Creating a community

In advance - sorry for the wall of text!

As I mentioned in this post, I have been thinking about our community of farmers a lot lately.  We run in to each other at events, where we can chat for an hour (or more!) after the event, catching up and sharing information, ideas, and ideals.  There are a few organizations that want to help us new farmers who have our contact information, such as Jillian at Beyond the Market (who also has a list of local farms and an email list for their newsletter) and Garry and Wendy at Twin Meadows Organics.  However, there's no system set up for us to contact each other.  As I've been catching up with new and familiar faces at events, we've all mentioned a desire for more communication within our community, not just from third parties.  I do not want to replace what Jillian is doing for us, as she is a fabulous workshop organizer, a wonderful source of information, inspiration, and advice, and a tireless advocate for all farmers in the region.  What I would like to see is a way for us new and young (and experienced!) farmers to collaborate; there are certain things each of us needs to know (farm status info, where to find tractor implements, good fencing suppliers, etc), and certain things each type of farm needs to know (sources of seeds/breeding stock/young animals/feed, innovative designs for greenhouses/heated waterers/livestock pens and chutes, etc).  There are also some of us who have other time commitments that keep us from farming full time (for example, Jordan and I are both working full time), and also limit the time that can be spent researching.  If every farmer in the region who wants to do chickens this year has to independently find suppliers for chicks, feed, and necessary items, each one would be spending probably at least 4 hours gathering this information.  If 6 farms want to do chickens, that's 24 hours spent researching.  We could collaborate on this, and one person checks out chick suppliers, another checks out local feed producers, and a third stops at the farm stores in town to check prices of equipment, it would be less work for each farmer, and many other farmers could benefit if that knowledge is shared with the group.  If we build a repository of this information that each of us is collecting, we would all save time and money (fuel, phone bill, and we all know time is money) and we'd build a supportive community at the same time.  We could also get together for work parties, harvest potlucks, and other social events.  (Ideally, I'd love to see a makerspace or co-op workshop set up in the future, but that's a little extreme to be thinking of at this time.)

So, what I'm hoping to build is an online space where we can get to know each other, communicate amongst us, share information and ideas, and collaborate to develop innovative solutions.  There are two parts to this: communication and knowledge-sharing.  I've chatted with Tessa and Matt (another young farming couple) and Cam (a student at the local university where I work and a young farmer) about how we can best set this up.

Communication has a shorter lifespan than sharing; email works great, but it can be hard for each of us to build an email list of like-minded farmers.  A few ideas:

• Develop an email list - I've thought about this one pretty extensively.  I can easily build a Google form to capture information from each of us, and then email the link to the results to everyone who submits their info.
• Listserv - similar to the email list, but we wouldn't get as much any info about the subscribers, and the sender has no connection to the receivers
• Forum - captures the conversations, and allows anyone else to join in
• Google groups - in my experience, they can be a bit clunky, and end up being similar to a listserv
• Facebook group - like this one (it's a closed group, but I requested to join and was added with no problems); creates a neutral place for people to post and discuss things, and allows others to join in, can be public or private

Sharing knowledge requires a stable online space that is easily organized and fully searchable.  Potential solutions:

• Forum - like this one; can be public or private, easy to set up, organize, and search
• Wiki - like this one (good find Cam!); easy to organize and search, must know a bit about wikis to add or edit a page; can be public or private
• Co-op blog or website - like this or this; more difficult to organize and search, must know a bit of website coding, can be managed by one person or multiple people, or allow posts from many contributors
• Google docs - like the ones on my Resources page; harder to organize (unless there is a doc for each sub-subject), can be edited by one person or by many, can't search across multiple docs

In my opinion, a forum might be the best way to go; Tessa, Matt and Cam seem to agree.  It is easy to set up an area for communication (with a thread for introductions, gathering the info I would have asked for in the Google form when I was thinking of an email list - good thought Matt!) where people can chat about anything by starting a thread.  There can be another area for knowledge and ideas, which can be organized into subcategories (suppliers, plans and designs, events, resources, etc) and into threads (for example, in the suppliers section, there can be a sub-forum or a thread for chickens where we can post about the best local organic feed producers).  We should be able to make the introductions thread members-only, so our email addresses and whatnot wouldn't be out there for spammers to access.

So, fellow farmers, what say you?  Are you interested in being part of this community?  What do you think is the best way for us to accomplish this?  Comment below (please sign your comment with your name so we know who you are if you are commenting anonymously!), or email me at lonepinefarmbc[at]gmail[dot]com.

Please send this post out to all of the farmers you know, so we can reach everyone - just grab the link from the address bar in your browser :)