Digging Through the Junk Mail Box

Yesterday we opened up the CSA to registrations for this coming season, which is an event every February. It takes some weeks before February 1 to work out the kinks, figure out how to make everything as mistake-proof as possible, and create a process that people will actually be able to finish without just giving up. 

Becky and I spent the whole day at our computers, answering relatively easy questions and also trying to fix the issues that popped up. Becky described it as a full day "squall."  I thought it was more of a rockslide. Our job is much more complicated than it was a few years ago because we are trying to deal with a team of "support" folks at a software company that manages our CSA data, and their systems confound us sometimes.  We get our hands slapped for sending our support tickets to the wrong box frequently. Our policy is to never get flustered, never express our exasperation, take the high road. But Becky and I complain back and forth to each other by text, constantly. There must be a strict company policy over there that they never, ever take responsibility for making a mistake. Ever. 

And then when it was just about time to get out of our chairs and go to bed, Becky figured out that for the last few weeks or months, all of the inquiries that were coming through our website (during a quiet time of year) had been going straight to her junk mail box.  So she started to dig through those because we really try to be responsive to anything that is asked.  We are the virtual customer service department (which is pretty funny because both of us are often snarky and impatient in person, but super smooth and helpful at the keyboard). 

At first, they seemed pretty run-of-the-mill.  People want to volunteer, they want to be out in the fields, they don't know anything but they are hard workers, they are fast learners, they have two weekends a month. Often we can respond positively to some of these, but now I just turn everyone away because we can't have random people coming in and out of our work group. It's just too complicated with covid.

Then there were the people who need help finding soil amendments for their garden that they will feel good about.  No details about where they are or what their goals are. Just tell me where to go where I will like what I get. I didn't like the last place.

There was a request for a donation to a local preschool. Those are common. We often give something, partly because I used to solicit donations for silent auctions for schools for many years. But I also know how few businesses ever write back, so I don't feel bad if I don't give something away every single time someone asks.

Then there was someone who has a food waste disposal service who wants to drop off a regular supply of food waste on our farm, at no cost to us.  No thank you. And another one who wants to haul manure from a zoo and dump it at our farm, two or three times a month, at no cost to us. This one I considered for a bit, but decided that lion poop sounds an awful lot like dog poop and that just wouldn't be appropriate for our compost.  But wouldn't it be fun to have a mix of fancy bird poop, and zebra, and snake droppings?  It would be such an interesting experiment. Oh well, never mind. Those animals probably take a lot of Xanax and that has not been approved for our compost recipe.

Someone wants to find an egg source from chickens who eat no soy or corn, available biweekly in Vienna. I tried to come up with some ideas but that it too many boxes to check. I wanted to say, maybe you should just not eat eggs.

This one was a first:  Ted Britt Chevrolet wants to let us know that they have recently featured our farm as a great place to pick your own fruits and vegetables in the Sterling area. "We're always happy to let our customers know about great places in the area! As your local Sterling Chevrolet dealership, we'd love a link back to your website mentioning you were in our blog. "   Umm.. First of all, we don't do pick your own. Second, why would you do that?  Third, who goes to a car dealership to find out about great fruits and vegetables?  I didn't even want to answer that one, but I told them not to do that.

And here is one that I wanted to just delete, but it was from someone who drives past our farm every day and looks at our fields, so I felt like I should answer her.  She said, I have read a book and watched a documentary about tillage and how it destroys the soil. Essentially she then said, "Discuss."  Now, she is not wrong. There is plenty of scientific and empirical data showing that tillage is a destructive activity. (Tillage is turning over the soil, with a shovel or a plow or a spader. Just turning it over somehow.) And so I wrote her a brief, even-handed response saying that this is a complicated issue, you are right to be concerned, and people are working hard on finding solutions to the problem. At this point, there are very few farmers who are growing sustainable vegetable crops at the scale that we do, without tillage. We all want to know how to do better.  In the meantime, we do this and this and this to maintain our soil health.  

It just feels like people are sitting in their houses, thinking about stuff, and sending out random messages that may or may not require a response, but since we are a business that thinks it is important to be responsive, we do our best. Usually the questions are more spread out and I don't notice how bizarre they are, as a collection.

If anyone needs contact info for Zoofari poop, just let me know.