Cooperative Innovation in the Food System, Session #2
Nebraska Cooperative Development Center
Author
12/16/2022
Added
4
Plays
Description
Unique Land Access, Worker-Cooperative Farm and Perpetuating Community Generosity.
A conversation and Q&A session with Hannah Breckbill of Humble Hands Harvest.
Searchable Transcript
Toggle between list and paragraph view.
- [00:00:01.440]Recording, all right, okay.
- [00:00:07.200]Well, thank you and welcome, everyone.
- [00:00:11.550]This is our second series in our winter webinar series;
- [00:00:17.820]Cooperative Innovation in the Food System.
- [00:00:21.376]And to the attendees, it's great to see you all here,
- [00:00:25.290]and thank you for signing up and being here.
- [00:00:29.010]And a big thank you to our guest, Hannah,
- [00:00:33.210]of Humble Hands Harvest Farm in Decorah, Iowa
- [00:00:36.600]for being here and sharing with us.
- [00:00:40.650]My name is Margaret Milligan,
- [00:00:42.540]and I'm the program coordinator
- [00:00:44.610]for the Buy Fresh Buy Local Nebraska Program.
- [00:00:49.531]And we're focused on local food promotion
- [00:00:51.480]and education in the state of Nebraska.
- [00:00:54.810]And we're also a part
- [00:00:55.920]of the Nebraska Cooperative Development Center,
- [00:00:58.920]which is in the Agricultural Economics Department
- [00:01:02.340]of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
- [00:01:05.400]And the Cooperative Development Center believes
- [00:01:08.370]that the cooperative business model can improve
- [00:01:11.310]the quality of life and economic vitality of rural Nebraska.
- [00:01:16.380]And since 1999, they've been providing education,
- [00:01:20.670]training and technical assistance to groups interested
- [00:01:24.180]in exploring that cooperative model.
- [00:01:27.540]And I would like to say that NCDC is funded
- [00:01:30.030]by the USDA's Rural Cooperative Development Grant Program,
- [00:01:33.870]and I wanted to thank them for making our work possible.
- [00:01:40.680]Also, just a thank you to Charlotte Narjes,
- [00:01:43.980]who is the associate director
- [00:01:45.660]of the Nebraska Cooperative Development Center.
- [00:01:48.240]She's here on the Zoom,
- [00:01:51.480]and will be assisting with facilitation
- [00:01:55.890]and monitoring the chat box.
- [00:01:58.650]So I think this is in the chat box,
- [00:02:02.670]but if you're just joining us,
- [00:02:05.370]go ahead and put your name and where you're from.
- [00:02:08.670]And if you're more on the production side,
- [00:02:11.910]if you're a farmer or rancher, say that.
- [00:02:14.730]If you're a more of a service provider
- [00:02:17.100]or someone with a support organization,
- [00:02:19.980]put that in the chat box.
- [00:02:23.730]And a little bit about today's session.
- [00:02:27.660]So the first half is gonna be kind of an interview style
- [00:02:32.010]with me and Hannah.
- [00:02:34.020]And hopefully that conversation will kind of cover
- [00:02:38.070]some foundation of who Hannah is,
- [00:02:41.040]and who Humble Hands Harvest is,
- [00:02:43.770]and what they do and kind of why they do it.
- [00:02:47.550]And then the second half will be a question
- [00:02:50.370]and answer session with Hannah and you all.
- [00:02:56.490]Kind of because of the number of participants
- [00:02:59.040]and our virtual format,
- [00:03:01.620]I think we'll be taking your questions in the chat box
- [00:03:05.580]and Zoom.
- [00:03:06.510]So if you have questions throughout the first part
- [00:03:11.130]of this webinar,
- [00:03:13.080]you can type your questions in the chat box at any time.
- [00:03:16.800]And then we'll form a queue of questions to be asked
- [00:03:21.150]and addressed during the second half of our hour together.
- [00:03:27.810]We're gonna be asking participants to keep themselves muted.
- [00:03:32.550]That's just the easiest option on Zoom.
- [00:03:36.870]So without further ado, let's begin.
- [00:03:43.050]And I'd like to welcome Hannah Breckbill
- [00:03:45.660]of Humble Hands Harvest Farm in Decorah, Iowa.
- [00:03:49.380]Thank you, Hannah, for being here.
- [00:03:52.834]Yeah, I'm honored to be here.
- [00:03:55.470]I grew up in Lincoln,
- [00:03:56.460]so I feel excited to be among Nebraskans. (chuckles)
- [00:04:00.900]You're back.
- [00:04:01.733]Virtually, you're back with your Lincoln crowd.
- [00:04:06.840]So maybe the first thing I'd like to ask you,
- [00:04:12.300]just to let the participants know,
- [00:04:16.050]could you tell us a little bit about your operation
- [00:04:19.620]at Humble Hands Harvest?
- [00:04:21.600]What you grow, what's your scale,
- [00:04:25.560]where are you selling to, kind of those basics.
- [00:04:28.860]And if you wanted to get into how you started farming,
- [00:04:34.170]that'd be great too.
- [00:04:35.550]Sure, yeah.
- [00:04:36.750]So the farm Humble Hands Harvest,
- [00:04:39.480]as it is currently situated,
- [00:04:43.290]is on 22 acres of land in northeast Iowa.
- [00:04:49.980]And we raise two acres of vegetables,
- [00:04:55.140]organic, certified organic vegetables,
- [00:04:56.940]and we sell those primarily at Farmer's Market
- [00:05:00.810]and also through a CSA.
- [00:05:03.660]So we go to Farmer's Market twice a week
- [00:05:05.430]during the growing season,
- [00:05:07.974]and we deliver CSA boxes at Farmer's Market as well.
- [00:05:14.460]So that's, yeah, that's the majority of our operation,
- [00:05:18.360]but we only have two acres of vegetables
- [00:05:20.640]and we have a 22 acre farm.
- [00:05:22.110]So we have a flock of sheep
- [00:05:24.780]that grazes most of the rest of the land,
- [00:05:27.570]and we've also been planting a lot of chestnuts,
- [00:05:30.660]hazelnuts, apples, that kind of thing,
- [00:05:34.020]just trying to perennial our farm a little bit.
- [00:05:37.920]And in a few years, those will start producing
- [00:05:40.590]and that'll shift things for us,
- [00:05:43.290]and we'll kind of reorient to a more perennial system, so.
- [00:05:51.431]That's great.
- [00:05:52.264]Yeah, I guess you asked how I got into farming.
- [00:05:53.850]Yeah, tell us.
- [00:05:55.110]I can share a little bit of that.
- [00:05:56.850]So yeah, as I said, I grew up in Lincoln,
- [00:06:01.200]and no connection to farming at all
- [00:06:04.980]for most of my growing up.
- [00:06:09.000]But I did...
- [00:06:12.480]Yeah, so anyway, I went to college in Minnesota,
- [00:06:17.520]and was planning on being an academic.
- [00:06:21.429]I was a math major and I was going into,
- [00:06:24.930]I thought I was gonna be a professor.
- [00:06:27.510]And then about halfway through college,
- [00:06:29.520]I just had this kind of reorienting and I was like,
- [00:06:35.887]"I really wanna do something real.
- [00:06:37.800]I really wanna move down from that,
- [00:06:40.530]this kind of abstract realm that I'm in,
- [00:06:42.840]and do something that connects to people,
- [00:06:45.330]connects to the earth,
- [00:06:48.870]makes a difference in people's lives."
- [00:06:53.081]And so I explored a bunch
- [00:06:54.150]of different kind of activist tracks.
- [00:06:58.320]But at the time, it was 2008 or so,
- [00:07:03.840]there was a big food movement on a lot of college campuses,
- [00:07:07.380]and so I got in on with the food crowd
- [00:07:10.620]and the farm farming crowd.
- [00:07:14.250]And everyone was talking about how cool it would be to farm,
- [00:07:17.970]and I was like, "Yeah, it would be cool to farm."
- [00:07:19.500]So I got a farming internship out of college
- [00:07:22.560]and never looked back, I have kept doing it since.
- [00:07:28.260]But what I'll say is that,
- [00:07:31.110]yeah, it's a kind of interesting thing for some kind of
- [00:07:37.621]a first generation farmer
- [00:07:38.580]from a non-farming background starting to learn the trade
- [00:07:45.180]and being in, yeah, just being a farm worker.
- [00:07:50.490]The transition from farm worker to farm owner
- [00:07:56.530]is a pretty big leap, and so there's a lot of,
- [00:08:01.950]yeah, there's a lot of support that I needed along the way
- [00:08:04.140]to be able to do that,
- [00:08:05.370]but I'm lucky and privileged to have had that support.
- [00:08:09.450]So yeah, I'll share a little more later as we get in.
- [00:08:14.250]Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
- [00:08:16.559]That, I think, gives people a picture
- [00:08:19.140]of where you're coming from.
- [00:08:21.180]So you were talking kind of about that transition
- [00:08:23.880]from interning and working on farms
- [00:08:28.111]to kind of running your own operation,
- [00:08:30.540]and this is a webinar or conversation about cooperatives.
- [00:08:37.320]Can you kind of share a little bit about how,
- [00:08:42.060]maybe how you landed on the piece of land,
- [00:08:46.890]on the piece of ground that your farm is on
- [00:08:53.070]and how that happened?
- [00:08:54.690]Totally, because that's a very cooperative story.
- [00:09:00.690]Yeah, so I worked on vegetable farms for a couple years,
- [00:09:04.770]and then I started renting land from some people
- [00:09:09.960]who had offered an incubator farm opportunity.
- [00:09:13.230]So they were kind of experimenting,
- [00:09:14.730]they had a grass-fed cattle farm and they said,
- [00:09:19.117]"Hey, we have a cooler and stuff
- [00:09:23.460]for our direct market deliveries to restaurants,
- [00:09:26.760]and we have all this land that cattle have been grazing.
- [00:09:29.850]We could parcel off, we could just section off a chunk of it
- [00:09:32.760]for a vegetable farmer to grow on,
- [00:09:34.710]and we could provide a bunch of infrastructure
- [00:09:38.070]to a vegetable farmer."
- [00:09:39.060]So that's what got me into farming in the first place,
- [00:09:42.090]into farming on my own as a business owner.
- [00:09:50.594]So that's where kind of I was,
- [00:09:53.567]I was renting land and growing vegetables.
- [00:09:59.266]But this piece of land that our farm now sits on is,
- [00:10:04.530]it had been a conventional cornfield for a number of years.
- [00:10:08.340]And it was in 2014, the owners of it had retired,
- [00:10:17.100]had moved to town, had actually sold the house,
- [00:10:19.500]but then not the cropland with it,
- [00:10:21.480]but then they were ready to sell the cropland too.
- [00:10:24.090]And so they were gonna take it to auction
- [00:10:29.730]and made that known.
- [00:10:33.030]But the neighbor up the road from this land was
- [00:10:36.810]really worried about what would happen
- [00:10:38.460]if the land went to auction,
- [00:10:40.920]because there are hog confinement operations
- [00:10:43.650]in the general neighborhood,
- [00:10:46.170]there are other things like that,
- [00:10:47.310]and he didn't want to see that happen on his road.
- [00:10:52.080]And so what he did was he organized
- [00:10:57.570]about 20 different people to all put in money
- [00:11:03.960]and then buy the land collectively.
- [00:11:08.190]Yes, but so he went to the owner of the land, he said,
- [00:11:11.917]"Hey, if we bought this from you before it went to auction,
- [00:11:15.930]what price do you need?"
- [00:11:17.640]And she named a price.
- [00:11:19.830]And so he organized people and raised the capital
- [00:11:24.510]to be able to buy the land at that point.
- [00:11:29.220]And so the group of people formed an LLC,
- [00:11:33.330]and they formed
- [00:11:39.180]or decided on a price of a share.
- [00:11:43.320]And the price of a share was corresponding
- [00:11:45.240]to half an acre of the land.
- [00:11:47.430]And so then people could buy any number of shares
- [00:11:50.580]in this LLC, and they co-owned the land
- [00:11:55.950]as Hidden Falls Land LLC is what it was called.
- [00:12:01.110]And I was lucky enough at that time
- [00:12:03.720]to kind of be in a car with the daughter of the person
- [00:12:07.380]who was doing this organizing
- [00:12:10.740]during the right two weeks of time
- [00:12:13.530]where I was able to get a share of the land.
- [00:12:18.060]So I was vegetable farming at the time on rented land.
- [00:12:22.350]I didn't have that much money, but I just,
- [00:12:25.500]everything that was in my savings,
- [00:12:26.820]I put into two shares of the land.
- [00:12:31.530]And my thought of course, was,
- [00:12:35.310]cool, this is a small piece of land, 22 acres,
- [00:12:39.540]we could put a diversified vegetable farm here.
- [00:12:44.040]Yeah, but that wasn't the reason
- [00:12:46.920]that everyone had joined this LLC.
- [00:12:50.820]So it took actually three years for me to,
- [00:12:57.570]yeah, for me to be able to kind of convince
- [00:13:02.610]the rest of the LLC shareholders that,
- [00:13:05.730]actually, this is possible, this could be done.
- [00:13:09.570]And I'm in a position to do the work of it,
- [00:13:14.790]but I wasn't at the time in the position
- [00:13:18.450]to just buy the whole thing outright from everybody.
- [00:13:24.000]So what ended up happening was that I was able to,
- [00:13:28.050]every time I got,
- [00:13:30.450]was in some kind of matched savings program
- [00:13:33.150]through Practical Farmers of Iowa
- [00:13:35.250]or through the Land Stewardship Project,
- [00:13:37.590]I was able to get a little bit more money.
- [00:13:40.410]Every time I did that, I bought shares from someone else.
- [00:13:44.490]So I was gradually kind of accumulating
- [00:13:47.400]these shares in this LLC.
- [00:13:50.460]And then at about...
- [00:13:54.990]Yeah, it was kind of coming to a head
- [00:13:58.380]and I really needed permanent land to farm on,
- [00:14:01.290]I really needed ownership of land.
- [00:14:03.690]Because I needed to be able to invest in my soil,
- [00:14:06.750]I needed to be able to plant trees,
- [00:14:09.660]both of those things, I really wanted to do.
- [00:14:12.030]And so then a couple who owned five share
- [00:14:19.200]or 10 shares of the land, five acres worth,
- [00:14:22.950]they came to me and they said,
- [00:14:24.097]"Hannah, we will sell you these shares at a discount
- [00:14:30.140]if you buy them from us."
- [00:14:32.310]So they discounted their shares to basically $4,000 an acre,
- [00:14:38.340]which is really, really low. (laughs)
- [00:14:43.901]And so I asked my uncle and he loaned me $20,000,
- [00:14:50.160]so to be able to buy their shares.
- [00:14:53.520]So I had accumulated basically eight shares at that point,
- [00:14:57.870]thanks to a loan from my uncle,
- [00:14:59.370]thanks to this generous kind of discount from this couple
- [00:15:03.540]who wanted to see me owning this land.
- [00:15:06.570]And I was able to take those eight shares
- [00:15:08.610]and parcel off a chunk of that land, eight acres of it,
- [00:15:12.420]and put it in my name so that at that point,
- [00:15:15.210]I was able to start investing in infrastructure
- [00:15:18.390]on the land.
- [00:15:19.950]A well, electricity, deer fence for vegetables
- [00:15:24.210]and was able to start a farm there, a vegetable farm there.
- [00:15:31.020]And yeah, so that's the kind of long story,
- [00:15:37.380]winding story of that land.
- [00:15:38.910]And I will say that in the years since that purchase,
- [00:15:44.563]I bought that eight acres in 2017.
- [00:15:49.680]And so that 2017 was our first season farming on the land.
- [00:15:54.570]And since then,
- [00:15:59.100]Humble Hands Harvest has been able to buy more shares,
- [00:16:04.500]every time buying out one person at a time.
- [00:16:12.754]And now we own under Humble Hands Harvest name,
- [00:16:15.660]we own another five acres of the land
- [00:16:17.820]and then there's nine acres remaining
- [00:16:20.040]that we are majority shareholders of the LLC
- [00:16:23.670]that owns those nine acres.
- [00:16:25.740]So we're gradually accessing ownership in this way.
- [00:16:29.220]And it kind of is, it's really cool because these people
- [00:16:34.740]actually agreed at the beginning,
- [00:16:37.230]during the first year of this LLC,
- [00:16:41.250]they agreed that they weren't gonna speculate on the land,
- [00:16:43.830]they weren't trying to profit from it,
- [00:16:45.270]they were trying to protect it.
- [00:16:46.590]And so they agreed that they were gonna sell shares
- [00:16:50.220]of this land at the same price that they bought them for.
- [00:16:54.210]Which is amazing for someone like me, who is basically,
- [00:17:00.600]that's the equivalent of me paying a zero interest mortgage
- [00:17:05.010]to buy the land.
- [00:17:08.340]Yeah, so I'm really grateful for that.
- [00:17:12.000]And yeah, these people were,
- [00:17:17.100]yeah, motivated by caring for this particular piece of land
- [00:17:21.120]and in this particular neighborhood.
- [00:17:25.013]And that kind of motivation and care was able
- [00:17:28.410]to translate into a whole new diversified farm,
- [00:17:33.930]which is a really cool thing.
- [00:17:36.600]That's so interesting, Hannah.
- [00:17:38.370]And I didn't know that.
- [00:17:41.910]I knew some of the that story,
- [00:17:43.560]but I didn't know the group that got together initially,
- [00:17:50.040]doesn't sound they had a firm plan,
- [00:17:53.160]they didn't necessarily envision
- [00:17:57.540]a diversified farm being on that land.
- [00:18:00.540]But sounds like you kind of convinced them
- [00:18:04.710]in a way through action.
- [00:18:05.610]Positive shift, for sure, yeah. (laughs)
- [00:18:08.670]Very cool.
- [00:18:10.200]Well, so thank you for sharing that story,
- [00:18:13.890]and there's a lot that we could get into just in that bit
- [00:18:20.070]of your bigger story.
- [00:18:22.080]But why don't we kind of talk a little bit
- [00:18:24.510]about the worker cooperative that is Humble Hands Harvest,
- [00:18:32.070]how does that work, what does that look like,
- [00:18:37.787]why did you choose it, yeah.
- [00:18:40.330]Cool, so yeah, when I talk about Humble Hands Harvest,
- [00:18:45.270]I use the word we to talk about it.
- [00:18:47.490]And that is because when I started on rented land,
- [00:18:52.230]it was just me farming.
- [00:18:54.270]But in 2017, the same year that we accessed that,
- [00:18:59.520]our permanent piece of land,
- [00:19:04.410]I had asked a fellow farm worker in the community
- [00:19:10.815]who had just moved to Decorah in 2016.
- [00:19:14.010]I asked her if she wanted to join me in business
- [00:19:18.660]'cause I was tired of working by myself.
- [00:19:22.489]I wanted someone to work not for me, but with me,
- [00:19:29.670]kind of equally invested in the outcomes of the business.
- [00:19:34.440]And so I didn't know at that time, actually,
- [00:19:41.910]that I was looking to be a worker owned cooperative.
- [00:19:44.910]I just knew at that time that I wanted someone to work with
- [00:19:50.010]and a way for us to be equally invested.
- [00:19:54.480]So our first year farming together, this land was brand new
- [00:20:00.870]and it was in my name.
- [00:20:03.540]So what we ended up doing was we basically,
- [00:20:09.930]we made Humble Hands Harvest LLC our business,
- [00:20:13.200]and we agreed to what parts of this farming operation were
- [00:20:17.220]under our business and what parts were under me, Hannah.
- [00:20:22.380]And so basically Emily and I were sharing
- [00:20:27.000]in the vegetable operation,
- [00:20:28.590]and the vegetable operation was renting land
- [00:20:31.050]and infrastructure from me, Hannah.
- [00:20:36.012]And we made this arrangement, we opened a bank account
- [00:20:38.550]and both of us put in, I think, a thousand dollars.
- [00:20:42.210]And we agreed that okay, if this year goes by,
- [00:20:45.420]and then we end our year and we're ready to part ways,
- [00:20:47.940]then we can just split this bank account 50-50.
- [00:20:53.613]So that was our agreement for year one.
- [00:20:56.310]But after year one, Emily was very firmly convinced
- [00:21:00.210]that she wanted to keep going,
- [00:21:03.270]she wanted to be here for a long time.
- [00:21:05.100]She had planted apple trees and she said,
- [00:21:07.237]"I wanna see those apple trees through."
- [00:21:13.309]And there was also this other kind of weird undercurrent,
- [00:21:17.820]where I had been farming in the community
- [00:21:20.880]for longer than she had been,
- [00:21:23.400]and people knew me and didn't know her as much yet.
- [00:21:27.630]So when they saw her at Farmer's Market or other places,
- [00:21:31.650]she got so many comments our first year of like,
- [00:21:33.997]"Oh, are you Hannah's helper?"
- [00:21:36.870]And that is really hard to hear
- [00:21:40.500]when you're an equal co-owner of a business.
- [00:21:44.700]And so yeah, she wanted also there to be some kind
- [00:21:48.720]of structure to be able to say,
- [00:21:52.477]"No, I'm not Hannah's helper,
- [00:21:55.140]I'm Hannah's co-farmer, a co-worker."
- [00:22:00.450]So yeah, and it's also worth noting that a lot of people,
- [00:22:06.810]I'm queer, Emily is not queer,
- [00:22:10.230]but everyone in the Decorah community knew of my queerness.
- [00:22:14.187]And so also,
- [00:22:15.540]so many people probably still to this day assume
- [00:22:18.420]that Emily is my wife, but she is not, she's my coworker.
- [00:22:24.320]And so that's also a really funny dynamic
- [00:22:26.430]with farming and farms, everyone is expected
- [00:22:29.160]to be in these nuclear family pairs,
- [00:22:34.290]which is not the way our farm works.
- [00:22:38.430]So yeah, so after that first year,
- [00:22:41.880]we were dealing with all of those dynamics
- [00:22:44.280]of the way people saw us was different
- [00:22:46.830]than the way we actually were.
- [00:22:50.028]And Emily wanted this official stake in the farm long-term.
- [00:22:57.398]So that's the point that we decided that we wanted to be
- [00:23:00.570]a worker-owned cooperative.
- [00:23:02.160]Some friends from different parts of my life had said,
- [00:23:05.215]"I think this is what you're aiming for, actually."
- [00:23:10.920]So the cool thing about a worker-owned co-op is that,
- [00:23:15.840]like a consumer co-op,
- [00:23:17.790]it's a bunch of consumers gathering together
- [00:23:20.310]to source the goods they're looking for.
- [00:23:25.560]So the point of a consumer co-op is the consumer's needs
- [00:23:31.650]and what the consumer is looking for,
- [00:23:33.720]and wanting, and yeah, how they're accessing it.
- [00:23:40.770]But a worker-owned co-op on the other hand
- [00:23:42.720]is about the workers' needs.
- [00:23:45.000]It's about, yeah, it's about making our,
- [00:23:52.260]yeah, making a business that is accountable to the workers
- [00:23:56.490]who are part of it.
- [00:23:59.130]And which is a totally, totally huge departure
- [00:24:05.190]from conventional business.
- [00:24:09.690]Yeah, and so the way that Emily and I organized was
- [00:24:16.050]we realized that we wanted to be equals in the business,
- [00:24:22.860]which meant that in our worker-owned co-op,
- [00:24:27.330]our patronage or what gives us, yeah,
- [00:24:32.970]our way of being part of the co-op is our hours
- [00:24:36.930]that we work in the co-op.
- [00:24:38.820]So we have an agreement, Emily and I,
- [00:24:41.250]to work an equal number of hours in a year
- [00:24:48.030]so that, yeah, there's that equality there.
- [00:24:51.240]A thing that doesn't have to be equal, though,
- [00:24:53.970]which is really cool, I think,
- [00:24:57.590]is our financial investment in the business.
- [00:25:00.000]So I had come to the business
- [00:25:05.280]after four years of farming already.
- [00:25:07.530]I had a bunch of infrastructure, I had saved money,
- [00:25:12.030]I had all this capital that I was able
- [00:25:13.860]to give to the business.
- [00:25:15.210]Emily was pretty fresh out of college,
- [00:25:17.610]did not have that kind of capital.
- [00:25:20.700]So that didn't have to be even,
- [00:25:24.600]but even though that financial investment wasn't even,
- [00:25:28.080]the thing that mattered was our work.
- [00:25:29.460]And so we paid ourselves based on our work
- [00:25:33.420]rather than on our financial investment.
- [00:25:39.030]Yeah, so that's the basic kind of structure of our co-op.
- [00:25:47.460]I'd love to hear your question,
- [00:25:49.110]more questions about that, to help me clarify.
- [00:25:52.950]Oh no, that's really interesting
- [00:25:55.470]and a lot of the kind of food system cooperatives
- [00:26:00.810]that at least I've seen are are more like marketing
- [00:26:06.150]or distribution co-ops,
- [00:26:07.740]so it's kind of like a group of separate businesses coming
- [00:26:12.570]together to make transport easier,
- [00:26:16.380]or to make selling their products easier.
- [00:26:18.450]So I think it's really interesting
- [00:26:21.480]that yours is a worker based cooperative.
- [00:26:28.226]Is the same true, how would you add more worker owners?
- [00:26:35.280]Is it the same hour arrangement as your time?
- [00:26:41.337]Yeah, okay, so to add a worker owner.
- [00:26:43.350]So yeah, the really great thing or important thing
- [00:26:47.130]about being a worker-owned co-op
- [00:26:49.470]and writing our operating agreement in that way
- [00:26:53.430]is that we need to have an exit strategy
- [00:26:56.280]and an entrance strategy.
- [00:26:58.710]And we also know neither Emily nor I want
- [00:27:03.120]to be someone's boss, we would much rather be a coworker.
- [00:27:07.830]And so our ultimate goal is for any of our employees
- [00:27:12.420]to be able to onboard into ownership.
- [00:27:18.060]And yeah, so right now,
- [00:27:19.920]this past year we had two full-time seasonal employees.
- [00:27:23.400]And both of them are coming back next year,
- [00:27:26.520]and after that they'll have the opportunity
- [00:27:28.860]to buy into the business.
- [00:27:33.660]So our onboarding process, we request some financial buy-in.
- [00:27:41.400]And so our kind of buy-in price is $5,500,
- [00:27:48.480]just because that was the price of an acre of our farm.
- [00:27:54.450]And that's an amount that feels like it's significant,
- [00:27:58.500]but also not unreachable
- [00:28:03.801]for someone to figure out how to save that much.
- [00:28:11.010]So yeah, so that's our buy-in, but then at that point,
- [00:28:14.880]after someone's bought in,
- [00:28:16.230]then they would be participating in equal decision making
- [00:28:20.880]and they would be expected to work on par with us
- [00:28:25.650]in terms of hours.
- [00:28:28.290]Yeah, and so both Emily and I have kind of specialties
- [00:28:32.130]on the farm.
- [00:28:34.470]So we're not all doing the same thing all the time,
- [00:28:39.300]but we're trying to match hours.
- [00:28:42.360]And we're counting office work
- [00:28:43.770]as the same kind of hourly rate as weeding or whatever, so.
- [00:28:49.686]Okay, okay, yeah.
- [00:28:51.750]And then so you talked about the importance of an entrance,
- [00:28:55.974]of a mechanism for you to add additional owners
- [00:29:00.840]and partners, and what about the exit strategy?
- [00:29:05.116]Yeah, right.
- [00:29:07.440]So at exit, if I were to need to retire from the farm,
- [00:29:12.780]I would want the money that I've invested in the farm back.
- [00:29:17.190]So that's the key element of our exit strategy.
- [00:29:21.750]Well, we also have some stipulations,
- [00:29:24.510]like don't exit in the middle of a growing season,
- [00:29:27.630]give your co-founders a bunch of notice,
- [00:29:31.716]and all of that stuff.
- [00:29:33.750]But the, yeah, the big question is what do we do
- [00:29:37.980]with our money and how does that fairly get dealt with?
- [00:29:47.009]So basically each farmer,
- [00:29:48.810]each owner of our business has invested some amount of money
- [00:29:54.690]in the business,
- [00:29:55.800]and so that is kind of accounted for
- [00:30:02.790]for each of us.
- [00:30:03.690]Each of us has our own account,
- [00:30:05.400]capital account of money that we've invested.
- [00:30:10.740]And so what Emily and I did was we agreed to,
- [00:30:16.830]in the event of one of us leaving the farm,
- [00:30:19.080]retiring, whatever, needing a new thing in life,
- [00:30:26.850]the money that's in our capital account,
- [00:30:28.680]the value that's in there would be converted into a loan
- [00:30:32.280]to the business, and the business would have to pay
- [00:30:35.100]that back to us over time.
- [00:30:37.650]So what that means is that we have a lot of incentive to,
- [00:30:45.060]right now I have the most money invested in the farm still,
- [00:30:49.410]but there's a lot of incentive from Emily's end,
- [00:30:53.070]especially for me to not invest more in the farm
- [00:30:56.760]because that makes, when I retire or leave,
- [00:31:00.900]that makes the amount that the farm owes me a lot more.
- [00:31:06.270]So there's even incentive
- [00:31:08.400]for maybe me to start being bought back or being,
- [00:31:15.270]having my capital account lowered
- [00:31:17.580]by receiving payouts.
- [00:31:21.510]We haven't done that yet, but that's on our minds.
- [00:31:24.630]Is how can we equalize these things
- [00:31:27.450]and make them as low as possible,
- [00:31:29.340]so that if one of us left,
- [00:31:31.830]the farm business wouldn't have a huge burden
- [00:31:34.320]to be able to keep going.
- [00:31:39.270]Yeah, but the really cool thing,
- [00:31:42.030]and the kind of unique thing about our farm
- [00:31:44.760]that we just kind of made up
- [00:31:47.610]is that when we were first starting,
- [00:31:54.720]I told the story of these people giving me
- [00:31:56.820]a steep discount on their shares.
- [00:32:03.000]And I didn't tell the story of we fundraise,
- [00:32:06.000]we ran a GoFundMe to be able to build our well.
- [00:32:10.680]And so a bunch of people from the community,
- [00:32:13.050]from our families, whatever, gave us money,
- [00:32:15.210]just gave us money.
- [00:32:19.920]And so that is money that didn't feel like it belonged
- [00:32:24.000]in my capital account or Emily's capital account,
- [00:32:27.360]it belonged to the farm
- [00:32:29.040]and to the thing that we were trying to do.
- [00:32:34.020]And so what we ended up doing was we created
- [00:32:37.770]a separate capital account for that money that,
- [00:32:43.260]and capital that we received as gift.
- [00:32:46.110]And we call that the commons,
- [00:32:49.170]and that is what we're not going to,
- [00:32:52.710]no one has to pay that back.
- [00:32:54.420]So if I left the farm, I get my money back,
- [00:32:58.770]but I don't get that gift money to me.
- [00:33:02.130]It stays with the farm and it stays as,
- [00:33:06.720]yeah, as something that in effect lowers
- [00:33:10.110]the price of the farm, of joining the business,
- [00:33:14.790]of all of that for a new member.
- [00:33:17.820]So that gift gets to be passed on
- [00:33:20.340]as long as our farm gets to exist, so.
- [00:33:23.700]That's really cool.
- [00:33:26.400]I don't think I quite understood it
- [00:33:28.560]until you explained it.
- [00:33:30.090]I've read about it on paper, but that makes a lot of sense.
- [00:33:36.971]And the point is if the commons account didn't exist,
- [00:33:44.520]it would make the,
- [00:33:46.170]maybe the price to enter as a worker-owner pretty steeper.
- [00:33:53.910]It would be more expensive, or it would be...
- [00:33:56.730]Yeah, having that chunk of our capital as gift means that,
- [00:34:03.570]yeah, if I leave the farm,
- [00:34:04.920]the next person who joins doesn't have to pay all of it,
- [00:34:08.430]doesn't have to pay my stuff and that gift stuff back,
- [00:34:11.940]they just have to pay my stuff back. (chuckles)
- [00:34:15.360]That's great, thank you for sharing about that.
- [00:34:20.010]And I think now is a great time to kind of transition.
- [00:34:23.520]I hope we all kind of have got a good foundation
- [00:34:27.390]of what Hannah's doing out there in Decorah,
- [00:34:30.720]and maybe we should transition to questions
- [00:34:34.230]from participants.
- [00:34:36.690]So we've got some questions,
- [00:34:39.060]some have been answered already.
- [00:34:43.920]One question is,
- [00:34:46.391]"What type of support or help did you receive
- [00:34:48.750]in forming the cooperative?"
- [00:34:53.655]Yeah, so there was a person in our community
- [00:34:57.660]who was really excited about the solidarity economy
- [00:35:01.320]at that time.
- [00:35:03.540]And since then, she's died actually,
- [00:35:05.700]but at the time that we were forming our cooperative,
- [00:35:11.262]she sat down with us and talked us through some ideas
- [00:35:15.000]or some concepts around it.
- [00:35:17.640]And then she pointed us toward
- [00:35:19.710]some kind of template operating agreements and bylaws
- [00:35:27.810]that are,
- [00:35:30.690]yeah, that were available
- [00:35:31.680]through the Sustainable Economies Law Center.
- [00:35:35.160]And so we took those templates ultimately,
- [00:35:40.750]and we just adapted them to what we wanted.
- [00:35:43.830]And so we have this
- [00:35:44.760]really nice kind of plain language operating agreement
- [00:35:48.240]that makes sense to both of us.
- [00:35:50.490]And yeah,
- [00:35:54.540]so that's the biggest technical assistance kind of support
- [00:35:59.610]we received, is just this person sitting down with us,
- [00:36:03.780]who was really excited about worker co-ops.
- [00:36:06.330]And then the Sustainable Economies Law Center kind
- [00:36:10.530]of resources and templates for that.
- [00:36:12.990]Nice, and you did all the business filing
- [00:36:17.190]and whatnot on your own?
- [00:36:18.660]Yeah, so we're filed as an LLC,
- [00:36:21.840]because you have to have five members
- [00:36:23.370]to be legally a cooperative in Iowa.
- [00:36:27.810]And so maybe someday we'll have five members,
- [00:36:30.150]that's probably the max that our farm would be able
- [00:36:32.490]to carry, and maybe we won't.
- [00:36:35.700]But anyway, we're an LLC for now. (chuckles)
- [00:36:40.470]And your bylaws and articles or whatever,
- [00:36:46.740]they're what lays out your cooperative mechanisms
- [00:36:50.970]and whatnot. Exactly, yeah.
- [00:36:51.803]Okay, very good.
- [00:36:54.490]Okay, there's a question, let's see here.
- [00:37:00.330]Somebody's wondering if you were able to pay back your loan
- [00:37:06.902]to your uncle for the 20,000 to purchase shares?
- [00:37:12.780]Totally, yeah.
- [00:37:13.890]So the agreement that I had with my uncle was,
- [00:37:18.090]the first five years would be interest only,
- [00:37:20.940]and then after that it would be a 10 year repayment plan.
- [00:37:29.309]And we decided that interest could be paid in vegetables,
- [00:37:32.910]so that was cool. (chuckles)
- [00:37:36.203]And so yeah, we're in the middle of repaying,
- [00:37:39.510]where we've basically been repaying for two years
- [00:37:44.640]at this point.
- [00:37:45.473]So we still have plenty to pay back, but yeah,
- [00:37:50.670]but those were the terms, so there we are.
- [00:37:53.370]Vegetable as interest is awesome.
- [00:37:58.860]All right, so the next question is,
- [00:38:01.027]"What would you like Humble Hands to become in the future?"
- [00:38:05.490]Are there any changes that you'd like to see?
- [00:38:10.530]Yeah, I mean, what I feel really excited about
- [00:38:14.220]in the future, and yeah, I think all of us who are working
- [00:38:18.990]there now do feel excited about is the perennial aspect
- [00:38:23.790]of our farm.
- [00:38:28.650]Yeah, wanting to have a farm that's super productive
- [00:38:33.330]on many scales.
- [00:38:35.490]Our sheep still grazing all over the farm,
- [00:38:38.400]but also there being trees all over the farm
- [00:38:40.830]that can be producing nuts and fruit for our normal markets.
- [00:38:46.980]So just having this super diverse space
- [00:38:51.570]that is really productive,
- [00:38:55.539]and then having a really good work life balance
- [00:39:01.170]for everyone who's involved.
- [00:39:02.790]And we're getting better every year, actually, at that,
- [00:39:06.630]this year I hardly ever worked more than 45 hours in a week,
- [00:39:11.220]which is really different than even just a couple years ago
- [00:39:15.240]when it was consistently 60.
- [00:39:17.130]And yeah, and so figuring out how to prioritize
- [00:39:24.750]all the things to make a business,
- [00:39:26.970]keep being functional and keep being profitable
- [00:39:30.990]as a business, but also caring for the workers
- [00:39:34.260]and keeping us really happy and really grounded.
- [00:39:40.410]So yeah, those are my biggest dreams for the future,
- [00:39:44.910]and I think we're decently on our way for toward them.
- [00:39:49.578]Yeah, it does sound like that.
- [00:39:51.557]And it sounds, yeah, it sounds like you're working on,
- [00:39:56.720]yeah, creating a sustainable pace for your farm
- [00:40:01.920]and the workers who are involved in the land.
- [00:40:05.970]A perennial system all around.
- [00:40:09.424]All right, so the next question is, okay,
- [00:40:14.887]"My farm, Salt Slope, is an informal co-op
- [00:40:18.330]with two other co-owners.
- [00:40:20.580]Nearly all the capital has been invested by me,
- [00:40:23.940]and I am the one who is on the lease to own agreement
- [00:40:27.660]for our eight acres outside of Lincoln.
- [00:40:30.720]What are some steps I could take
- [00:40:32.610]to formalize this partnership?
- [00:40:35.280]Could you share your bylaws or founding documents?"
- [00:40:39.210]Yes, I can totally share our bylaws.
- [00:40:45.750]And what you will need will be different for sure
- [00:40:49.140]than what I'll need, that what I needed.
- [00:40:51.600]But I can definitely share that
- [00:40:54.900]and you can riff off of that.
- [00:40:59.760]Yeah, and...
- [00:41:06.090]Yeah, I think one kind of formal way,
- [00:41:12.060]thing that I would suggest is the part of really accounting
- [00:41:19.140]for the capital that's been invested
- [00:41:22.200]and maybe requesting a certain amount
- [00:41:26.520]of skin in the game to be a full partner
- [00:41:29.670]or something like that.
- [00:41:33.030]Yeah, obviously you'll need to make that make sense
- [00:41:38.610]for everybody, or fair to everybody
- [00:41:41.760]in different means of being fair, but yeah.
- [00:41:49.650]Yeah, just really a lot of clarity
- [00:41:52.650]about what the power dynamics are currently
- [00:41:55.470]and what you want them to be ultimately.
- [00:41:57.960]And yeah, that's my best suggestion for now.
- [00:42:03.635]Yeah, and Nash, this question came from Nash.
- [00:42:06.330]And if that's something that you want some help with,
- [00:42:11.520]I think that's something
- [00:42:12.353]that Nebraska Cooperative Development Center could help
- [00:42:16.590]with those conversations, or thinking that through too.
- [00:42:20.850]So I just wanted to put that out there.
- [00:42:24.270]Okay, the next question is,
- [00:42:26.167]"What resources have you utilized over time to develop
- [00:42:30.360]the structure and agreements?
- [00:42:34.080]Are there any toolkits, websites, courses you'd recommend?"
- [00:42:40.320]Yeah, I mean, really,
- [00:42:43.470]the Sustainable Economies Law Center has,
- [00:42:46.500]I think they still have on their website
- [00:42:48.360]several different operating agreements
- [00:42:50.130]for worker-owned co-ops.
- [00:42:52.950]I don't know...
- [00:42:56.880]Yeah, I don't know what all they have,
- [00:42:58.260]but they definitely have worker-owned options
- [00:43:01.710]for ways of organizing.
- [00:43:06.180]Yeah, and I'll say that I'm also part
- [00:43:09.510]of the US Federation of Worker Co-Ops,
- [00:43:14.160]and so they've been a really fun group to engage with.
- [00:43:21.330]So it's really fun to been part of a,
- [00:43:27.135]a email listserv of worker owned co-op farms,
- [00:43:32.910]and it's fun to have just solidarity with people
- [00:43:35.400]who are thinking about the same kinds of things there.
- [00:43:38.100]So that's the US Federation of Worker Co-Ops.
- [00:43:43.680]Okay, and the second part of that question was,
- [00:43:47.737]"Any tips, any hot tips for farmers,
- [00:43:50.880]for busy farmers to actually make time
- [00:43:53.670]to hash out some of these agreements?
- [00:43:57.750]Or how do you have accountability towards what you decide,
- [00:44:06.660]and did you use a third party or a mediator
- [00:44:10.470]at any point in that process?"
- [00:44:13.380]So those are big questions, yeah.
- [00:44:14.820]Those are big questions, yeah.
- [00:44:23.970]Yeah, so I guess I came at farming from this,
- [00:44:31.110]I had explored kind of the idea of intentional community
- [00:44:34.710]for a long time.
- [00:44:35.640]So I came at farming ready to have meetings,
- [00:44:39.570]and ready to think about stuff with people.
- [00:44:43.140]I don't think Emily came with that much expectation of that,
- [00:44:48.990]but I kind of.
- [00:44:52.950]Yeah, I feel like clarity was really important
- [00:44:56.310]to both of us, and so we initially just spent
- [00:45:02.790]some really dedicated time to figuring out what we wanted.
- [00:45:12.360]And we didn't actually know each other that well
- [00:45:15.990]when we made our agreements,
- [00:45:18.090]which kind of was helpful in terms of needing to be clear
- [00:45:22.920]and not having these kind of underlying assumptions,
- [00:45:27.960]as many of them as one might
- [00:45:31.500]if you know each other super well.
- [00:45:35.460]So yeah, so we just in the winter, got together.
- [00:45:40.620]And then actually, since then,
- [00:45:42.810]every winter, every December,
- [00:45:46.470]usually we have our annual retreat,
- [00:45:49.650]where we just leave the farm for two days,
- [00:45:53.910]have someone else take care of the sheep,
- [00:45:58.060]and go through our budget, our plans for the year,
- [00:46:01.740]talk about our feelings,
- [00:46:03.450]talk about all the stuff that we need to talk about,
- [00:46:06.840]and make our crop plan and whatever.
- [00:46:08.490]So I highly recommend that, just the dedicated chunk of time
- [00:46:17.315]to really get through it all.
- [00:46:21.030]Yeah, and then in terms of mediator or that kind of thing,
- [00:46:26.760]I'll just say that what we've found or where we struggle
- [00:46:32.010]is not so much in the business agreements,
- [00:46:39.084]but we have gotten mediators
- [00:46:41.550]or people to facilitate conversations between us
- [00:46:47.661]about other things, and I think that's really valuable.
- [00:46:52.085]Last spring, we actually hired someone for our whole farm,
- [00:46:56.100]to talk through to help us get to know each other
- [00:47:00.480]'cause our employees were new at that point.
- [00:47:02.520]Help us get to know each other, get to know our expectations
- [00:47:07.043]and how we want, and come to an agreement
- [00:47:09.240]or come to a, yeah, a way of working together
- [00:47:14.340]an understanding of how we were gonna work together.
- [00:47:16.530]And so that was really useful,
- [00:47:20.010]and highly recommended and also quite expensive
- [00:47:23.370]for a farm to pay for, but I think worth it,
- [00:47:29.580]that time at least.
- [00:47:32.700]That's really interesting to have that,
- [00:47:36.702]and very helpful to have that third party kind of help
- [00:47:41.190]with those discussions,
- [00:47:42.660]that can be challenging sometimes without it.
- [00:47:50.040]Okay, Hannah, there's a question here.
- [00:47:54.450]It says,
- [00:47:55.283]"Have you watched "The Biggest Little Farm" documentary?"
- [00:47:59.730]I have seen that documentary, yes.
- [00:48:02.564]Do you have any feelings that you wanna share about it?
- [00:48:08.520]It was very beautiful,
- [00:48:10.200]and I didn't quite understand how they existed.
- [00:48:18.180]I don't know, in terms of how they actually bought
- [00:48:22.620]their land and stuck with it.
- [00:48:25.530]But yeah, it was beautiful documentary.
- [00:48:28.740]Gotcha, okay.
- [00:48:30.660]And there is a question of,
- [00:48:32.437]"What kind of sheep are you raising
- [00:48:35.010]and what are your main to market products?"
- [00:48:39.930]Our sheep are hair sheep.
- [00:48:43.050]They're a Katahdin-Dorper cross.
- [00:48:47.880]And yeah, and so mostly we bring cuts of lamb
- [00:48:57.270]to Farmer's Market, and we sell wholes and halves to,
- [00:49:01.260]Well, whole lambs to individuals who want them
- [00:49:05.190]for their freezers.
- [00:49:06.270]So yeah, so at Farmer's Market,
- [00:49:10.140]we basically just sell lamb chops, ground lamb,
- [00:49:14.610]lamb stew meat, and shanks, and that's it.
- [00:49:20.460]We have realized that legs are big enough,
- [00:49:24.870]that they're pricey enough,
- [00:49:25.980]that it's pretty hard to move them at Farmer's Market,
- [00:49:29.010]so we don't really sell legs at Farmer's Market
- [00:49:34.680]unless someone really asks for it in advance.
- [00:49:39.900]Yeah, that's for sure a special treat.
- [00:49:45.180]Okay, so there's a couple more questions.
- [00:49:50.400]One is, "I see from the website that you refer
- [00:49:53.130]to the commons at the farm.
- [00:49:55.470]Is this modeled after the agrarian commons?"
- [00:49:59.850]And the follow up to that,
- [00:50:01.867]"Any challenges as you navigate
- [00:50:04.230]the emotional personality side of a cooperative?"
- [00:50:11.160]Yeah, so the agrarian commons first, I love them.
- [00:50:15.210]And basically, we made our, on idea of the commons,
- [00:50:20.850]we did that completely separate from them,
- [00:50:24.030]but kind of at the same time.
- [00:50:25.710]They were starting at the same time,
- [00:50:27.630]and I found out about them as we had already fully developed
- [00:50:33.600]our idea of the commons.
- [00:50:35.340]So our idea of the commons
- [00:50:38.035]is a kind of internal business accounting thing
- [00:50:43.740]to kind of hold ourselves to the idea that,
- [00:50:47.700]okay, we receive these gifts
- [00:50:49.080]and they have to be passed along,
- [00:50:51.390]and they have to keep doing that,
- [00:50:54.630]keep serving the purpose that they were originally gifted
- [00:50:57.300]for from our community.
- [00:51:00.720]And the agrarian commons on the other hand
- [00:51:02.370]is more of a land trust model,
- [00:51:08.220]which is basically a community,
- [00:51:11.730]It's community kind of nonprofit ownership of land
- [00:51:16.070]and then the community
- [00:51:17.490]or the board of this nonprofit structure is the landlord
- [00:51:24.150]and holds itself to all these values
- [00:51:27.570]while it leases land to farmers.
- [00:51:29.610]So I love the agrarian commons.
- [00:51:31.710]I kind of wonder if that's a way for our farm
- [00:51:35.850]to go in the future.
- [00:51:39.570]I've thought about it a lot,
- [00:51:41.977]but as it is right now, we're a pretty separate thing.
- [00:51:49.740]Oh yeah, the challenge,
- [00:51:51.060]the emotional or personality challenges involved in farming
- [00:51:56.250]or being in a cooperative with other people.
- [00:51:59.190]Yeah, so I think an important thing to acknowledge
- [00:52:05.340]is that both Emily and I, and any future members,
- [00:52:13.500]opt in to being part of a cooperative.
- [00:52:16.230]So we already have enough kind of personality proclivities
- [00:52:24.840]in the direction of working together
- [00:52:27.300]and being a cooperative.
- [00:52:31.650]So that's, yeah, that's useful.
- [00:52:34.470]And the clearer we are with our operating agreements
- [00:52:38.910]and all of that,
- [00:52:41.490]then the clearer it is for people
- [00:52:44.100]whether or not they want to work in that kind of context.
- [00:52:49.530]So yeah, so there's that.
- [00:52:57.870]But yeah, I mean, I think it has felt important
- [00:53:04.080]to give everybody autonomy in their work,
- [00:53:11.880]even as we're kind of working together
- [00:53:15.000]and we're working toward the same goals,
- [00:53:16.710]but everyone getting to make their own decisions
- [00:53:21.343]about their realms of work,
- [00:53:27.390]I think has felt really important to both Emily and I
- [00:53:30.330]at any rate.
- [00:53:31.163]And yeah.
- [00:53:36.720]Did that come naturally?
- [00:53:40.380]Was it easy to determine who was gonna do what,
- [00:53:44.370]or who wanted to do take on more of one thing,
- [00:53:48.300]or what did that look like?
- [00:53:51.630]Yeah, I think our first year we wrote a list
- [00:53:54.930]of all the, before our first year,
- [00:53:57.150]we wrote a list of all the farm tasks that there were,
- [00:54:00.300]that we could think of, and we were like,
- [00:54:02.107]"Okay, who's in charge of this part of things?"
- [00:54:05.940]And there were some things that were really obvious,
- [00:54:07.830]like, Emily is excellent at making vegetables beautiful
- [00:54:11.670]so she runs the wash station.
- [00:54:14.040]And I like to think about finances
- [00:54:18.150]and so I do the accounting and the bookkeeping.
- [00:54:23.040]And yeah, so that kind of, some of those were really easy.
- [00:54:30.150]And then others of those, it's like,
- [00:54:31.537]"Who's in charge of weeding?"
- [00:54:33.960]We're all in, everyone's in charge of weeding, so yeah.
- [00:54:45.120]Yeah, we've started doing a weekly walk every day,
- [00:54:51.000]every week on Monday mornings,
- [00:54:53.790]where we just go around the farm
- [00:54:55.410]and we figure out what needs to be done.
- [00:54:59.340]And so it's all in all of our minds,
- [00:55:02.190]and it's really interesting to kind of see,
- [00:55:05.340]oh yeah, these people really are focused
- [00:55:09.540]on weeding the carrots,
- [00:55:11.340]and these people are really focused on harvesting
- [00:55:16.410]the beans on time or whatever.
- [00:55:19.050]So yeah, so it just kind of settles out,
- [00:55:23.790]but as long as we're in communication
- [00:55:26.100]in this regular way,
- [00:55:27.270]and as long as everyone has kind of the agency
- [00:55:30.450]and the autonomy to say, "I really think this is important,
- [00:55:33.450]I wanna do that, or I need help doing this,
- [00:55:36.390]will someone help me do this, whatever."
- [00:55:39.810]It's been working out pretty well.
- [00:55:42.660]Great, that's great.
- [00:55:44.220]Yeah, and everybody weeds, that's just life.
- [00:55:47.023]Everybody weeds.
- [00:55:48.900]There was a question about exiting
- [00:55:54.330]and entrances into your co-op,
- [00:55:56.760]but we'll see if I get this right.
- [00:55:58.710]If someone wants to enter,
- [00:56:01.080]they have an initial capital investment
- [00:56:04.560]and then it's kind of the hour based.
- [00:56:08.280]Yeah, we get paid a salary based on
- [00:56:11.220]an assumption that we're working equal numbers of hours.
- [00:56:14.070]Yeah.
- [00:56:15.150]And then the capital of our farm
- [00:56:16.740]is held in capital accounts.
- [00:56:18.720]And yeah, a new member would be expected to contribute
- [00:56:22.830]at least $5,000 to a capital account to start.
- [00:56:26.040]And then the exit would,
- [00:56:29.400]seems like it involves other members buying that person out
- [00:56:34.380]over a period of time?
- [00:56:36.330]Yep.
- [00:56:37.230]Oh, right, okay.
- [00:56:38.880]All right, so I just have...
- [00:56:42.150]I'm sad, but we are almost at time
- [00:56:45.120]and I was hoping to ask you one last question,
- [00:56:49.230]and that's really,
- [00:56:52.290]if someone is considering a cooperative,
- [00:56:56.220]maybe a worker cooperative or something like that,
- [00:57:01.050]what advice would you give them now that you've been doing
- [00:57:05.700]it for some years and have some perspective on it?
- [00:57:13.830]What's a piece of advice you'd share?
- [00:57:16.530]Yeah, I mean, I think the most important stuff
- [00:57:21.240]is the kind of soft skills stuff for a worker-owned co-op.
- [00:57:27.750]To really get in touch with your own needs
- [00:57:32.310]for quality of life, and get in touch
- [00:57:34.860]and be willing to hear other people's needs.
- [00:57:41.310]And yeah, to just make sure you're in alignment
- [00:57:44.430]with the people that you're working with.
- [00:57:47.070]And yeah, see what makes sense for how to kind of bend
- [00:57:55.320]toward each other's needs and ways of doing things.
- [00:58:05.233]Yeah, it definitely feels like the hard skills can follow
- [00:58:12.270]from just those softer, squishier emotional things.
- [00:58:19.110]As long as everyone's grounded and feels good
- [00:58:22.800]about what they're all working toward.
- [00:58:26.460]So yeah, that's my encouragement,
- [00:58:28.770]to just have big, deep conversations with the people
- [00:58:34.260]that you're working with and really make sure you understand
- [00:58:37.530]what's going on with them.
- [00:58:41.670]That's wonderful, thank you, Hannah.
- [00:58:43.560]Yeah, sometimes the soft skills are the hardest to develop,
- [00:58:49.860]and it's been really great
- [00:58:51.960]to hear about what you're doing
- [00:58:54.796]and how you're setting things up on your farm
- [00:58:58.080]to continue with other people
- [00:59:00.960]and continue in that community.
- [00:59:03.540]So I really appreciate you being here, and thank you.
- [00:59:09.870]Yeah.
- [00:59:11.040]Yeah, and I would like to thank all the participants
- [00:59:16.830]for hanging out with us, asking really good questions.
- [00:59:21.780]I'll send a recording of this session to you sometime
- [00:59:27.510]in the next few days.
- [00:59:29.550]And if you need clarification or you wanna get in touch,
- [00:59:35.370]I'll put my email in the chat box.
- [00:59:44.010]And thank you to NCDC and Real Cooperative Development.
- [00:59:51.330]Yeah, if you guys wanna,
- [00:59:53.160]you have questions about cooperatives
- [00:59:55.140]or cooperative development, you wanna talk through an idea,
- [01:00:00.000]please be in touch.
- [01:00:01.080]And Hannah, thank you again, I hope you have a good day.
- [01:00:04.770]I hope everybody has a good day
- [01:00:06.660]and you're not too bogged down by wind, or rain,
- [01:00:09.900]or snow if it's in your area.
- [01:00:12.210]So thank you.
- [01:00:14.160]Thanks everybody, it was a pleasure.
- [01:00:42.427](indistinct)
- [01:00:44.835]Hi, Charlotte.
- [01:00:45.677]You're still recording?
- [01:00:49.290]Oh, are you sure you want to stop.
The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!
You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.
Log in to post comments
Embed
Copy the following code into your page
HTML
<div style="padding-top: 56.25%; overflow: hidden; position:relative; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex-grow: 1;"> <iframe style="bottom: 0; left: 0; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; border: 0; height: 100%; width: 100%;" src="https://mediahub.unl.edu/media/20243?format=iframe&autoplay=0" title="Video Player: Cooperative Innovation in the Food System, Session #2" allowfullscreen ></iframe> </div>
Comments
0 Comments