From fsfarm@mufn.org Sun Jan 18 20:32:41 1998 Date: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 10:53:30 -0500 From: Jim and Jo at Five Springs Farm To: csa-l@prairienet.org Subject: CSA newsletter in the works [The following text is in the "ISO-8859-1" character set] [Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set] [Some characters may be displayed incorrectly] /we at Five Springs Farm ( a small CSA in Northern Michigan) have decided to produce a national CSA newsletter. "The Community Farm", published quarterly will start with the May issue; the main theme of this first issue is membership retention (we hope to come up with something that sounds better by then). Our goal is to be a community supported newsletter. You are part of our community, at least we hope so. If you have an interest in writing articles, contributing ideas or tips, or being interviewed let us know soon. We are starting this on a shoestring so can offer little compensation at this point... "The Community Farm" can be a forum for growers, core group members, interns and others with an interest in sustainable agriculture. We are compiling a file of growers to contact for answers to specific questions. A farm "profile" will be in each issue- so we will be looking for farmers around the country who would like to be interviewed. Any assistance in these areas will be welcome. A letter will be going out in a couple of weeks to everyone on the CSANA mailing list, if you are not sure that you are on the list let us know and we will check. We are excited about this project (if a bit overwhelmed)...More later Jo Meller Jim Sluyter From fsfarm@mufn.org Sun Jan 18 20:34:43 1998 Date: Sun, 18 Jan 1998 11:48:10 -0500 From: Jim and Jo at Five Springs Farm To: csa-l@prairienet.org Subject: CSA newsletter-homework [The following text is in the "ISO-8859-1" character set] [Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set] [Some characters may be displayed incorrectly] There have been two (that we know of) CSA newsletters in the past several years. Melody Newcombe edited one in 1994. It is no longer being published. Robyn Van En was on the staff of Seasonal News, which came from CSANA and was published perhaps twice in 1995. We have identified no other specifically CSA periodicals. We went to the Northeast CSA Conference in Massachesetts in November 1997, partly to see what, if anything, there was that we had overlooked. It was, by the way, a GREAT conference and was the final inspriation to take on a newsletter. We hope to interest CSA farmers, yes, but also core group members, interns and others in the publication. Recognizing that CSA farmers may not represent the wealth in agriculture, we hope to make it as affordable as possible and still pay the bills. Thanks for the warning, Dori, and this is not to say we have done ALL of our homework, but we have covered these issues as well as we could. Other comments will be appreciated! Jo and Jim at Five Springs Farm and "The Community Farm" From funfarm@servtech.com Sun Jan 18 20:34:58 1998 Date: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 14:18:24 -0500 From: Dori Green To: csa-l@prairienet.org Subject: Re: CSA newsletter in the works [The following text is in the "ISO-8859-1" character set] [Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set] [Some characters may be displayed incorrectly] Re: new national CSA newsletter -- have you done all of your homework to make sure that you're not re-inventing the wheel? Wasn't Melody (oh gosh, drawing a blank on her last name -- Townsend?) doing a regular national CSA newsletter, or maybe it was regional for the Northeast? I know she had been ill and I seem to remember hearing that we've lost her as well as Robyn Van En. I went through another bout of unemployment last year so cut all subscriptions out of my budget in favor of keeping the mortgage paid and am not on top of who's doing what these days, but it seems to me that there's already something in existance. The Demeter Association or ATTRA would probably have up-to-date info. Of course, Free Enterprise is a fine thing and there's probably room for another publication. Just be aware that many of us CSA folks are living hand to mouth while we put our resources toward getting these projects off the ground and if there's already something out there you might be asking for water from a well that's pretty much dry when you put out a call for subscribers. Dori Green: Writer, Farmer, Facilitator Ash Grove Community Farm & Center for Sustainable Living http://www.servtech.com/public/funfarm/index.html $100,000 tied up in my CSA farm now and it's time to order seed! Where ARE all of those subscribers? Besides waiting until July to indicate some interest, harrumph.