is enough produce to feed a family of four. In the spring, it’s greens, in the summer we get into sweet corn, squashes and tomatoes, and later on it’s pumpkins and then we go back to greens in the fall.”
Half shares for small families are also available, and people also can share a share with a friend or neighbor. Buying a share won’t deprive the dedicated vegetable lover of the joy of attending the weekly Friday Farmers’ Market in Garberville, either, since this year share holders will be able to pick up their box of produce at the market. Or share holders can pick up their produce at the farm on Thursdays, and still go to the market.
Pickups for share holders begin the first Friday of June and last until the market ends in October.
This year, as well as the usual vegetables, share holders will also get cut flowers from the flower patch and fresh herbs from the herb garden. Watermelons will be grown this year and the cooperative potato patch is also happening.
Renting your own plot and planting your own garden is also a possibility at the farm. Lisa says that a few people have already signed on for that. The only requirement is to practice organic methods and control weeds, she says.
For more information on purchasing a share in the Community Garden, contact John or Lisa Finley at 707-223-4996, or better yet, show up Saturday morning at 9 a.m. and get a hands-on experience of growing food.
Mary Anderson, Redwood Times
03/12/2008
This year marks the fourth year that John and Lisa Finley have been operating the Community Farm across from Tooby Park. Lisa Finley says that every year it’s gotten a little better.
”We’re learning how to work with this land and in this climate,” she says. “We lease the land and the house from the Community Park board and operate it as a farm and also as a community project. We’re financially independent of the park. They don’t support us financially, but they support what we are doing very much. And the past few years, we have broken even on the finances.”
To interest more folks in farming and local food production, the Finleys are hosting an Open House at the farm on Saturday mornings between now and May. In exchange for working with John and Lisa doing the seasonal chores, participants can learn more about growing food and take home a helping of fresh produce.
”Right now,” Lisa says, “we will be sowing seed and transplanting. People can come and help us, pick up some pointers and take away a helping of whatever is growing in the field.”
It’s a chance to learn about the many techniques of gardening and earn your salad fixingsat the same time.
In the field greenhouse, Lisa already has flats of lettuces, broccoli and kale that will be ready for planting fairly soon, she says. She doesn’t expect any killing frosts, she says, and the plants she’ll be putting out are tolerant of light frosts.
This, of course, means that the farm will have fresh produce to offer before the Farmer’s Markets start up in June. In fact, she says, they have been selling fresh produce to local markets throughout the winter, thanks to their winter crops of chard, cauliflower, and kale.
The Finleys are also selling shares of the farm. Community Supported Agriculture is an important component of sustainable local agriculture.
”CSA is a way for people to be involved with the farm by subscribing to it,” Lisa says. “With a subscription comes a weekly share of whatever we produce. A full subscription is enough produce to feed a family of four. In the spring, it’s greens, in the summer we get into sweet corn, squashes and tomatoes, and later on it’s pumpkins and then we go back to greens in the fall.”
Half shares for small families are also available, and people also can share a share with a friend or neighbor. Buying a share won’t deprive the dedicated vegetable lover of the joy of attending the weekly Friday Farmers’ Market in Garberville, either, since this year share holders will be able to pick up their box of produce at the market. Or share holders can pick up their produce at the farm on Thursdays, and still go to the market.
Pickups for share holders begin the first Friday of June and last until the market ends in October.
This year, as well as the usual vegetables, share holders will also get cut flowers from the flower patch and fresh herbs from the herb garden. Watermelons will be grown this year and the cooperative potato patch is also happening.
Renting your own plot and planting your own garden is also a possibility at the farm. Lisa says that a few people have already signed on for that. The only requirement is to practice organic methods and control weeds, she says.
For more information on purchasing a share in the Community Garden, contact John or Lisa Finley at 707-223-4996, or better yet, show up Saturday morning at 9 a.m. and get a hands-on experience of growing food.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
