My sister just sent this link to me: MyFarm. It's just on the verge of being mega-dope, but I think they got part of the model wrong.
Premise: You get a wide variety of veggies delivered to you every week, grown in your garden and the gardens of your neighbors.
I love it. They've crowdsourced gardening. You grow the broccoli and Jane over at 54 grows the Chard. Then this business goes around and picks the veggies, makes a box, and delivers a full compliment of all the veggies to you.
Well, that's how it should work, in my purview. Instead, they actually do the gardening for you... they re-landscape your backyard and maintain the garden. That's too much - instead of crowdsourcing, they're just renting your land for the price of veggies (i think you may even have to pay them for them to rent your land).
Instead, they should give you the tools to plant a successful garden (ie: great localized gardening information, opportuntiies to chat with a gardener, local meetups, excellent seeds)- and they should plan a planting rotation to optimize diversity & scale between gardens. And then they should coordinate pickings and dropoffs (in order to compete with the convenience of other CSAs). Ok, that's a lot of "shoulds" - which is always dangerous. I just mean that it seems there's a lighterweight way to make this great idea happen.
You should get in touch with Joe Edelman who's created http://groundcrew.us/, a very similar concept to what you have here at Extraordinaries.
Regarding MyFarm, I'd recommend a little more understanding into the market they're working with in San Francisco. Most backyards come from owners of home and land, owners of land have high incomes, most of those incomes are from families who's net income is over 100k/year.
The most valuable resource for these individuals is time. Secondly, growing food isn't rocket science but in an urban setting it's not as easy as cooking spaghetti either. Much customer feedback showed that all farm owners wanted to work in their garden but didn't want the full responsibility of caring for it weekly. The MyFarm crew devotes great time and energy to producing amazingly tasty organic vegetables amidst the urbanite forest of SF.
Posted by: Chris Burley | March 02, 2009 at 02:46 PM
Have been in touch with Joe. Very interesting stuff they're working on (although quite a bit different than what we're doing - since ours is all about on-phone works, and his is on-the-ground works).
Yes, got it with the SF market - am a resident here - but anecdotally - the vibe I get is that with a little push and guidance, and good gardening know how, many of us would be happy to tend our own gardens. Sure, it's not for everyone, but there are a lot of DIY people here (think: home of Make Magazine) - and so if there were two levels - one fully managed - and one "guided" - MyFarm could open the market right up... and avoid the problem they're having now with being oversubscribed.
Does this second level exist? I didn't see it, but was talking with a friend who said that it did. If it does, sign me up. And I've got a pair of chickens to provide some awesome compost.
Posted by: Ben | March 03, 2009 at 07:34 PM