In which we confess to lofty aspirations and the willingness to pay to work.

Recently, there has been some critique directed at our community.  While we typically prefer to disengage ourselves from drama, it has occurred to us that this might be a good opportunity to set the record straight, as it were, regarding what we do here.  Communities are set up in so many ways, and we know that what we do is a bit different from most.  

Finney Farm is land trust. We are a farm. We are families. We are homesteaders. We are teachers and students.  We are a community.  The three tenants of Finney Farm are conservation, community, and education; these goals are in our articles of incorporation, and they are the basis of all of our endeavors.  

And we have lots of endeavors.  We have gotten quite used to doing things on a shoestring budget, so being low income doesn’t hold us back as much as you’d think.  Our seed distro is a good example of this.  What began as a few packets to friends or locals has grown far beyond our expectations.  Between February and May of 2014, we distributed 7000 packages of heirloom, open pollinated seeds, at no charge, to schools, community gardens, food banks, and households.   In the past 5 years, we estimate approximately 20,000 packages were distributed, which has a retail value of over $60K.  And we gave them all away for free.

And what exactly goes into this?  We begin with planting seeds ourselves, growing and caring for the plants before harvesting the seed.  We do not use tractors, and with the exception of the initial tilling, all of our garden work is done by hand.  In many cases this is a two year commitment to weeding, watering, making and adding our own biodynamic tea, etc.  After we harvest the seed, we dry it (or ferment and then dry in the case of many cucurbits or nightshades) and most seed will need processing or threshing of some sort. We do this entirely by hand, as we cannot afford mechanized processing equipment.  This takes a heck of a long time.  After the seed is sorted and cured, we meticulously and monotonously print labels, affix labels to envelopes, fill the packets, seal the packets, and arrange neatly in bins.  When we give the seed away, we sometimes fill our handmade seed racks or attend events. At some of these events, we have to pay a tabling fee to give our seeds away for free. We also receive seed donation requests and ship around the country, the postage and further packaging all on our dime. 

Another thing we do is offer events.  Our longest running event is the Southside Social and Barn Dance which draws a host people.    The bands generously donate their time, and we sell t-shirts and espresso to help cover our costs; many people drop something in the donation jar as well. This event costs us about $1800 in actual money spent out of pocket, and most years we miraculously cover the expenses.  This year, due to weather, we found ourselves about $400 short. 

We don’t have outside funding.  Well, that’s not entirely true. In the 16 years that I have personally been part of this community, we have received $2654 in grant funding.  A pretty darn small amount in the big picture, but we were VERY glad to receive the assistance.  Mostly, everything that we do is funded by our members.  Each year at our annual meeting, we look over our projected expenses and pick a few projects from the wish list, and create a budget based on this.  The residents divide this amount between them and make monthly payments. 

We also have some other income, like our CSA and events .  But because we’re terrible capitalists, we find ourselves still in the red.

We take in about $1000 in gross income with our CSA each year.  We spend about $2500 on our WWOOF program (sort of a farm intern program) on food alone.  These workers normally arrive absolutely untrained, and almost without exception, do not make enough of a contribution to cover the cost of hosting them. The primary reason we host these people is because we want to help them learn important skills, so that they can help create a healthier food system and become more self-sufficient.  We absolutely lose money on this program.  In 2013, our members spent well over 800 hours (20 weeks of full time work for one person) booking and managing the WWOOF crew.  Because we are very experienced workers ourselves, our labor goes a lot further than a WWOOFer, and 800 hours is more time that we would need to grow the same amount of food without the help.  We would also save $2500+, and free up some housing.  But we’ve hosted hundreds of these people over the past decade, and we think they (and we) are better for it.  

We also sometimes receive money by hosting events.  As bad capitalists but terrific lefties, we will usually host without payment for purely educational events offered free to the public. We have recently received criticism regarding an event, and I feel that it would be good to give some insight  on this. 

Since we have hosted many, many events over the years, we know that a larger event requires a fair amount of prep work on our part.  A crew of 5 will spend one full day preparing the grounds, setting up signage, prepping classroom and performing spaces; plus two members will need to take a least one day off of work-this will actually cost them a combined total of $400; and even with a good clean crowd, we’ll still need a crew of 5 to spend at least a half day putting everything away.  Additionally, one of us will have to bottom line the parking/gate crew in order to get everyone parked and camped in the right spots. We usually volunteer to set up a community kitchen space (and provide tables, pavilions, stove, bbq, fuel, etc), and sometimes we offer a free tea kitchen. At the very least, we will have invested well over 120 labor hours, $400 in lost wages, and at least $200 in out of pocket expenses just to host an event. This doesn't include the regular maintenance of facilities (composting toilets or outhouses, repairs on buildings, etc), or the decades of work invested in reclaiming the land and getting the infrastructure to the point that we could even host this sort of thing.

None of our members will receive a dime, not even lost wage reimbursement, for an event.  All of the money goes to our land trust, where it will be added to the budget in order to make improvements on…you guessed it…our ability to offer better facilities to future groups and events. This money is entirely used to support future events.  The residents of Finney Farm don’t actually need an outdoor kitchen, or a 500 square foot indoor classroom, or a well drilled at the barn.   But we believe the greater community could make good use of these things.  We have the land and the ability, we feel it is our duty to help create a place where people can gather to learn, play, and connect. It’s possible that we may eventually “turn a profit” at some point, but looking at the maintenance list alone, it doesn’t seem likely in the next decade. 

We host events out of our desire to build community, not fill our pockets.  We consider Finney Farm to be our life’s work.  Our members don’t get paid.  When someone drops $20 in the donation jar, that money goes to the farm, not our members.  

We made the last payment on the back 40 acres in 2006.  We don’t have debt.  If we didn’t want to do good work here, our budget would drop to the point that my household alone would pay about $5000 less per year.  Seriously.  Our budget is comprised of taxes, a few consumables for the common house, and projects/events related to our goals of education and community. What we do here, we do because we believe in it.  It may not be for everyone, but you can count on the fact that we believe in what we're doing enough to work very, very, hard for it.  And pay to do it.