peacefrog&#39;s lilypad

Have you been reading the LJ comm? The info has been reposted there.

parkerfarmcsa

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dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com

I have not been! Thanks *again!*

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Envy, now! And I was so sad to read a couple 'Please, show me some other farm share cuz now I'm irritated' posts about Steve's decision. I hope he does really well now.

And I'm starting to realize that it's time I learned to can stuff.

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Some of the nasty, entitled comments in particular made me pretty sad, too, especially since they all came from people I know, whereas the outpourings of support on Facebook and such were names I didn't recognize. The poor communication isn't a good thing, of course, but it certainly doesn't invalidate all the things that *are* great.

As for canning, it's pretty new to me, too. I learned from books and the net.

Edited Date: 2009-09-29 05:56 pm (UTC)

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I was slightly startled that people I watched do some canning recently were also doing this via the net. But having found a pressure canning vat thing, so the lids would pop down sealed on. It was amusing.
Too cool, so now I must find one of these-- I love having a new project as to kitchen gadgetry! I'm sure it will take into winter for me to find one.(It is like a steamer-doubleboiler, but with inner colander thing reaching all the way down to the bottom. No doubt there's an actual name. A mystery for me to solve, whee!)

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dani-namaste.livejournal.com

I can ask Nick where he got the pressure canner that we use - I am pretty sure he got it from Amazon. If you want an old-school waterbath canner, try Benjamin Franklin in Cushing Square (Belmont, near me). They have tons of canning supplies.

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Cool, asking would be nice and yay, a new place to explore.

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Tags in Porter also has everything you need for canning. But I still anti-recommend buying a boiling water "canner". A pressure canner is a nice thing, but more expensive and not necessary for the most common kinds of canning (tomatoes, fruit, pickles).

If you get a pressure canner, though, you can also use it for BWB stuff.

Edited Date: 2009-09-29 08:15 pm (UTC)

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Ironically, the people learning it now, assuming they are using proper sources, are likely being safer than those who learned from their grandmothers. I've seen people post about canning and provide enough details for me to know that the USDA would consider their methods unsafe. Not that the USDA is the be-all-end-all, but it's like safer sex, in that odds are relatively low that you'd get into trouble if you didn't follow the guidelines, but why take the chance?

I don't have a pressure canner and so only do boiling water bath canning. I don't recommend buying anything called a "canner" for that, though. Any large vessel will do, and most "canners" are not sized properly for canning, oddly enough.

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Yeah, I caught that commentary about non-FDA-approved old canning styles. Scratching my head over it. (did the right things to prevent botulism, etc. so what's so dangerous?)
What's the sizing difficulty? Depth so the jars are immersed enough?
The 'canner' _did_ seem almost redundant, and that its main charm was the aluminum insert preventing glass breaking(eh). I'd imagine one could accomplish this with a pie plate too. *g*

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I think the thing about non-approved methods is that they don't actually kill all the bad bits reliably. They will most of the time, but not all.

But yeah, the "canners" are almost always not deep enough to safely can quart jars, and the wire racks they come with suck. Putting Food By has several pages of rant on the topic. :)

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water-childe.livejournal.com

My beef with Farmer Parker is that his communication skills are really sub-par at best. I understand the troubles he's been having. Farmers all over the state have been extremely hard hit.
It's just he doesn't seem to understand that that how his non-too great communication skills are off putting, have, and will continue to potentially cost him business with people who will then consider using other similar services, rather then his.
Ro and I are really kind of fed up and are strongly considering going else where. I understand that as a Farmer he's at the mercy of the growing conditions. But, I require better communication and the feeling like my commitment to being one of his share holders is respected.

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I can't argue with you over his communication skills and it's absolutely something he needs to fix. Since he's not very net-savvy, he doesn't really understand what a problem it all is. I also don't have a problem with people being unhappy about his comm or lack thereof.

The attitude I have a problem with is people insisting that it's wrong for him to sell crops at the markets that could be going to shareholders, as though it'd be better for the farm to go under than for us to not get veggies for a few weeks.

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I was a bit bothered with the decision to sell to farmers' markets while discontinuing CSA, because it seemed like selling the same vegetables twice (because the implication, with no additional information available, was that there weren't enough veggies for both, so he was concentrating on the markets to get some extra cash). The later, more elaborated explanation was more about "don't have the non-vegetable resources to make CSA happen (e.g. pickers, auto fuel), so I'm selling at the farmers' market instead." And that made me feel better about it.

The commitment is 2-sided: the shareholder agrees to put up money and accept the risk that the fields flood and there's no crop; the farmer agrees that if there *is* a crop, he'll give some reasonable amount to the shareholder in exchange for the up-front money. I'm fine with that as a deal; I'm less fine with "even if I have vegetables, I might decide to do something else with them rather than give them to you."

But it's really about the communication, as you say -- e.g. last year(?), when he said "I'm having trouble with high oil prices, please chip in extra." I found that entirely reasonable and did so.

Also, I think there's something about how people respond to panic-inducing situations, both in terms of decision-making and communications timing. Many people's instinct is to try to Put Out The Fire As Soon As Possible, meaning make some sort of decision, announce and implement as fast as they can -- and then when they've settled down a little and slept on it, to realize that there was probably a better solution. I empathize with that, even as it frustrates me to be on the receiving end.

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I mostly agree with what you've said, except I don't think it's wrong for him to sell at the markets. If he wasn't already doing so, that might be different, but I guess I'd ask why is he obligated to stop doing that versus stopping the pick-ups? I don't agree that the farmer is saying that if there is any food at all, we get it, and I would very surprised to hear about other CSA farms interpreting it that way given what I've seen of how they work. No farm is going to put the shares ahead of their own survival, and I don't think they should.

But yeah, while I'd bet he could have managed a drop-off last week, even if it was meager, I think your last paragraph is dead-on about the process. Add to that that he's a perfectionist when it comes to his vegetables, so to him, a meager share would be worse than nothing, even though the rest of us would obviously appreciate it.

For me personally, it also matters that I trust him to do what needs to done (as long as it doesn't involve communication :), and I believe that trust was borne out when he announced just a few days later that pick-ups would continue.

The contrast in various comments was still rather striking, with some people going on about "where's my refund?!?" while many others were insisting they didn't want any money or vouchers back, and could they pay now for next year if that would help.

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(And really, if he'd cancelled last week without immediately announcing what he was going to do, like you suggested in your post, that wouldn't have freaked people out -- or *shouldn't* have, anyway. That's totally within the "risk we signed up for.")

"No farm is going to put the shares ahead of their own survival"... I keep waffling about what I think about this. They're counting on the share payments for their survival, aren't they? And the shares are investment, not charity: weathering the ups and downs is one thing, but the share-purchaser does expect something in exchange for the money, in the long run (that is, if over several years one was never satisfied with what one received from farmshare, one would be perfectly justified in taking one's money elsewhere).

Perhaps it's the difference between buying a ticket to a fundraiser show to support one's community theatre group, and giving a donation -- if you show up to the fundraiser with your ticket and it's been cancelled in favor of throwing resources to the mainstage show, that might be a necessary decision on the group's part, but they've broken faith with the audience. Rather than asking for donations, they've...taken donations, from people who thought they were coming to see a show. And those people might donate if asked for donations, but that's not what they were asked for.

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Yes, the shares are an investment, but it's rarely a farm's only source of income. Given that we were already 15 weeks in, though, I'd be more inclined to compare it to having bought a ticket to a fundraiser performance only to show up and find out one or more of the acts isn't going to be there.

I suspect the long-term may be a factor as well. I've been with Steve for four years and enjoyed excessive bounty for pretty much all of that time. I don't feel short-changed this year and past experience led me to conclude he'd come up with a way to do the right thing by folks, even if I had no idea what that right thing might be. Even the day of the announcement, I had no intention to leave him. (Bitching and moaning, otoh, is another story. Those are some of my favorite hobbies. ;)

My biggest complaint was and continues to be the comm issue. I think the same decision would have been taken very differently if it followed weeks of being told what was up. I've offered to help him with that on several occasions, but the problem is that once the season starts, he's too busy with the fields to deal.

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Fair enough. And yeah, communication is the fundamental issue.

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Hm, having thought a little bit more about where I agree/disagree with your position: I think the bothersome thing is the lack of...power? input? consultation? on the shareholders' side, when the deal is being modified. If it's a business deal, then each side should stick to its commitments and not change the rules. If it's a team effort, then all the stakeholders should have some sort of way to affect decisions that affect the enterprise (even if that's as little as "I warn you what's going on, ask for your thoughts, and make a unilateral decision" -- though it'd be nice to know in advance what the mechanism was). You're looking at it as a team effort, and I think that's great (and admit I am not as good about that as I should be) -- but the initial announcement didn't feel like we were being treated as a team, and I suspect that was part of what got to people, and why they/we didn't share your perspective.

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