Designed to support local farms, build and strengthen our community, and to provide the tangible experience that we make a difference as individuals and as a community. Our hope is to launch this project for the 2005 Season.
A Farm-of-the Month will be selected each month. The community will get used to where to look to find out who the farm is each month.
The community will become accustomed to directing available (and created) resources to the farm that month. – time, money, skills, a tool, maybe an unused roll of fencing, for example, that’s in the back of the garage or barn.
At the beginning of the month there will be an introduction of the farm and the farmer/s to the community covered by the local newspapers – who they are, what they do, what they hope to do, and what they need.
There will be a Work-Party the third weekend of the month where the community will come together to raise a farm in the old tradition of barn raising. Fences will be built, chicken coops constructed, equipment repaired, planting, weeding, harvesting – whatever the most pressing needs are for the farm at the time. Not only will time and skills be given by those who help out, but skills will be learned as well, information and knowledge exchanged, those who participate will share the experience of a deeper sense of community, and the satisfaction of knowing they do make a difference in the world.
As human beings we have two basic needs – to be autonomous and to belong to a group dedicated to a common cause. Oddly enough war has filled this need for all too long. Now we can choose to be a part of a meaningful and essential group effort – the preservation of small family farms and ultimately the health and well-being of our communities.
Farm Registries can be just like bridal registries. A couple becomes engaged to be married and they go to their favorite department store and select their china, silver, glassware, etc. Someone who wants to buy a wedding present for the couple goes to the department store and chooses a gift from their pre-selected list, with the store keeping an updated list of what they still need.
Instead of brides and department stores, it will be farms and farm stores. Say you have $20 and you want to contribute to the Farm-of-the-Month. You go to a local participating farm store, tell them you’d like to buy a $20 gift for the farm, they’ll tell you what the farm needs, and tah dah! There you have it~