Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Questions re setting up a garden or orchard as a coop or club

[KJ (pumpkin2282]

That sounds like a pretty good system, I love how you have teams- bee teams, 
tree teams, that's great that people sign up to he.  Also, excellent idea to 
hire a garden manager!  This helps with instruction and direction.  Excellent. 

Sent from my iPad

On Nov 16, 2013, at 5:29 PM, Lynn Nadeau / Maraiah <welcome [at] olympus.net> 
wrote:

> 
> RoseWind Cohousing, Port Townsend WA (long built). 
> 
> Our gardening is defined by the nature of the plantings. 
> 
> Perennials are fruit trees, berries, rhubarb, asparagus (both stalks...), 
> artichokes, and bees. These "belong" to the whole community and are under the 
> supervision of the Agriculture Committee. Annual budget funds go to things 
> like fertilizer, mulch, and bee-keeping stuff. Plus a few new plants. 
> Individuals or small teams manage subsets of this: bees, trees, berries. 
> Occasionally some stuff gets orphaned and we just take care of it without a 
> designated manager, usually with the labor and direction of our Garden Coop 
> (see below). The orchard team, for example, might send around an email saying 
> (a) the Wagner apples in the hill orchard are ready, tree is marked with blue 
> ribbon, each household can take 8 (b) there aren't a lot of Melrose apples, 
> so they will be brought to Monday dinner for distribution of 1-2 each (c) the 
> other apples aren't ready to pick yet. 
> 
> Annuals are the vegetables, and some flowers. A couple of members have 
> personal patches, where they raise stuff for themselves, at their own 
> expense, within the common gardening areas. Most of the other active 
> households, about 12 households, form a Garden Coop, or club. It's a de facto 
> in-house CSA, with members paying a monthly fee, and most doing garden work 
> as well. Cost is about $40 a month, for a 2-person household. The community 
> Monday-night cooked meal program also has membership in the Garden Coop, so 
> those cooks can harvest from the garden too. In season, the garden might 
> provide a community meal with carrots, beets, onions, garlic, cabbage, kale, 
> salad greens, potatoes, squash and more. In summer, tomatoes, basil, 
> cucumbers, beans.
> 
> Produce from the annual veggies in the Coop areas goes first to those who are 
> on hand for the twice weekly garden work times (2-3 hour long), then to Coop 
> members (who get an email saying pick beets from bed 28, parsnips from 13, 
> let the cauliflower get bigger still, etc). When there is more than that, it 
> is taken to the Common House foyer with a help-yourself sign. If not taken, 
> often someone will run the rest up to the local Food Bank, which welcomes 
> even small amounts of garden produce. 
> 
> Key to the success (for years now) of our vegetable garden is that we hire a 
> delightful neighbor as our manager: very knowledgeable, and fun to hang out 
> with. This is most of where our monthly membership money goes. She not only 
> directs us in what to do when and where, but does a lot of physical work 
> herself at the same time. Monday mornings and Thursday afternoons typically 
> have from 4-12 people pitching in to help, usually about 8. 
> 
> I still dream of a truly community vegetable garden, funded by the whole 
> community, worked by the Garden Coop which would become a committee. But what 
> we're doing now works, and seems good enough for now. At least via surplus 
> harvest, and via community meals, everyone here can benefit. 
> 
> My response to the original post is that short term projects like annual 
> vegetables and chickens seem more suitable for the "club" approach. If 
> interest or help wanes, they can be let go. Not the same as fruit trees or to 
> some extent bees. 
> 
> Maraiah Lynn Nadeau
> www.rosewind.org
> having a lunch salad with fresh-picked spinach, carrot, beet, turnip, 
> lettuces, and calendula petals.....
> and it's NOVEMBER! 
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