By Franny Rainbow, Farm Production Lead
Every week on the farm looks different, with various small victories being celebrated, giant (and tiny) vegetables being marveled at, programming and events, and of course, endless questions being asked and problems being solved. But the general skeleton of our weeks tends to stay the same, weaving in admin, fieldwork, markets, and harvests. As this was my second season on the farm, the flow of these weeks felt increasingly second-nature, and we’ve really nailed down how to work efficiently to meet our demands.
This season at Fresh Roots I was the Farm Production Lead for both of our Vancouver sites. My primary responsibility was ensuring that we had enough produce for our 60 share CSA program, our weekly market, and our youth programming (like our summer camp and SOYL program). This required lots of organizing and planning behind the scenes, but also provided opportunities for tons of hands-on farmwork with the fieldcrew. I found this to be a great balance between the two kinds of work. Here is what a week might look like during peak season!
Monday
Mondays are full admin days, where I sit down on the computer and plan for the upcoming week. Typically, the farm team would meet at our David Thompson site, walk through the farm and make a list of priority field tasks, and check on the crops to see what sized up over the weekend. Then I would set the field crew up with seeding, while I head to the office to work through my list of Monday tasks. These change slightly from week to week but always include writing a workplan for the week, creating the harvest plan, making a CSA plan (lots of planning, clearly), writing the fresh sheet (a list of produce we have available for distribution this week), responding to emails, coordinating with volunteers, and lots of record keeping. Taking a full day to get organized may feel excessive, but it makes a big difference and saves so much mental energy over the course of the week. Instead of constantly figuring out what to do next, you can just follow your plan, check your lists, and dive straight into the work!
Tuesday
Tuesdays are when we harvest for our market and CSA pickup the following day. They are super fast-paced, sometimes a whirlwind, but so much fun. We start at David Thompson, harvesting all of our greens first, then moving on to the root veg as the temperatures increase throughout the morning. Once all of our DT harvest is washed, processed, and packed away in labeled totes, we load up the truck and head to Van Tech. There, we start the harvest process over again, washing totes, writing up the harvest plan on the whiteboard, preparing the washing station, and harvesting the veg! There is a cooler on site at VT, so we are able to load everything in there as we harvest, organizing totes based on where they will end up going (i.e. market, CSA, donation, etc).
Wednesday
Wednesday is market day, which is always a blast! We’re at Van Tech all day on Wednesdays, finishing up any remaining harvest bits, doing some fieldwork, and facilitating the SOYL youth’s farming. However, the main priority for Wednesday morning is flowers. One of my favorite parts of the week is spending time in our flower beds, harvesting long stems to turn into big beautiful bouquets. Camille is an amazing teacher, and has guided us all in bouquet making, and it truly is a special experience! It feels like time slows down when we’re all gathered around these beautiful flowers, playing with the colors and textures and creating something unique together. We have a 10-share flower CSA program, and we usually aim to make an extra five bouquets for the market stand. Once flowers are done, we help set up the market, ensuring all of our veg looks abundant, clean and fresh, then carry on with fieldwork for the remainder of the day as the market carries on in the background.
Thursday
At this point in the week, we’re starting to feel the effects of all of the hard work we’ve done, so Thursdays tend to move at a slower pace. That’s not to say they are slow – there’s still plenty of harvesting to be done and weeds to be pulled, but we do generally have more time to enjoy each other’s conversation, the fruits of our labour, and the beauties of the farm. We start at DT, harvesting what we need for our second CSA pickup on Fridays, then move to VT for the afternoon, where we facilitate volunteers for ‘Trowel Thursdays.’ This is a great opportunity to get some bigger field tasks done while fostering community engagement.
Friday
We made it! Fridays are devoted entirely to fieldwork. We finish any tasks that didn’t get completed earlier in the week such as weeding, bed prep, clearing beds, transplanting, or seeding. There is always more work to be done than we have the hands for, so I like to make a priorities list, and work our way through it so things feel a little less daunting. Typically, we spend this day at DT because most crops are direct seeded at this site, making the weed pressure much more intense. After a busy week of moving between sites, interacting with SOYL youth and volunteers, and big harvest days, it can be really nice to just stay in one place, put on a podcast and have a productive day of fieldwork to finish off the week.
One thing that makes Fresh Roots really special is that we have a standard Sat/Sun weekend, which is a pretty rare treat in the farming world! It’s something I really appreciate. Having that time to rest, recharge, and hang out with loved ones makes such a difference, and much easier to do when your days off line up with everyone else’s 🙂
Farming with Fresh Roots has been an incredibly rewarding experience. I feel so grateful when I reflect on the past two seasons with this team. I’ve grown so much – and I’m not talking veggies 🥕! I’ve developed as a farmer, a leader, a facilitator, a teammate, and a person. Like any farm, there have been plenty of challenges, but I felt supported every step of the way, and overcoming them was extremely edifying. That kind of encouragement and backing is something I believe only Fresh Roots can offer.