Getting started

These first five years at Red Planet have been exciting for us. Sometimes a little too exciting. For one thing, we've had to change location three times! It's hard to keep the details straight, but each year consisted of clearing, nurturing or gardening some new patchwork combination of the following venues:

• a rock strewn but idyllic hayfield ½ mile down a dirt trail in North Rehoboth.

• a bullet casing strewn Federal Hill back lot, which we turned into a compost-strewn greenhouse.

• a trash strewn Olneyville hillside, which we are trying to strew with awesome.

• a loamy paddock on the holdings of a South Rehoboth blue-blood (and our subsequent flight, in terror.)

• an abandoned Federal Hill garden, with some unique but hard-to-describe challenges.

• a 300 year-old farmstead in Johnston which has been owned by the same family since 1780, and they're really great people who want to keep their farm a farm and not make it into a huge Rite-Aid.

As you know, this is a good way to develop a plotline for a quirky novel, but not a good method of organic gardening. Any business has start-up costs, and farming particularly so. If you're unfamiliar with the business of sustainable farming, imagine spending your life savings and a year of your life opening a restaurant, then imagine moving the place across town after only being open for 6 months, oh, and you have to buy all new tables, chairs, dishwasher... maybe you get to keep the stove. It's analogous to what we've done once a year or so, and it's been a thorn in the side of an otherwise great market-gardening business.

Starting from scratch so often has taught us a lot: we've learned to be pretty lean as a business, and we've learned to grow vegetables intensively on small urban plots. But this constant movement has kept us from recovering our start-up debt or achieving financial stability.

We think this year could change that. With our three city gardens and an amazing opportunity in Johnston, things are finally feeling stable. Jenny and her brother Chris, the owners of Mathewson Farm, are really happy to see the land being farmed again, after being untended for over 20 years. And we are glad to finally be in a situation that truly makes sense for us. The fact that this farm is being preserved is thanks to years of Jenny's hard work and determination, which resulted in the department of agriculture purchasing the development rights in late 2008. This achievement guarantees that the land will be preserved for agriculture. All of us want to see this farm become a vibrant part of the community once again. And the time has come for Red Planet to try something new: a CSA during the traditional growing season. We are inviting you, as members of our community, to join us in making it happen.

Community Supported Agriculture

Many of you reading this have been members of our very experimental winter CSA, but this one is different. Accentuating the community component of Community Supported Agriculture, we are happy to have found 20 people who will work with us at Mathewson Farm and in our city gardens as core members of our new CSA.

We are in our second year of production at this beautiful historic farm, just 3.5 pleasantly bikable miles from the west side of Providence. There's a lot of work to do. This year we will be planting 1.5 acres: starting with peas and radishes along with the sweet and spicy greens of spring. Followed by favas, string beans, shell beans, and all sorts of crazy cucumbers, plus summer squash and beets and turnips and cabbage, and of course, tomatoes, eggplant and hot peppers. And a great variety of greens and herbs. Plus a few other things.

As a core member, we are asking you to be deeply involved in the organization and running of the CSA, choosing work that suits you. Possible jobs include:

• Harvesters: picking, washing, and, if necessary, transporting vegetables to the pickup site.

• Distribution: dividing up the harvest, and organizing the pickup.

• Weekly Chores: glamorous repetitive menial labor. Including weeders, mowers, and occasionally bug squishers.

• Communications: keeping track of membership, maybe writing a newsletter or setting up a website.

• Event Planner: picnics and potlucks, plus meetings, and maybe workdays.

• Crunch Time Help: folks who can put in a day's work when we have a whole bunch of transplanting, or trellising, or harvesting to get done.

• Projects: if you've got a particular interest in working on something a little more complicated, like irrigation, building fences, or cleaning up the borders of the field. Maybe some repairs to the barn, or general maintenance of tools and machinery.

Divvying up these tasks means that we would ask for around 15-20 hours of work per person for the entire season. It also means that members are more involved in decision-making on the farm. This, in our view, would make the farm more responsive to the needs of our membership, and will more evenly distribute the share of mosquito bites throughout the group.

And of course, adding this work component means that we can ask less for the cost of a full share; $350 to $450 (depending on what you can afford) for 24 weeks of produce, starting mid-May. Weekly shares will likely be worth between $15-25; more during the height of the season. We're also thinking about a special share for Picklers, Canners, Preservers and Brewers. But let's discuss all of this! We'll have fun, and grow some delicious food.