Here is a message from the farm about their upcoming projects and how paying as much as you can as early as possible really helps them.
Hi Greenpoint-Williamsburg CSA members and future members,
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SUPPORTING OUR FARM! Your financial support at this time is making a real difference on the farm. Right now, the only income we have is from CSA signups. We know what some of you are going through financially, and what your friends and family are going through, so we appreciate even more that you are making eating local organic food, and supporting local farms, a priority. We will do our best to make sure you won't regret it!
We wanted to tell you about a few of the big projects we have planned for the coming year, which we hope will improve both the quality and quantity of vegetables we'll be able to produce.
Our most major improvement that we've been planning for over a year now is a new building (a barn) for washing, packing, and storing the vegetables in walk-in coolers which will be MUCH larger than what we have now. This will make a major improvement in both our efficiency and the quality of the produce, not to mention be easier on us physically and mentally. We need to put a $20,000 down payment down in the next week or two to keep this moving forward.
A second major project is to replace the mobile home trailer that burned down last year in a fire (the one that had the turkey and chicken chicks in it), so we can provide housing for 3 additional farm apprentices. We also need to put a major $20,000 down payment down for this building in the next month or two. This is not to mention $2,000 in permit fees, $2,000 to my engineer for plans, the $5,000 in seed orders we just sent out, $1,000 for greenhouse fuel, $1,000 for potting supplies, $5,000 we already owe on the farm credit card for equipment and miscellaneous parts, $5,000 for fruit trees we'll be picking up in March, etc.
At the end of 2008 we took advantage of prices on pickup trucks being at an all-time low to buy a much-needed full-size Toyota Tundra pickup, which will be able to fit our market tables (finally!) in the 8 foot bed, as well as pull an equipment trailer heavy enough to tow our tractors in to the shop when they need service. Our neighbor said that we paid less than he paid for the same truck, 2 years ago! However, this purchase meant that we spent most of the money that was left from 2008, and left us with no reserves for 2009...waiting to get those signup checks from our lovely CSA core groups!
All of these purchases are affordable in our 2009 budget, based on the same number of CSA members that we had last year. However we have, and will continue to have, tight cash flow until some more people sign up!
