Questions re setting up a garden or orchard as a coop or club
From: Melanie Mindlin (sassettamind.net)
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 15:36:53 -0800 (PST)
This was an interesting story from Kay which points out many of the confusing 
things about cohousing regarding money and energy sharing.  When we started our 
community 6 years ago, we had different ideas about the community garden.  I 
had assumed that we would have individual plots and others had assumed that 
food would be grown there for use of the whole community.  The community was 
willing to support the expenses of water, compost, seeds, etc (but not paid 
labor of course).  We tried a number of different things, including notably 
"adopt a bed" in which one or two individuals would plant a bed primarily with 
a single vegetable, presumably care for it, and the community would reap the 
harvest.  These beds were mostly orphaned after planting and were then fostered 
by me because I couldn't stand to see them languishing for want of attention.

My pleas for individual garden allotments was not getting a consensus approval, 
but as an avid gardener, I just kept gardening.  Our community has a number of 
committees or teams that handle different aspects of the community like 
finance, care of the commons, landscaping and so on.  I have been convening the 
garden committee and manage to engage other members sporadically.  Everyone 
nominally on the committee wants to be involved in choosing and ordering seeds. 
 A number of people check with me about what needs to be done and do a job now 
and then.  Often I go out to the garden and spend an hour working with anyone 
who drops by my house with some interest.  On our monthly workdays, I get a 
team of about 3 people for 2-3 hours, and I save the hardest jobs for them.  I 
do the rest myself with less attention to detail than I consider optimal.  

Our policy is that anyone can pick and eat anything at any time, unless the 
cook for the next common meal sends a request to reserve an item they plan to 
use.  In practice I can harvest all I want for everyday eating because I'm the 
one that knows it's there.  There is not enough for me to take large batches of 
food for canning, drying or freezing, as those batches go to the community 
meals.  Certain other individuals harvest small amounts for themselves, not 
necessarily the folks who are doing the gardening.  However, many folks who are 
not gardening feel like it's a bit off-limits unless I send out a request for 
people to pick something before it goes to waste.  Everyone enjoys the 
community dinners that are made with food from the garden which are less 
expensive as the food does not add to that meal's budget.  Often I harvest the 
food and press it on the cooks for the evening.  Sometimes I leave food on my 
porch and advise the community to come by and pick some up.

I do a little vegie garden in my backyard so I can have exclusive rights to a 
small patch and not have any surprises about community harvesting.  This system 
has worked pretty well, since I really enjoy gardening and have found it 
interesting to see what kind of production I can manage.  If/when I'm not here 
to do it, it seems  likely that a different approach will be needed.

We planted a number of fruit trees, both on the edge of the "garden" and 
throughout the community landscaping.  I have been caring for these for 
"participation hours."  My experience is limited, but my curiosity is intact, 
so I continue to learn about fruit growing as it happens.  Recently someone 
offered to understudy on this task with me which I think is a great idea.  We 
haven't had a lot of fruit to harvest so far, but when the fruit is available 
we let everyone know and they can go out and take some.  I made some applesauce 
this summer which is in the community freezer waiting for the common meal for 
Hannuka.

What I have most appreciated about my experience is the community's willingness 
to include the garden expenses in overall budget without requiring careful 
calculation about what exactly is the financial payoff.  They recognize, along 
with me, that there is value in building up the garden soil, and the experience 
of growing and preparing food from our own garden.  I enjoy the comraderie when 
someone works on a garden task with me, and the sense that we can grow quite a 
bit of food in our 2,000 square feet of garden beds.  I enjoy being able to 
bring in food for the meals and in planning and cooking meals focused on garden 
vegies when it's my turn to cook.  The lack of "accounting" bothered me at 
first, but I've come to appreciate the grace and trust of the way it works now.

Good luck with your plans. 
Melanie Mindlin 


On Nov 13, 2013, at 3:16 AM, cohousing-l-request [at] cohousing.org wrote:

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>   1. Re: Questions re setting up a garden or orchard as a     co-op   or
>      club (Kay Argyle)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 18:53:15 -0700
> From: "Kay Argyle" <Kay.Argyle [at] utah.edu>
> Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Questions re setting up a garden or orchard as a
>       co-op   or club
> To: "'Cohousing-L'" <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
> Message-ID: <002a01cee013$1e55e830$5b01b890$@utah.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain;     charset="us-ascii"
> 
> We've had minor successes at sharing small enterprises, and miserable
> failures. It depends greatly on the dynamics of the community and the
> individuals involved.  YMMV.
> 
> Our orchard trees were purchased partly by community funds and partly by
> donation. The community hired installation of an irrigation system
> (programmable timer, stop-and-waste, valves, and drip lines), and pays for
> the water. The work is done by whoever is willing to do it.  Or is not done.
> A couple of residents have arborist training (and a few without training
> _think_ they know how to prune -- shudder).  One year somebody persuaded an
> arborist to hold a class on pruning (with demos and hands-on homework) in
> our orchard.  Whoever wants to, picks the fruit, and the community is happy
> if some cobblers show up at pot luck.  Occasionally people have passed out
> jars of apple sauce or raspberry jam.
> 
> New residents sometimes get lyrical about the idea of the entire community
> gardening together. I've learned to keep my mouth shut and let them figure
> out the hard way why most gardeners choose to have individual veggie beds.
> One group made a go of sharing. More often, one person gets exasperated that
> the other never shows up to weed or water. Or neither show up, and along
> about July another gardener covers over the blowing seed heads with weed
> cloth.
> 
> When the community started the garden, the gardeners bought lumber for
> raised beds and built them themselves, as many as each chose to build.  Over
> the years, as gardeners left the community, an unused bed would be offered
> to new households, until about half belonged to people who hadn't done
> anything to "earn" them.  One year we had several more households who wanted
> to garden than we had unclaimed beds.  The new households couldn't
> understand why the entire garden wasn't strictly allotted at one bed per
> household.  If there weren't enough beds, someone needed to build them one!
> The suggestion they should build their own, like those gardeners who had
> multiple beds had done, didn't go over well.
> 
> Several of our residents share a small flock of chickens.  Each has one or
> two days a week when they let the chickens out in the morning, feed and
> water, and close the coop at night.  They collect and keep that day's egg
> production.  Every few weeks the club gets together and moves the coop and
> fencing to a different weed patch.
> 
> I believe the buy-in is simply to purchase the next bag of chicken feed. The
> chickens were left behind when someone moved; the club was given an old
> coop, and the chicken run is a roll of fencing on loan from a neighbor. So
> no startup costs. While there is daily work, there is also a daily (or
> almost) payoff. 
> 
> The chicken club is about a year old.  It seems to be working okay.  It's
> uncertain yet how they will deal with the continuing drop in egglaying, as
> the hens are no longer spring chickens (so to speak):  Will they buy chicks
> and somehow work up the ruthlessness to slaughter the older ladies (or bribe
> a neighbor to do it)? or accept that they are running a home for retired
> chickens? Or, next time someone reports seeing a raccoon, "forget" to secure
> the coop, and wait until after the last old hen vanishes (not silently) in
> the night, before passing the word along to our raccoon-disliking
> non-cohousing neighbor with the pellet gun. And by the way, could she
> increase her next order of chicks, and split the cost with them?
> 
> There are some important differences in how an orchard club would function.
> 
> 
> While the chicken run limits other uses of an area, it doesn't take a lot of
> room and never stays put very long.  Trees are very permanent.  Many fruit
> trees need cross-pollination, so you can't have just one peach, one plum,
> one apple.  Your community needs to be agreeable to the orchard club taking
> over part of the property.  This may be a nonissue, if others approve on
> principal of having an orchard (even if not personally participating) or
> there is plenty enough land to meet other needs/wants.
> 
> Either plan to hire a professional arborist, or have at least a couple of
> people in the club get honest-to-god training on tree pruning.  More than
> just a one-hour lecture; something like an arborist certification course.
> You can probably find a class locally:  continuing education at a
> university, or the county agricultural extension agent (assuming your state
> has such things).
> 
> Unlike keeping chickens, the costs and labor of fruit trees are frontloaded,
> and the reward is years away. Fruit trees can cost anywhere from $10 to $100
> each, especially if you want something besides whatever unnamed variety the
> garden manager at Home Depot got a special on.  
> 
> There is the considerable work of planting the trees, the extra babying
> while they get established (particularly watering, in our climate), the
> pruning to ensure a good branching structure, stripping immature fruit the
> first couple of years to encourage the trees to put their efforts into an
> extensive root system and sturdy branches.  
> 
> Some of the people putting in money and labor may find themselves leaving
> the community for a new job in Chicago, college in Vermont, a new spouse in
> New Jersey, or for omigod-anywhere-but-cohousing, before they ever see a
> nectarine.  New residents may want to participate.  The community and the
> orchard club should figure out, now, how to handle that. 
> 
> Will you buy out people who are leaving, or do they forfeit their investment
> to the club or the community?  
> Do you ask new members to pay part of the years-ago cost of buying the
> trees?  How do you "refund" people for their labor? 
> 
> Such issues of club membership might be simpler if the community pays for
> the trees, and the orchard club "rents" them.
> 
> If the trees are paid for by the orchard club, do they eventually become the
> community's property nonetheless?  It's easy to wind up a chicken club:
> Offer a neighbor three moth-eaten hens and a half-empty bag of feed; by the
> time you drag the coop across the parking lot to the dumpster, it will be
> coming apart and easy to heave in.  By contrast, a fruit tree will still be
> around when the twenty-something who dug its planting hole has gotten as
> gnarled with age as the tree (assuming it hasn't been bulldozed and "Peach
> Tree Lane" paved where it used to be). 
> 
> Kay
> Wasatch Commons
> Salt Lake City
> 
> 
> 
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