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.

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[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.

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Cooperative Innovation in the Food System, Session #2

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