I wake up early and get right to work -- heading straight for my couch and my cozy blanket. There I might do an hour or so of farm work: scrolling through Instagram to see what other farmers are showing us (there is one particular farmer who grows bazillions of carrots and beets on perfectly flat, sandy ground and has got his weed management down to a perfect science. What a show-off, and so incredible.) and answering the load of emails that have come in overnight. But my most important work is texting with other farmers.
Since we got past the era of the telephone on the wall, times have really changed for all of us. Right about when that happened, farmers markets were also starting to sprout all over the area. And all through the last 20 or 30 years, more small farms have come into being. In the olden days, if you wanted to talk to a fellow farmer that you didn't really know, you had to drive to their farm and introduce yourself. My parents did that all the time -- that was how they learned to grow vegetables, really.
Nowadays, we can watch farmers all over the country do their best work. I know when folks have started to pick garlic curls and I should go out and look more closely at our own patch. When everyone in North Carolina has got their potatoes in the ground, we are still waiting for some dry soil, but we know it will be our turn soon. It is not really a way to learn to farm but it is certainly a way to check in with other experts, from the comfort of the couch. I have to admit that I personally do not post -- I don't know if I have any pictures that I really want to share with strangers -- but there must be lots of farmer voyeurs like me, watching others at work.
But what is really good is the web that we have constructed, with PVF as a big spider. This sounds evil but this spider is a spider that doesn't eat the farmers it catches, it feeds them. We lure farmers in, get them settled in our sticky web, and then make sure they are getting what they need so they want to stay right with us.
This process is a long, slow, persistent one, just like a political campaign or community organizing. As the spider, we must be dependable and transparent, make no sudden or unfriendly moves. We just keep reaching out and inviting others to join us.
And what are we trying to do? Maximize the amount of food that gets to the right place, for a fair price. I hate it when I hear about a surplus that is getting wasted. Our farm has a CSA that is big enough to accommodate other farms' excess. The other farms just have to grow their vegetables to the same standard we do, and we will do our best to find a home for whatever they want to sell. Right now there are 11 farms who are part of this flexible arrangement. Some of them only have too much for about three weeks of the year, some of them grow stuff specifically for our CSA, and some of them are only right now realizing that this may be the best way to operate this year, as we are all adjusting to the changes that come with covid-19.
So this morning I texted with Casey who usually goes to market with a gigantic load, but who has chosen to find other avenues this year. His farm is avoiding the coronavirus by staying home, growing as much as they can, and putting it into a home delivery system that was established by a fellow vendor. They are selling just about everything they can pick, and they only leave the farm to deliver a whomping pile of boxes to the pickle factory, where bags are packed. I am standing at the ready, ready to take whatever Casey doesn't package up for the pickle people. We have an excellent relationship, built over the last ten years -- he and his wife worked for us for four years and then went on to manage a gorgeous farm in a more rural area. They are a fierce competitor in the market, but we have been good friends since the beginning and we take all their surpluses, happily.
The moral of this story is that friendships and relationships matter all the time. You have to take the long view ALL THE TIME. You never know when someone might need your help, and you should always try to give help when asked. You will always be someone else's priority if you need their help, if you stay in touch and you say yes. Last summer I was picking basil at 7:30 in the morning, on a tight schedule, getting ready to load for market, when I got a call from Casey who was broken down on the side of the road, with a humongous market load. He wasn't asking for help but he was telling me he would be late to market, where we were supposed to meet to pick up some of his squash and cucumbers. We mobilized and found a way to help him salvage the day. It took two of our trucks to get his load off the side of I-66 and into Dupont Circle, and he only sold about 2/3 of what he had hoped to sell, but it was better than losing it all. And this is just one example of how we maintain our farmer relationships, so that all of us can move as much food as we possibly can.
Farmers are particularly able to help each other in times of stress and need -- we can send a crew to help fix a blown-down hoop house, we can tackle a job that is too big for a small farm to handle on its own, we can even send a tractor driver every Thursday when a farmer friend has broken his foot and can only watch everyone else from the porch for 8 long weeks. It is harder to imagine other small businesses being able to jump to the rescue so easily, but I am sure there are many examples that I don't know about. Our farm is generally more able to help because we have a lot of people and a deep pool of experience. We can build, we can dig holes, we can harvest, we can go to market with a half an hour of warning. We have been doing all of that for years, and that is part of the reason we have 11 participating farms in our unofficial web.
Most spiders are good spiders. And they do really good work. We will continue to maintain our web and lure in farmers who grow the way we do.
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