By Erin Wilson, The Seed & Plate
“If I plant arugula nobody cares when its ready except for me,” says Jacqui Coburn on a hot day at Front Field Farm in Winterville, Georgia.
That was before Collective Harvest and the responsibility of a shared farming Cooperative.
Second career farmers, Jacqui and Alex Rilko started small with ¼ acre in Covington, Georgia. But even in their early days driving into the Athens Farmers Market, they were looking ahead to what should be next. They knew their future–and the expansion of access to fresh food for their community–couldn’t rely on their farm alone.
They saw overlaps and flaws in the status quo every time they went to market. Sometimes Eva at Full Moon Farm would buy produce from Jacqui to fill gaps in her own small CSA operation. Jacqui would do the same.
“We’d joke about racing Ed [of Sundance Farm] to 5&10,” said Jacqui. “We were all at different points during the week going to the same restaurants and sending the same itty bitty [availability] email. We just thought that was silly.”
In 2015, the farmers behind Full Moon Farm and Diamond Hill Farm partnered with Front Field Farm because Alex and Jacqui put out the call for a new system that would give farmers more time on the farm and alleviate unnecessary competition between them.
Their ultimate impact from these efforts are why Jacqui and Alex have been selected as the 2020 Barbara Petit Pollinator Award from Georgia Organics.
The Barbara Petit Pollinator Award honors an individual or organization for outstanding community leadership in Georgia’s sustainable farming and food movement. The award acknowledges exceptional success in advancing Georgia Organics’ mission by spreading—pollinating—the movement throughout community life, such as the food industry, faith communities, public agencies, schools, and institutions.
The award is named after Barbara Petit, who passed away in 2015. She was a committed leader, culinary professional, and organizer who served as President of Georgia Organics from 2003-2009.
In 2001, Jacqui left her corporate after growing tired of the corporate world of food. Unexpectedly, a neighbor asked Jacqui to begin work on her farm despite having no experience to speak of. At almost 40 years old, it was late in life to take on such a physical challenge as farming, but the transition felt immediately natural.
“I really just felt so comfortable in that environment. The competition in the corporate world is so underhanded… whereas the competition in farming is there but everyone is so open,” Jacqui explains. “Everyone will tell you pretty much everything about what they’re doing because you have different resources so you may or may not being able to use their technique or ideas.”
Individually, each farm was up against the off-farm challenges of emailing, social media, data collection, advertising, delivering, ordering supplies and the list goes on. Collective Harvest takes a portion of this burden off the individual farmer, offers expanded bulk buying power, stabilizes finances through regular payment on delivery, and enables the farmers to focus on growth both of produce and infrastructure without fear of an off harvest.
“Last year it was raining so much that it was a bad year for us personally with farming but other farms were able to pick up our slack. When you’re doing a CSA on your own, with the year we had last year we’d probably have had to refund their money…or they would have just gotten a lot of okra,” Alex jokes.
At the beginning of each year, the Collective Harvest farmers meet for a bid process in which they plan the crop schedule and their weighted produce commitments.
“The bid process allows everybody to be as involved as they want to be,” says Jacqui. “Everyone puts down what they’re really comfortable with because we all have other outlets as well. We all want to go to the market and look full,” Jacqui explains. “Everyone’s at different levels naturally.”
Just as one farmer’s secrets to success may not translate to another, each farm in Collective Harvest varies based on acreage of land, number of staff, physical capability and focus on market versus CSA and direct-to-restaurant.
While the organizational side may have taken some getting used to, especially by farmers who once didn’t even keep an inventory at market, this data-driven planning allows Collective Harvest to reliably secure availability for 11-12 items every week, provide members with the details of their share a week in advance, and enable customers to swap undesired items for a variety of 20 other items available in lesser quantities.
After all, mother nature is a part of the collective too.
Although Collective Harvest primarily focuses on their CSA members, the group’s consolidation of direct-torestaurant business has benefited both farmers and chefs alike.
“In the previous model, we would have to pick and choose, trying to order equitably amongst all the farms, trying not to play favorites because everyone does such a great job,” recalls Chef Peter Dale of The National. “Collective Harvest has taken away that awkward part of the equation. Everyone shares the orders and the restaurants benefit from expanded and consolidated availability.”
Restaurant owners, like Ryan Sims of Donna Chang’s, see the same values as the farmers in being able to consolidate tasks and simplify systems while maintaining a strong standard of quality.
“We know their passion, values, and that quality is something that is important to them. That is something we are proud to align our restaurant with,” Ryan says. “What is great about working with organizations like Collective is that they are our neighbors. They aren't some face-less entity.”
Admittedly, some farmers initially feared that combining forces would require them to shed an element of personal identity or recognition of their own quality of product. Fortunately, each farmer’s maintained presence at the markets, conferences and events only grows the power of their shared mission and the weight of the Collective Harvest name.
“Once people got involved with us they realized pretty quickly this is better,” said Jacqui.
With the stability Collective Harvest affords, the current eight member farms have all shown growth and ambition. Diamond Hill Farm moved from a landlocked farm to one closer to town with more acreage. Ed Janosik at Sundance Farm built a fence to protect his crops. Each of the farmers can support more full time employees just as Collective Harvest itself now operates out of a downtown headquarters with five employees to maintain the day-to-day operations.
As membership increases, Jacqui still smiles when she sees a CSA member shopping at the Saturday market with their Collective Harvest bag in tow. When Collective Harvest began, over 100 people signed up and the founders were nervous they couldn’t keep up. This fall they have a seasonal record of over 300 members. It’s clear that different outlets for fresh food working collaboratively and a cooperative farming community can uplift one another instead of existing in competition.
“Our big picture goal is to have all the farms at the farmers market be part of it,” dreams Alex. “It would be awesome to get to that point where you’re so busy, you have that many people, and you can bring all these vendors [into the collective].”
Erin Wilson is the general manager and part-owner of The National in Athens. In her spare time she is part of The Seed & Plate, an exploration of sustainability, self-sufficiency, and slow living through storytelling. Read more from The Seed & Plate at www.theseedandplate.com.