 My name is Maude Powell and we're here on our farm, Wolf Gulch Farm, we're in the Little Applegate Valley and my husband and I have been farming here for about 17 years with our kids who are 17 and 13. And I also work at Oregon State University at the Small Farms Program. So I run that program in Jackson and Josephine counties. And then my husband and I coordinate the SISCUE Sustainable Cooperative, which is an agricultural cooperative of seven farms in the Applegate Williams valleys. And it's primarily a marketing and distribution cooperative. In addition, there's some equipment sharing and bulk buying that we do as well. But it's primarily we run a community supported agriculture program. We had 275 members this year. So community boxes that we were distributing from Grants Pass down to Ashland and lots of the towns between them. So we coordinate that CSA program. And so the other members of the SISCUE Sustainable Cooperative are Seven Seeds Farm, Dancing Bear Farm, Sunspirit Farm, Wandering Fields, Barking Moon Farm, L&R Family Farm. And I always feel bad about the one I missed. Maybe that's it. Let me just think Barking Moon. Well, Wolf Gulch. So our farm. Yeah, so that's the seven farms. So our first season on the farm was 1999. And but that year was mostly building infrastructure. So I think we weren't we started at markets in 2000. Yeah, so it was fairly early on in the life of our farm. But it didn't necessarily feel like a risk. Like I said, I mean, the bar was kind of low. I mean, we did inherit some debt. Although we were coordinating it. So it wasn't as if we personally inherited it was the co-ops debt. And we were sort of mandated to get rid of the debt in a few years and pay off the farmers. Because the co-op at this point is really just about organizing the CSA. We meet throughout the winter that the CSA program runs. We deliver boxes from early June through November. So basically until Thanksgiving. So the winter months are freed up for us to do crop planning and marketing. So essentially the growers meet. We meet about every other week in the in the winter. I just want to add that the meetings are really fun. There's often beer drinking involved, but it's always a laugh. And I think that's part of what makes our co-op great and functional is that we enjoy each other's company and meetings are not a burden. They're actually really enjoyable. So we meet through the winter months and we essentially decide on who's going to grow what during the season. So we have pretty complex spreadsheets at this point. Diving up the farm, depending on what the crop is, into four or five or six compartments, whether that's months or parts of the season. And so farmers essentially get to decide what they want to grow, what's going to work into their individual production plans on their farms. It might have to do with the cash flow for them. If they need money in the early spring, they might focus more on spring crops, etc. So it's kind of a bidding system. We do, if a farmer has successfully grown a crop the past season, then they kind of get first dibs at growing that crop again. In some cases, there's some negotiating that happens because some crops are more profitable than others. Some are less appealing, for example, things that you have to harvest a lot of peas and beans can be hard to get people to grow. So sometimes we all share the burden and take on growing some of those. But we've been doing it for Tom and I have been coordinating the co-op for 12. This is our 12th season. So we're pretty seasoned at it. We've kind of gone through a lot of bumps in the road. The co-op we've dealt with pretty serious issues, probably the biggest one we've faced is quality control. So figuring out what are our standards and how do we make sure that at pack out when we're packing out the boxes and something is of inferior quality, how we flag that, how we process that as a co-op. So there's been negotiating through the years, but we have, I think, done a really good job of figuring out systems that work. It looks like we've got some nice green lettuce. We've got kale, parsley, broccoli, so that's a nice good fall greens. And then down underneath here, we've got some winter squash, it looks like. Let's see. Sun gold, cherry tomatoes, sweet peppers, so still some good summer stuff. Eggplants, summer squash, onions, and last but not least, I'm gonna guess potatoes, let's see. Oh nice, purple viking, beautiful potatoes. What's your favorite part of the pack out? Oh, all the good company. Donuts. I am putting the lids on the boxes so they can be loaded in the truck and delivered to the several, like 10 drop points from Rand's House, Bedford, Sunfield Point, Ashland. One day. How long have you been doing this? I am two remaining since 04. Yeah, three. When did we start? Oh, three? I don't know. Yeah, the red around there, that sounds right. You're a dancing bear. I am. Yeah, there's two of the original crew left. I do it in a much smaller capacity than a lot of these guys. I have marquettes and a lot of seed crops I do as well. Why have you stuck with it, Steve? It's fun. And you get comments from customers, mostly good. Like, oh, that lettuce was amazing. And I know that I had all the lettuce, so I feel good. And it's farming. You grow food, you sell it, you deliver it, and this is good food. Our CSA boxes, our drop points are either a local business or they are someone's house. And so like in Ashland, we have four drop points. We've done a lot in the CSA with doing partnerships with businesses and corporations. So we work with Asante and All Care and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. And we actually deliver to their places of work. But mostly it's in towns, but in a couple of cases, they're more urban drop points. We're all drop points, sorry. Want to be on camera? He's really camera shy. So the co-op started in 2002. And there was kind of a loose affiliation of farmers in the Applegate Valley. They were called the Applegate Agrarians. And they ran a harvest fair in the fall together. And they kind of did some informal, you know, buying of quantity inputs and marketing, sharing booths at farmer's markets and such. But like I said, it was fairly informal. And then in 2002, a man moved to Williams who had experience with business and financing. So he had worked for Dell and Kodak. And he wanted to get into the sustainable lifestyle, but he brought this whole skill set with him. And he really saw a huge advantage to this group of farmers getting more serious, writing a business plan, getting incorporated with the state. So he was able to secure funding from Oregon Department of Agriculture to write a business plan and to have this group of farmers incorporate. It was a guy called Rob Hamilton. Now, I was pregnant at the time, so I was not attending these meetings. Tom went to some of them. But what I hear is that they were really difficult. There were a lot of farmers that started off in the co-op. Then there was attrition as disagreements came up. The business plan that was written is, I have a copy somewhere, and it's really visionary and far-reaching. And it has a lot of great components, things like shared healthcare for farmers, a large processing facility that was going to be built in Williams for seed processing, a value-added kitchen, commercial kitchen. But essentially, and this is my interpretation, but there were ways that there was not enough planning that was done. So for example, there was a farm stand built on Highway 238, and the farm stand quickly went into debt because there really wasn't enough analysis about traffic patterns and staffing and how to differentiate products between the growers. So we were really not very involved the first couple of years because Tom had an off-farm job. I was taking care of the kids. We were just had a fairly small operation here. But the co-op at that point did go into debt. We took over in 2005 was the first year we ran the CSA, and so we inherited some debt, not a huge amount, but some debt in the co-op that we were able to pay off within a couple of years. And so at that point when we took over, it was kind of a skeleton crew. There were only a few farmers that were still interested in trying this cooperative venture. So in a way it was good. The bar was set really low for us. I think at that point there were maybe five farmers that were involved. And so we just kind of have gradually built it up over the years. We have had the same farmers in the co-op since 2007. So we lost one farmer because he moved. But aside from that, we have not lost any farmers from 2007. We've also not added any because we're really kind of at a sweet spot. The seven farms is just about right in terms of what our capacity is for the CSA members in terms of just the logistics of coordinating farmers. We have certainly talked about growing, but we're also cognizant of growing pains that could make the co-op a lot less fun to be a part of, possibly less profitable, more complicated. So we're pretty happy with how things are. We do offer some special items. We offer, in terms of adding new growers to the cooperative or producers, we do buy in bread from Rise Up Bakery, and we buy chev and feta from Mamaterra, the micro-creamery at Williams. We do bring in honey and eggs from other producers. And then additionally, there are times of the year where we do buy in berries from Pennington Farm because our producers don't have necessarily berries early in the season. So there's a couple parts to it in terms of adding new members. One is that the growers don't necessarily want to share in what they're able to produce for the co-op. So they don't necessarily want to add a new grower and then have a smaller piece of the pie. The other issue really has to do with personalities and group dynamics. And over the years, I've been asked to speak on panels. I've consulted with other groups. I've had a lot of opportunities where someone will come to me and say, hey, you know, I really want to start a co-op like yours. And I'm always happy to share whatever I can with them and, you know, our experience and the challenges we faced and why I think our co-op works. But ultimately, I think it is really challenging to have a group of producers that works as well as we do together. And like I said, that really enjoys each other. And I think that we're really committed to each other's farms. So there's some great examples of just where people have stepped up to help each other in times of need or just, you know, really like, I talk a lot about like social capital and building social capital. And I think there's so much of that in our co-op because we know each other's families. You know, over the years, our kids have grown up at Pack Out. Like I said, we share equipment. We exchange so much information is exchanged during Pack Out. So I just want to record Pack Out because people will talk about, you know, what varieties of lettuce they're doing well or what pest issues they're dealing with or, you know, impacts of... Oh, sorry, yeah. So Pack Out happens every Thursday morning. And it's the point where all the... we're actually building the CSA boxes. So the farmers all get together. We actually meet at Eleanor Family Farm because they're the most centrally located. And so we lay out all the boxes. Everyone brings their produce. And then we distribute the produce amongst the boxes, pack the boxes into the two distribution vehicles. And the whole process takes about an hour and a half. And it's like, people come to Pack Out. You know, we'll have interns come or occasionally a guest will come. And it's like one of these sort of peak experiences of it's almost like, to me, it's like being in a hive. Like you're a worker being a hive and you have this... You know, it's well orchestrated. Tom is very organized. So he kind of runs the show. And so it's this like satisfying feeling of getting a ton of work done. Like you think we're packing 275 boxes of food for people. And it just kind of happens and you're like working with all these other people and it's sort of this like really intricate dance. And it's highly efficient, which I think is satisfying for people as a part of a system that works. And like I said, all this information is exchanged. It's fun. We started playing music at Pack Out this year. You know, someone brings a stereo in their car and plays music. So it's really like celebratory. And a lot of farmers, like you said, a lot of farmers do go to markets. So they kind of get that experience of being with other farmers and being part of a system with a lot of moving parts that's satisfying. And in the case of market, you know, you're able to interact with your customers and get instant feedback on your produce, which we don't get with the CSA. But I do think it's great. And then unlike farmers market at 9.15, the farmer drives away and has the rest of the day to work on their farm and do whatever they need to do. And they're not stuck at market until 2 or 3 p.m. Having to schlep everything home. Okay, so Stevens, and this will be a Sante. This gets hot peppers. Okay, next. I stacked some over here. I don't know if we're doing this fast. Okay, we got them. Of course they aren't. It gets hot peppers. I was just talking to Tomo. Seems like we don't have enough sauce. We got them. I just missed them. 42 total. Sorry. 42 or so. And then pour it out. Put the... I mean, I think part of what's nice to pack out too is just being with... Yeah, just being with people that are living the same reality you are. I mean, I think farming is, you know, it's coming back but I think it's still... It's unusual to be a farmer and we do live in a rural community so there are people working on the land but, you know, most people are in front of a computer most of the day or inside and so having people that are, you know, similar values and that are doing what you're doing most days is, I think it's great. What have been some of the biggest challenges that you've seen in kind of growing and maintaining the co-op? Yeah, so the biggest issues I would say that we've dealt with in the co-op are quality control and I think some of that is... was a little bit of a philosophical difference within the co-op so there were certain people in the co-op who felt like we need to educate people about eating seconds so you can't always expect everything to be cosmetically perfect and that's... that whole value system is something we need to get rid of and people need to learn that, you know, if you've got a few holes in your carrots it's not a big deal. Other people in the co-op actually felt like hey, we're marketing organic produce here this is really about having a successful business we need to have high quality we're competing with grocery stores and ultimately that camp kind of won out so we... what we did as a group is we sat down again there was beer involved which made it fun and we... we went through every item that we offer so every vegetable and fruit and we actually created um... benchmarks so whether it was... some of it was size because people would... farmers would show up to pack out with different sized bunches of beets and so we had to make some sort of um... standards so whether it was, you know, the beets need to be the size of a golf ball or larger or you're only allowed to have two blemishes on an apple and neither of them can be um... like a real hole um... so that type of thing I don't think we allow two two holes in apples by the way um... so we went through every single crop and came up with standards and then we came up with a protocol so there's one thing to have the standards but then our people meeting them so we came up with a simple outline for when you're putting and one... one rule we have is that you do not distribute your own produce you have to... your produce has to be distributed by another farmer because we want more sets of eyes on it so if you're distributing someone's produce and you see that it doesn't mean quality standards it's not personal we try to make a culture of it's fine to flag something it doesn't mean that you're narking on your, you know, neighbor farmer so you would say hey guys I'm seeing an issue um... the farmers all gather around at that point the farmer who brought the produce can either choose to go through and glean it on the spot and then adjust their invoice to um... take away the produce that was not acceptable they can just decide not to put any in again adjust their invoice um... and I guess those would be the main options so um... yeah so it's worked pretty well for me I always harp on it because I interface with the customers so I'm the one that gets complaints um... we do have a policy of anytime someone complains we always replace that item the next week no questions asked I encourage people to complain I'd rather people complain and get the produce the product um... get something they want then to not be happy and then not sign up the next year or tell their friends you know it's not the quality isn't good enough and plus I want that feedback so I can pass it on to the other farmers so that's kind of been cause I think in any cooperative situation quality always comes up because you've got multiple growers who have different eyes and different internal standards about what they think is okay you can be in the middle of August and you might have an aphid infestation and you kind of want to get away with moving this product and it's not going to sell at market when customers can pick it up so on some level you might subconsciously kind of want to move it through the co-op and hope that no one notices and that's understandable we know we're all like we're in this together so we do try to make it a culture where it's okay to flag stuff we appreciate it you know farmers might get defensive but it's all for the greater good it's all for us having high standards and have members that come back so that's one issue I'd say the other big issue and this is kind of for me personally has been in marketing so with CSA what I have noticed myself and I think it's been pretty well documented is that CSAs were initially really about supporting the farmer so it was really about let's support local agriculture it was often like a group of citizens or group of eaters would get together and they'd hire a farmer to grow their food and it was really about like supporting that farmer it was you know early on there was so much emphasis on we're all we're buying a share into the farm we take risks if there's a crop failure that's okay because the farmers lost we lose we're shareholders that was the attitude and then what I've seen and I think it's a result of the fact that local food is so much more accessible so there's lots of farmers markets there's local food offered grocery stores there's more farm stands there's just lots of ways to access food their online platforms so now it's really much more about pleasing the customers and being customer based so over the years we've made all kinds of changes so just a couple examples at one point probably five or six years ago we're getting a lot of feedback from people well I'm not going to sign up next year it's too much food I'm just one person or we're a couple we travel a lot we just we can't eat this much food so from there we decided to start we added a mini share so we always had a large and a small and then we added a mini which is really designed for one person and that's great for the consumer because they can invest less money get portions that are commiserate with how much they eat for us it's a lot more work because now we have three box sizes that we have to manage another example is vacations so we now allow people to go put their box on hold if they're out of town and then they get credits the same number of credits as their box is worth and those credits can be spent in an online store and then they would get so whatever they order on the online store on the week that they return comes in their regular box so again this is like a huge additional amount of work for me I deal with all the special the online store and making sure those orders are fulfilled but we just saw like it was such a big issue for people because most people travel in the winter or sorry in summer they go away and they don't want to waste their money whereas in the past I think the attitude was like oh we're supporting this farmer we bought a share we'll have our neighbor pick it up or you know we'll donate it there was sort of a sense of like you know investing in like larger local or sustainable ag movement and now it's like really about the customer and getting your money's worth and making sure it's convenient and all those things and it's not I mean I don't I'm not complaining about it I think it's great that local food is more available overall but it is interesting just to see like all the ways we sort of bend over backwards to make things work for our members I see it almost as an alternative means of shopping now and getting fresher food I mean even at a farm stand it's usually you know the leftovers or whatever right so I think it's there's a lot of value to that I think I'll end at the end of the maybe with you know your greatest success stories yeah from that right now what I'd like to ask you about is if you could be a little bit more specific about how people are cooperated okay so how people have cooperated um let's see you mentioned planning equipment yeah I mean there's what about schooling we're shopping now yeah so definitely bulk purchasing so every year one of the growers in our co-op organizes by a purchase of fertilizer from Portland so it's a specific fertilizer that's certified organic because it can be hard to find products that are certified organic and so they now bring down a few pallets of this fertilizer they deliver it so it makes the the cost of distribution so much less because we're buying it together um there are a lot of cases where people are sharing equipment one of our producers got a potato hiller and he lens that out to other people two of our growers actually ended up starting a garlic business a garlic seed business together so that was kind of a spin off and there was we actually did get some funding and this is a little bit different because this is really about seed production but I would say out of the seven growers and our co-op I think six of them also produce as a separate enterprise organic seed that they sell on contract to seed companies so in probably 2007 we got some funding and it was through the co-op to purchase some seed cleaning equipment so now between the co-op members there are four pieces of seed cleaning equipment that can be used by other members of the co-op has there been any cooperation about schooling or child care or I mean if anything informally I can't say with us that we've necessarily benefited from any schooling yeah but now I'm trying to think sorry? yeah yeah definitely grant writing trying to think I just thought of another what was it yeah I mean marketing for sure because we're all marketing you know we created banners for some of the farmers that attend markets regularly so they actually have a siskia co-op banner that we have them put up at their markets so they're marketing obviously their own farm but then they're also marketing the co-op as a whole how has how has your work with the extension program benefited the co-op and vice versa well I think in terms of how the co-op benefits my work at OSU extension I kind of have this mini focus group that happens every Thursday morning so I go to pack out and I kind of hear like what is this handful of growers talking about what issues are they dealing with what's on their mind what are they concerned about and I think being an extension I mean extension is part of the university and the danger is always that we're kind of in our ivory tower and we you know are reading national reports about all the research that's coming out of the university systems but we're not necessarily kind of keeping our finger on the pulse of what's happening locally and so that's great for me because I have this kind of instant in where I can kind of find out like I said what people are thinking about what are educational programs that would be useful to them and practical so that's been great I do we do a lot of our the classes that we offer through small farms are on farm we find that people learn the most they're the most engaged not when they're sitting in a class or looking at a PowerPoint I know it's not surprising but when they're actually in the field walking around with the farmer seeing with their very own eyes whatever practice or whatever enterprise or whatever crops being grown and so it's been helpful for me to have these really tight connections with these growers because they're often they're willing to host events for me and you know they're willing to come in and teach about different topics and I do I mean I make sure that we can pay them from the OSU budget so it's not as if I'm asking for this favor but it is nice to have those kind of solid relationships talk about your role as small farms I see the small farms as a means of getting new growers in the system and people who are hobbyists essentially but have a level above domestic gardeners yeah so I mean I think one of the ways that extension is great is that really it provides some structure for getting to know the farming community so for example we offer a course called growing farms and it's depending on which way we run it it's usually four or six meetings and it's kind of a business planning class it's sort of looking at what are the markets what is your soil and water like what enterprises should you choose based on those things you know what is your lifestyle how do you want to spend your life how much time and energy do you have to focus on your farm how much money do you need to make off your farm just kind of looking at large scale whole planning whole system planning and so I always bring a lot of farmers into that class and it's often people that are just have moved to the area they're just kind of you know entering the agricultural community and the feedback I often get is that you know just getting to see the landscape of farmers so getting to meet people like Don Tipping and David Mostu and the fries having you know just having exposure to who are the big players in the community and how can they fit in with say a new niche crop or a new marketing scheme or you know just kind of getting the lay of the land so I think that's really important our League of Women Farmers has been really successful we've been running that since 2008 and we meet either monthly or bi-monthly on different farms we have discussion groups we occasionally have we have a lot of skill building sessions so upcoming we have a chainsaw class for women farmers we're building a cob oven we've done carpentry and welding and pruning and just a lot of the more hands-on skills that women have historically been more marginalized from and may not feel comfortable for whatever gender reasons learning in a coed setting so that's a big emphasis on what we do but there is again through this network of women farmers that's well established that meets regularly there's again a lot of that social capital built up so we see time and again people coming together to support each other it's funny now a lot of the meetings we have are baby showers you know we get together when someone's getting married to make flower bouquets for them we had one woman a long-time member whose husband died a couple years ago and we organized an event to help her weed her new beetle bank it was a hedgerow she'd put in to attract beneficials she was completely overwhelmed with her orchard and her other economic enterprises and so she had just kind of let this hedgerow she hadn't done any work on it and it was really weedy so we just got out for a couple hours but we were just able to get so much done in that time so it's that kind of thing just bringing convening people I mean the historically the extension has been all about extending I mean that's where the name came from it's extending the university research and knowledge out into the communities and more and more we're really just acknowledging that there's so much knowledge within these communities and it's really about getting people together to share and not to take away from the importance of bringing in the research and bringing in the experts who've spent the last 20 years studying some filens or studying mosaic virus or whatever it is that's great and important there's a place for it but also it's really about bringing farmers together to share the applied knowledge they have you're so you're so my hero I'm not I'm a total fraud no you're so sweet I'm not oh my gosh so you've been farming since 98 and you're really embedded you know a lot of people you have access to a lot of different groups you convene many different groups how have you seen the practice of agriculture and the markets for agriculture during the last 10 years 12 more than that now I would say the biggest trend that we're noticing in the Rogue Valley is saturation in direct markets especially for vegetable production in particular so we are a lot of so what that means is that where before you could say 10 years ago you could move to this valley start growing 6 acres of mixed vegetables go to markets and do really well at a growers market and sell most of your product and feel really good about what you come home with now it's really it's much harder there are a lot of people growing the same kinds of things selling to the same markets and it's just I mean to me it's like an issue of population so we just we don't have a huge metropolitan area that we're selling into and so we kind of like if you talk about the choir the people that want to buy their value is to buy from a local farmer and they're going to go out of their way they're going to take their lunch break to go to the market on Thursday or on Tuesday we've kind of saturated that those people and they so now it's like how do we break into the people that go to Fred Myers and shop there go to Albertsons or how do we actually sell to them and so selling into wholesale markets is problematic and I don't know how much you want me to go into that but there's issues around pricing is probably the biggest one you know there's a little bit of a margin some of the stores will pay a little bit more to be able to market that this is local but it's not that much more so if you're a really small farm if you're growing three to five acres of vegetables you just can't get the prices that would make it profitable so do you scale up do you dig deeper into the local markets do you try to grow niche products that you can sell locally it's pretty tricky and then there's other issues with selling to wholesale things like you might need certifications that could be cumbersome for small farms you're going to need to offer a really consistent product because those grocery store owners they are also operating on really narrow margins also operating on really not a lot of time so for them to make one call to a west coast distributor and not have to think again about are they going to get their heirloom tomatoes or whatever it is they want so there's some issues we are OSU small farms and Thrive especially has been working a lot on making it easier for people to grow wholesale so that's one big issue, a trend that we've seen another one is just the cost of inputs keep going up and they go up at a higher rate than the cost of produce so I think a lot of farmers don't really know their cost of production and they're afraid to charge more and so they're probably not making enough money and so we statewide the OSU small farms program has a cost study cohort we have a group of farmers in southern Oregon that are tracking their cost of production and that's primarily labor is what you're tracking so how much does it take to plant and weed and harvest this row of cabbage and then what do you need to actually charge for that cabbage in order to be profitable and so we're looking at that it's really hard to get farmers to keep records so the cost study program we've tried to simplify it as much as possible so people aren't having to do a ton more of record keeping but it's still challenging and some farmers frankly don't really want to look at their numbers because they'd rather not know that they're making $9 an hour and so it's tricky but I think that if we're really making sustainable farming it's not just environmentally or socially sustainable it's economically sustainable so how do we make sure farms are making enough money to support themselves to get their kids in college to pay for health care to have some savings for when they want to retire and so that's just another that's a huge issue $1 an hour $1 an hour $1 an hour well I bought $1,000 because I figured and I want to have them on hand because I'm sick of waiting to get organic I'm waiting to get I get tired of getting to get organic I'm getting it on my shirt every time I keep getting nailed for non-compliance so I'm like I'm just going to put 500 pounds in the fridge and keep it for a few years I'll take they're they're Magnus they're nice gosh well I mean I guess I think of heritage as what you leave behind so what are you leaving to your future generations within your family as well as to your community as a whole and then looking backwards it's kind of what you've come from and what you've inherited I guess heritage inherited must be related so I guess I think of it as looking at time through kind of you know a cross-section of time so looking at what is passed down through the generations and yeah I guess a word I feel like is I feel like legacy is like somewhat of a similar idea is like you know what do you inherit what do you what do you get from your own ancestry as well as the physical place where you live and then conversely what are you leaving to those stewardship yeah that's a tricky one I mean stewardship to me can be defined it's not an inherently good word I think I have some some negative connotations with that word as well I mean I think in the best scenario stewardship is when I think of it in terms of like how permaculture like the ideals of permaculture like you really look at a landscape and you don't rush which is you know our cultural tendency is to move really quickly but you observe you take a lot of time I think the precautionary principle that's used in Europe is so helpful just you know really taking a lot of time before taking action and then according to what the highest needs of the land and the community taking care of the land in accordance with that or taking care of people or any kind of institution or really any body of sorts but I think the idea of stewardship there's sort of this implicit like hierarchy or relationship that's created where one entity is like supposed to be in charge of the other and taking care of it and so I think that like that has to be really looked at and examined and is like oh what is that power dynamic if I am stewarding you whatever you is does that you know what kind of authority do I have over you and what does that mean that you need me to take care of you so I don't know I think it's problematic but in the highest I mean done well and in the highest done for the highest good and with that most integrity then I think it's really about care observation and right relationship yeah I mean I've studied sustainability and I know you look at those the three aspects of sustainability environmental social economic and more and more I really buy into the need for all three I think when I came into farming it was to me it was all that environmental stewardship it was all about you know increasing soil fertility and not using any herbicides and water conservation was really all like that was sort of the whole emphasis and more and more I've seen well what I really believe is that it's really about the economic and the environmental and then the social just comes naturally out of that it's just sort of like it's born out of the other two I mean I don't know I just made that up if that's true or not but I do see it more and more as like oh yeah I mean it's one thing to have all these great environmental practices but if you can't meet your family's needs financially you're not going to be around in a couple years and more and more that's really what I emphasize in this small farms program is how can we make this economically viable for you because I think a lot of people that come into farming a lot of the demographic I work with they have those values of environmental and social care and it's that economic piece that people are like shy away from and it's actually like that's the key because that's what's going to make it so we're all here in 10 years see our farm continuing into the future or not continuing into the future you know I think that it's really about looking at the individuals involved and what we need to be happy and fulfilled and satisfied and so what I see I mean for us you know at this point we're still paying a pretty large mortgage and we still have kids that are dependent and so we have the need to generate a good amount of income but as that is going to taper off in the next 5 years or so we've talked a lot about not doing the Suzuki co-op not being in that coordination role and really having Tom be able to work on the seed production the most which is really his passion and it's the enterprise that's really best suited to our land and it takes advantage of his skill set in terms of seed breeding and seed selection and just doing a really good job of stewarding those seed varieties and I think that is like what would make him happy and then for me I really enjoy my work with OSU so I could see doing more of that as our kids get older and being able to kind of supplement so anyway I guess that's kind of a short term answer is just as yeah just focusing more on what we love to do and less having to focus less on making as much money as possible and then in terms of like long term succession planning it's it's hard to know I mean we purposefully over the years put a lot of perennials in so we have a lot of fruit trees and nut trees and of course our hope is that one of our kids would want to take over they both love the farm they love you know what we've created but I also realistically you know don't expect them to farm I don't know to be honest we haven't thought a ton about it um so I don't know actually what to say I feel like we're a little far we're not quite there yet in terms of getting real about the succession planning I think um I think we have quite a few years left in us being here possibly I mean I think honestly like the most exhausting thing that we do is the CSA and it is really satisfying on some levels it's satisfying to like coordinate this awesome co-op it's satisfying to like deliver food to all these people but it's it's a lot of work it's a lot of busy work it's a lot of our time and it's a lot of travel you know Tom has to he spends an entire day doing deliveries and so being able to cut that out would feel like a real luxury and really focus on seed production it's funny you ask about succession because in some ways the question that's more on my mind right now is the succession of the co-op because it is like I said earlier you know the co-op is great and it's a structure but it's also a product of all of our personalities and how we work together and part of that is the Tom and I have held it together all these years and looked for opportunities and you know we've held the container of the co-op and as we think about I mean even if it's five years off I mean we still need to think about like okay so what's going to happen next at this point none of the other girls in the co-op want to do want to be in our position so it's unclear and I've actually thought about writing a grant to do a feasibility study and to look into like what are our options and there's someone I have in mind who's really smart about food hubs and business structures who I'd actually get to do the research and to think about what are the next steps could we go into more wholesale marketing could we add could we add a lot more growers could we be doing selling to institutions or selling to chefs there's so many options because we have this great structure but it's going to change it's going to change how the co-op looks it's going to change how it feels it's not going to be this cozy entity anymore and we're all going to have to let that go and let something else be born which is painful it's hard to let go of something that is really sweet and feels good and works but is not going to work forever so what is that new how can we enter that new phase as gracefully as possible with as much foresight and consciousness as we can so that's the succession piece actually that's on my mind a lot more than the farm hopefully my kids will want a farm but I don't know not counting anything so in terms of the future of agriculture in the valley I mean it's hard to talk about the future without talking about cannabis I mean that's part of the present as well you know there's just an article in the Mail Tribune about how cannabis will probably be like pears and wine grapes in this valley that it's going to be huge it will attract tourists it's going to be a huge player in the economy and from with OSU extension I'm actually not allowed to address that issue at all because we receive federal funds so I can't have classes on cannabis production I can't really consult I can't consult with cannabis producers so it's a little bit of a realm that I'm not that comfortable in discussing I don't really understand a lot of the issues at play I'm certainly aware that you know there's talk of a land grab so a lot of land being bought up often by people from out of state who want to produce cannabis I think it's an area of Oregon that's really good for cannabis production in terms of heat units and aspects and soils so it's definitely we see a lot of it being grown here and so yeah there's concern about this land grab and for rec grows you know they need to have a good water right so there's a concern of what well is a lot of the land with good water rights going to be taken up in cannabis production and not food production so there's a few things the way I think of it there is the question of the future I think none of us know what's going to happen with cannabis it could be another boom and bust situation where it's you know the green rush and everyone's going to buy land and grow plants and then in a few years it's so hard to know what the market's going to do and you know if it becomes federally legal and it can be grown anywhere there wouldn't really be the same export market you know I think Oregon's already growing way more cannabis than we use in the state so there's that issue is kind of like well it's so hard to predict we're kind of in this in flux regulations are in flux markets are major flux so that's hard to predict and I don't have any idea I don't feel like I can speculate and then the other issue that's interesting is that it's bringing a lot of money to our counties so in some ways our CSA grew quite a bit this year and it's hard to know exactly why but sometimes I wonder well there could be more money in the pockets of people that want to buy local food that maybe have some of those agricultural values or there's just more money around so people are buying more CSA boxes I don't know for sure but I do wonder like it's a new tax base and it's potentially bringing wealth to the county that could really be good for local foods because obviously there is a price margin for products and locals there needs to be and so if we have more people that can afford that and maybe more people that share those values not necessarily that could be a good thing for the local food movement so it's hard to say I think there's certainly unintended consequences the land grab is a concern labor is another huge concern I talked to a lot of farmers that can't find people to work on their farms because they're able to make so much more cannabis operations there's some seasonality with that too October is notorious time to get help on your farm so I've heard some really difficult stories about farmers that have lost crops because they weren't able to hire people to come in and weed them so that's another you know that's an unintended consequence so it's hard to say I think in general it's it's just there's so many unknowns but I do think that that is obviously having a big effect yeah I mean I think just in terms of wrapping up I think that I mean I'm most struck by where we live and how we live when I travel of course and I guess you know whenever I leave the Rogue Valley I'm just aware of how much my life is around like eating well and I don't know I'm not really sure how to wrap this up but I just like I kind of take for granted how much like living close to the land and having like a really intimate relationship with my food is it's just it's so intrinsic to how we live that I forget until I go away and don't have that experience so from growing our own food and having like living near the food that I'm eating I mean that's wonderful but then also like knowing growers that are producing my meat and producing my eggs and producing my cheese so having those relationships with people that are providing the food that I don't grow and then just the way we eat you know it's like it's all based on what's in season and what's available and not that we don't go to the grocery store and buy other stuff as well but yeah I mean to know that you know my rancher lives down the road the person who bakes our bread lives down another road I mean it's it's just yeah I think we're really lucky and I think having so much access to so many great producers of different types of food is just it's such a blessing and easy to take for granted when you live here for a long time but yeah like I said just really intrinsic to to the quality of life so I don't know