Community Supported Agriculture
See also the Community Supported Agriculture page on the main site and the extensive Soil Association CSA Resources.
The latest essential reading from the Soil Association is their revised action manual which is designed to help groups setting a local CSA projects:
Older pamphlets from the Soil Association include:
- CSA Action Maunal
- CSA Cultivating Communities, this booklet gives a brief overview of CSA with 11 case studies.
- CSA Cultivating Cooperatives, organisational structures for local food enterprises. This is a toolkit to help local food enterprises develop their organisations, allowing them to work effectively and achieve their aims.
See the Community Land Trust page for some information on the legal entity that could be set up to buy land.
Transition Meersbrook / Heeley CSA
People in Meersbrook / Heeley are looking at a field in the Moss Valley for use for a CSA project, see the Meersbrook-Heeley-Food email list and the Hazelhurst CSA pages for more info on this.
History
The first Transition Heeley / Meersbrook CSA meeting was held on 23rd April 2009 at the Grapevine Centre and this was attended by somewhere in the region of 50 people and Chris spoke about Stroud Community Agriculture ( mp3 4.3M | pdf 2.6M ) and Kirstin Glendinning from the Soil Association spoke about CSA's in general ( mp3 19M | powerpoint 12M ) and there was a general discussion followed by discussions in smaller groups.
The second meeting was held on 6th May 2009 in the Meersbrook Pavilion, the notes from it were posted to the email list. A few days before this meeting 3 people had visited a couple of fields in the Moss Valley that might be for sale. The meeting came up with the following ideas for the Moss Valley site:
- Vegetables
- Soft fruit
- Fruit trees
- Nut trees
- Bee hives
- Herbs
- Forest garden
- Native trees
- Ducks
- Fish
- Frogs
- Polytunnel
- Composting toilet
- Storage/packing shed
- Pavillion/shelter
- Water storage tanks
- Wind turbine
- Play area
- Parking space
- Borehole
- Workshop
- Compost heaps
- Plant nursery
- Camping space
- Butterfly & bee garden
- Straw bale building
- And a horse
There was a skills census of the people at the meeting and this showed that there was:
- 20 Growers
- 7 Labourers
- 4 Community networkers
- 2 Conflict resolvers
- 1 Carpenter
- 2 Web programmers
- 5 Project Managers
- 3 Marketers
- 1 Architect
- 1 Bicycle delivery rider
- 1 Minute-taker
- 3 Orchard-keepers
- 1 Chartered Surveyor
- 3 Finance/investment managers
- 3 Medics
- 2 Beekeepers
- 1 Storyteller
- 3 Chicken keepers
- 1 Group facilitator
- 2 Fundraisers
- 2 Craftspeople
- 2 Animal husbands (?)
- 2 Herbalists
- 3 Permaculturalists
- 1 Artist
- 1 Builder
- 2 Jam, juice, wine & cider makers
- 1 Ecologist
- 1 Event organiser
On 12th May 2009 there was a group visit to the fields in the Moss Valley and a report of the visit was posted to the list.
The third meeting was held on 9th June 2009 in the Meersbrook Bowling Club, and follwoing a general discussion the meeting broke down into smaller groups to discuss some issues in more depth. Following that meeting CSA Letters were sent out to The Ecological Land Co-operative and The Soil Association's Land Trust to see if they would be interested in buying the land on our behalf. However both organisations replied to say that they were not in a position to help but they did offer some advice.
The fourth meeting was held on 9th July 2009 in the Grapevine Centre and Mark Simmonds gave a presentation, File:Legal-and-Organisational-Structures-CSA-Sheffield.ppt titled Legal and Organisational Structures -- A guide to good start-up governance for Community Supported Agriculture projects.
The fifth public meeting was held on 12th October 2009, after a series of steering group meetings which took place over the summer. There was a good turn out and discussion and the presentation made is available, File:CSA Public Meeting 1 Presentation.pdf and so are the notes and transcribed flipcharts, File:CSA public meeting 1 20091012.doc.
The sixth public meeting was held on 2nd November 2009 and at this meeting the Heeley-Meersbrook CSA Steering Group was dissolved and a new group of 8 founding members were agree to take the project forwards. This meeting was the first that Sam Wichelow from the BBC filmed following a discussion about the program he hopes to make. Two names were agreed for the project, sheffield.coop for a Sheffield-wide food umbrella group and Hazlehurst Community Supported Agriculture for the CSA project. The following draft presentation is not the one that was used at the meeting, however not all the slides from that one that was used were shown, File:CSA Public Meeting 2 Presentation.pdf. The notes from the meeting are available here: File:CSA public meeting 2 20091102.doc.
The committee agreed at the 6th public meeting held it's first committee meeting on 11th November 2009, and this meeting was attended by Mark Simmonds who produced a pdf mind map of his thoughts following the meeting. This meeting agreed to create an email list for the committee with open archives to ensure transparency.
The second meeting of the committee took place on 22nd November 2009, Hazelhurst CSA Committee 2009-11-22.
