What’s it like to start a new CSA? – Guest blog post from Jubilee Farm in Suffolk
Date Published: 18th December 2023
One of our new members, Mike Long from Suffolk, is logging his progress as a new CSA with a solidarity scheme integrated from the off. Over the coming months, Mike will take us along with him on his journey of getting a CSA running.
I’m Mike, and along with my family, I’ve just started Jubilee Farm, Suffolk. Farming is a brand-new adventure for me. Since 2007, I have been in horticulture, starting in landscape construction and ending in garden design. For me, this journey started with a podcast in 2019, a simple interview with Jeff Tkach from the Rodale Institute. He talked about his health journey and how eating organic food helped heal his body. I was captivated.
Fast forward to 2023, and we now rent 16 acres of farmland equipped with barns and buildings from the council as tenant farmers. Eleven acres of our farm have been farmed conventionally for many decades, and the other 5 acres were laid to pasture seven years ago. Our plan is to turn our small piece of the Suffolk countryside into a thriving, biodiverse, food-producing heaven, supplying organic food to our local community. The CSA was an obvious fit for our farm. Having met some representatives at this year’s Groundswell, a call with Suzy Russell sealed the deal for me.
During our phone call, whilst en route to visiting Maple Farm Kelsale, Suzy recommended a webinar that she had recorded with Elske Hageraats in July 2022. In the video, Elske talks about different payment systems around solidarity payments and how her experience has both improved her income and made food more accessible for lower-income households within her community. For me, the concept felt fresh, fair and daring, not many people are doing this within the UK and Suzy was looking for new CSA ‘Guinea Pigs’ as a way of evidencing how this model could be adopted from the very start of a business. So, enter us.
I started a social media presence. Personally, I dislike social media, but many of our potential customers use these platforms, so we feel it’s wise to be there. The first thing to do was to raise awareness about the farm, tell our community we exist, and embark upon telling our ‘why’.
Like many CSA farms, we are committed to growing organic food using regenerative methods and then supplying this food to our local community. I am fairly certain most of us are doing this or desire to. Interestingly, whilst it is a message we have all become familiar with and feel that it’s a no-brainer, most people in our communities are not familiar with this. Understanding this, we set about inviting as many people to our farm as possible and hosted a pre-farm walk; pre-farm because all there really is to see is mud and dilapidated buildings.
One cold but clear Saturday morning in late November, we had 50 adults and around 20 children and young people arrive at Jubilee Farm, as well as the local press that we had invited along. We were extremely pleased with the turnout! I started with my mentor, William, sharing the importance of growing and supplying food in localised ways before I then trekked everyone around the fields, stopping at set locations to share and cast vision out about the ‘why, what and how’ we will be farming the land. The walk ended with a second round of refreshments and an opportunity to mix and mingle with our community. We had prepared 50 sign-up sheets for people to take home and sign up for our food shares, and 40 went. However, to this date, only 3 have signed up and paid, but I’m telling myself not to be concerned, it’s nearly Christmas and people have a lot to spend out before they think about what they’ll be eating in May.
It is for this reason I am going in for round two of marketing ourselves. Following a conversation with one of my previous garden design clients, it became apparent she did not know about my farming adventures despite living 3 minutes around the corner. It turns out not everyone uses Facebook and Instagram – thank goodness! So now, just before Christmas, I have written a letter to go out to everyone in my community, bright pink envelopes to match our logo and a handwritten ‘dear neighbour’ text on the front. The letter introduces me as a local resident and goes on to again share our ‘why’ I’m doing this farm and the importance of our work. It then allows them to hear about the food we are growing for them and shares how the solidarity payment scale works. Prices are shared on the back of the letter for all to see, and our telephone number for anyone who isn’t online and wants to contact us to hear more or, indeed, sign up for our veg shares.
This is our journey so far. We’re just two months in, and it’s steady; no one is biting our hand off for food shares just yet, but we are taking time to deliver our message, sharing our ‘why’ with people and broadcasting it in as many ways as we can. Off the back of our pre-farm walk, we met a lady who has invited us to have a regular, once-a-month, 20-minute segment on her radio show, sharing updates with listeners about what has been going on at the farm and what is to come. And as I mentioned, we were also in the local paper the week after our walk; the article attracted a local beer maker who asked us if we would grow regenerative Barley. Ummm, yes!
As CSA members, we share a passion for growing healthy, nutrient-dense food. Perhaps that’s not normal, but that’s our best USP. Keep shouting about your ‘why’; I believe people will be drawn to your passion.
Praying you have a peaceful Christmas,
Mike Long