Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: west TN co farm (Co-Farming)

[joanne baek (joannebaek]

Co-farming sounds very interesting.  Are you thinking organic?  Mono-crop or 
diversified, like for farmer's markets?  Are you thinking of individual plots 
plus a community one (like the private and common spaces of cohousing)?  And 
cohousing is part of the idea, too, or not?

I am not in cohousing, and have mostly just been in discussions with people 
wishing they were.  In those contexts, having a CSA (Community Supported 
Agriculture--that is, a weekly produce share paid for by subsciption) has been 
at the top of the wish list.   And the other thing of course people talk about, 
is a huge garden for produce for the community and private kitchens.

Maybe you could say more of the ways you see it as possibly being organized.  
What are your favorite ideas?

Let's see, what would my own wish list be?  (I too have acreage that could be 
used, though I haven't the funds for infrastructure, and think I would benefit 
from doing on some other project first.)  My own wish list would be large 
gardens, a growing CSA, lots of place for non-gardeners to come and stay and 
learn, lots of food for eating, place for very poor people to be part of 
community even though they might not have funds themselves...

Where I have land (western South Dakota), the land is lotts of mud... we'd 
build adobe style (that is, from mud)--maybe earthbagged mud-- or such (straw 
bale/mud too if there were the funds to buy bales), and build greenhouses off 
the south sides of these buildings as well.  Maybe there would be a lot of 
experiments going on at any given time.  We'd be building the soil with manure 
and prairie grass tilled in... maybe field peas, rye, and alfalpha (I think 
that's a soil builder too?) grown and tilled in.

Obviously I am just a beginner, don't know how to do anything, but sure would 
like too.  Thanks for letting me articulate part of what I imagine and wish for.

Joanne