Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: gardening and produce-handling question

[Lynn Nadeau / Maraiah (welcome]

At RoseWind Cohousing, Port Townsend WA, we've long had both perennial and 
annual food production-- not at a "farm" level, but maybe an acre of 
cultivation. 

Perennials - our modest orchards, abundant rhubarb, some artichokes, asparagus, 
berries, honey-- are the domain of the Agriculture committee, and the food 
produced is available to all members equally. 

The annual vegetables, needing more work and money, are mostly handled by a 
Garden Coop which is like an internal CSA: members who wish to, pay a monthly 
fee, work when they can at the twice- weekly garden-work times. The money 
mostly goes to pay a well-loved neighbor who is our garden manager, 
contributing not only her expertise, but a lot of physical work and 
cheerleading. 
We also buy mulch and soil amendments, Remay fabric, watering tape. The 
Monday-night-meals have two of the CSA shares, paid for out of community 
assessments, so those cooks can use whatever is available from the garden at no 
cost to their shopping budget. (Last Monday's meal included from the garden 
beets, carrots, onions, beans, salad greens, eidble flower garnishes, and 
potatoes. 

A few households have personal patches in the community garden and/or 
greenhouse, instead of or in addition to the garden-coop joint beds. 

Perennial distribution is either you-pick ("the Liberty apples are ready to 
pick, tree is marked with blue ribbons, take 8") or sometimes brought to a 
common meal, or to the common house porch, with a sign indicating what to take. 

Annual vegetables go first to the CSA members--- take home from garden work 
parties, or go pick what you want for lunch, or in the case of harvest crops 
like onions/garlic/winter squash there is a designated share distributed  (10 
large onions, 2 bundles of garlic....). When there is more than enough for the 
garden-coop/CSA members, it's brought to the common house, and what isn't 
adopted by the membership at large is taken to the local Food Bank. (Also when 
harvest is super abundant: we gave over a hundred pounds of rhubarb to the Food 
Bank in the course of the summer.)

Our problem isn't so much a matter of more than we eat, as it is a problem of 
more than we have volunteer energy to take care of growing. The garden coop has 
ongoing conversations about how much of what we should plant, and it's never 
exact. But it works out fairly well. 

We have a freezer in the Common House for common-meal food. Presently there are 
many parcels of frozen diced rhubarb. Last night I chopped 56 cups of 
non-keeper fresh onions and bagged and froze them for Monday cooks. 

I always imagined we'd have lots of communal canning and such, but it's only 
happened a few times. Many of us do can, dry, freeze, pickle at home. 

As is typical of our community, all the agricultural work is volunteer. Which 
reminds me, it's garden time and I'm not there-- gotta go! 

Maraiah Lynn Nadeau
www.rosewind.org