Goals and Aspirations

IMG_1029Hello and welcome to April!  I wanted to take a moment to welcome you back to the CSA and update you on some of our goals for this year.  As you may know from previous posts we are expecting to be fully transitioned to our new property in Chepachet by the end of this year, and will be doing 90% of our cropping there.  The barn you see in the picture is brand new, just erected last month.  We are in the process now of getting our water lines, power lines, and concrete pad installed.  The tables you see under the lean-to are part of our new wash station that we are putting together on the property.  The generous donations that many of our members have made is helping to fund installation of pipes and drains, tubs and tables, and other things we need to wash and process our vegetables.

In trying to grow our impact and influence in the farming community and beyond we have started collaborating with some long-time CSA members.  Claudia, Jim, Kristina, Dave, and Faye are working with us this year (and hopefully in the future) to help with advertising, outreach, and promotion of organic, local agriculture in our area.  We are excited to have their support in exploring some of our bigger, mutual goals as well.  For instance BTF is very interested in educational work and anti-racism work in the community as well as access to low-income or other-wise disadvantaged people to fresh, healthy food.  Raising the number of CSA members who are paying with EBT is one of our goals this year.

Other goals are lofty, some down to earth.  We want to grow the best produce we can (always a goal) and we intend to put even more focus on making sure our produce is strong and worthy of your dollars.  Expanding our educational impact, devising a minority-land-access internship program, helping other farms become EBT accepting CSAs, providing an excellent internship for our two interns, providing educational management techniques for our managers, starting a farm school in RI, etc, etc, etc… Oh yes, and we’re getting married and building a house (those are important too!).

As you can see we have many ideas and we need help to actualize them.  If you would like to work with us on any of these projects we would be thrilled to talk with you about them.  For now some of our CSA members will be sending e-mail updates, so don’t be surprised if you find an email from Jim or Claudia in your inbox (under the Big Train email address).

Looking forward to seeing you all in June.  Best Wishes, John

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