Happy Fourth of July!

By Julie Pottier-Brown, Operations Manager

Emily Landeck, owner of our primary farm, Riverland Farm, started giving her crew holidays off last season. This is unusual in the farm business. Monica (Newsletter Editor who fixes my run on sentences, is the collaborator of some, and writer of much of the content in these newsletters) and I were trying to follow suit and wrote this newsletter up a day early so she/we could take Monday *mostly* off. 

Emily gives her crew Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, and possibly Indigenous Peoples’ (previously known as Columbus) Day off. We accommodate this by making a plan for fewer veggies, or ones that can be picked and packed either in advance (for hearty items like cabbage) or day of (leafy greens).

We work with a farm that rotates two crews. Neither crew works a full week – full farming weeks are way more than 40 hours. The farm in general does not harvest on Wednesdays.This day is reserved for in house farm related tasks like equipment repair, weeding, fencing fixing, etc. This practice allows for more time off the farm, and more hands to swap around to different crews.

Former primary farm, Picadilly Farm in Winchester NH, used to publish their farms financials for CSA members and the general pubilc to view. They believe farm owners and workers should have access to the same wages and benefits as a white collar worker. We agree. And we hope that it’s part of a trend of farming being not only sustainable for the earth, but for the farmers who work the land as well.

I hope you have enjoyed some time off.
Happy Fourth and thank you for supporting local!

Julie Pottier-Brown
Salem, Tuesday*
(please include your full name, depot and day when emailing us)