THE WORK OF SWEET MELONS

As many of you know, we love being able to share the ins-and-outs of the farm with you, from soil to spreadsheets. After all, a sweet melon is inseparable from the labor that went into it. This is nice to forget sometimes, but we believe the knowledge of what went into the melon makes it that much sweeter.

In the coming years, 2023-2024, we will be raising the prices of our CSA shares.

Below is an essay for members about the context behind our share prices increases.

2022 was a year of financial reckoning for many small farms around the country. Inflation and the sharp (highly justified) rise in the cost of local labor obliterated already thin margins for farmers. For our farm, these headwinds exposed the financial predicament of farming the way we farm — the predicament of farming diversely, regeneratively, and locally in an era of global industrial food production.

Kristin Kimball, owner of Essex Farm in New York, summed it up beautifully, “Our [CSA program] is a monument to the conflict between the ruthless efficiency of monoculture – of the industrialization of our food supply, of increasingly large economies of scale – and the wild beauty, flavor, life and health that comes from this farm’s flagrant agricultural diversity.”

West County Community Farm is a similar farm. On one hand we have thrived and succeeded because we are not industrial agriculture. Demand for our CSA shares is strong because so many people appreciate the culinary, social, and spiritual joys that comes from food grown in season a few miles from where they live; from visiting the farm and being able to watch over 200 varieties of vegetables, flower and herbs grow.

On the other hand, the diversity of our farm and our small scale is our Achilles’ heel. Our farm competes with the price points set by large producers in the Salinas and San Joaqin valleys and Mexico whose economies of scale vastly supersede ours and who underpay their workers. While we harvest about 10 cases of lettuce a week, Bud of California, a partner of Dole, harvests about 15,000 cases a day out of the Salinas Valley in the summer and Yuma, Arizona in the winter. In Mexico, the minimum wage is $7.00 a day in some agricultural regions. 

So the same industrial systems that have had famously dire consequences for topsoils, natural habitat, health, and rural communities are the same systems that bring us $1 per pound melons in the winter, $2.50 a bunch kale, $1.50 per head romaine lettuces, and 99-cent Chicken McNuggets. To achieve these price points, industrial farms rely on poorly paid labor, cheap oil, mono-cropping, and numerous cut corners in soil care and health — not to mention the rampant use of toxic herbicides and pesticides in conventional vegetable production.

Over the last 30 years, the increasing use and refinement of these practices and the increase in global competition for American produce markets have caused wholesale organic produce prices to remain flat — which in turn has depressed the price of locally grown produce. Two local farmer friends of ours recently stumbled upon Farmer’s Market price lists from the 1990’s. They were shocked — the price lists might as well have been from 2022. Over that same 30 year period the median home price in Sonoma County increased by almost 400% and the cost of labor increased by 360%. 

So local farms have been in a precarious financial position for years. 2022 was a tipping point.

So what is our individual story in this larger context?

Kayta and I started this farm on Green Valley Road in 2017 with a simple dream: To feed our CSA community with the best produce we could grow, and to take care of the land as best we could. 

In 2017 we started with 25 CSA member households and sold at two farmer’s markets. We didn’t pay ourselves from the business for those first couple “start up” years as we purchased equipment, gained confidence as growers. We made ends meet from Kayta’s 2nd job farming at Russian River Vineyards in Forestville. Since 2019 we have both worked full-time on the farm, paying ourselves modestly, and the CSA has grown by leaps and bounds from 25 members to what we expect to be 200 member households in 2023.

Over this period, we followed the status quo and priced our CSA shares based on the weekly value people take home pegged to local grocery store or farmer’s market prices. When the numbers didn’t look good at the end of a year, we would chalk it up to the “start up” phase — just a few more years of experience, new tools, and a few tweaks in efficiency would send us over the top into viability. But in 2022, our most financially successful and efficiently produced year yet, Kayta and I were only able to pay ourselves $10/hr while labor and materials costs surged.

As we have grown as farmers and business owners, and gained confidence in our understanding of the financial reality of doing what we do, we have come to realize that viability isn’t just one more year away. We’ve realized that our old pricing method is not appropriate. We will never be able to match the prices set by industrial vegetable producers because we are not industrial vegetable producers. 

We offer something more.

We offer a place where local people can develop a weekly relationship to the land, plants, and seasonal cycles that sustain them; we offer food where you can taste the love we put into the soil. And we do all this with local employees — passionate people who want nothing more than to be able to do this work in Sonoma County.

For Kayta and I, with our early 30’s behind us and a baby on the way this spring, 2022 laid out our choices plain and simple: Either raise prices, shut the business down, or change our CSA program so drastically as to strip away the magic.

Luckily, our CSA members made this decision as easy as they could. If there is one thing our members have shown us, day after day, year after year, it is that they deeply value what the farm brings to their lives. Many say they never knew their kids could like broccoli until they tasted one-day old broccoli. Many members say spending time on the farm is the highlight of their week. Many say the farm is powerfully healing, in our increasingly sedentary and screen-filled lives.

For our part, Kayta and I cannot put a price on the joy that it brings us to farm for you. But after doing this work for over a decade, and running this business for the last 7 years, we now know what it costs to keep this dream alive in a way that is sustainable for ourselves and our employees.

* * * * *

Practically, we realize the price increases might be prohibitive for some of you. 

If that is the case, please do not hesitate to request Share Price Assistance when signing up. Alternatively, if you have the means, please consider donating, even a small amount, to our Share Price Assistance Fund when you sign up. Every year we have been so proud and inspired that donations to this fund have always matched requests we get from people who need a reduced price share. 

Thank you for reading and for being the heart of this farm. 

See you in the fields, 
David & Kayta