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Working Shares?



Offered working shares instead.  Gosh, that needs a lot of organizing and
supervising!  I still have a problem understanding how people can be so
disconnected from their agricultural roots that they can't tell the
difference between a weed and a crop plant even after you've spent fifteen
minutes with them demonstrating.  

My newest approach is to form a garden work co-op in which everybody keeps
track of their hours (and it's checked by somebody reliable, sigh, at some
point no matter how much I try to empower people I do get turned into the
policewoman).  Income from farmstand sales, garden tours/visits by
non-members, and farm market sales is recorded and the operating costs of
those endeavors (advertising, stall fees, etc.) subtracted.  Remainder
(profit) is divided among the workers in the same proportion as their total
hours (for example, if somebody provided 10% of the work, they get 10% of
the profit).

Note that these workers are not paid from CSA fees.  We also have
apprentices and teen workers who provide our steady workforce, and they are
paid a salary from memberships.  The Lead Farmer/Facilitator (me), Core
Group, and members who want to help in the gardens but don't want to do so
for free are those who are paid through the Garden Work Co-op.  Regular
workers may do additional work as co-op members, above and beyond their
contracted time and salary.

The problem I had with "working shares" was that I got lots of promises of
work and lots of heartbreaking days when nobody remembered to show up.

How do other CSAs handle working shares?

Dori Green:  Writer, Farmer, Facilitator
Ash Grove Community Farm & Center for Sustainable Living
http://www.servtech.com/public/funfarm/index.html