From Miller Farm

Helpful Hints to the Farmers of 2007-2008

A few of us talked about restructuring the committees to help the farm get done what it needs to do. The problem, we realized, was that the existence of committees didn't actually affect what we do at the farm. From our experience, the person on orchard, or bees, or gardens, or tools doesn't feel any extra responsibility towards any of these things because of the committee that they have.

Because of this, we decided to reorganize the committees to (hopefully) allow for a greater sense of responsibility. One way that we feel this responsibility could be created is by beginning each ag meeting by reading off each of the committee names to ask for any updates. Also, we tried to divide the committees into low, medium, and high responsibility jobs. So if you're going to have a lot of free time and you're excited to take personal responsibility for getting things done in the garden, it'll be a different level of committment than someone who has a busy semester and decides to be in charge of animal food.

Finally, we discussed some ways to improve community at the farm, some things that we wish that our house would have implimented from the beginning. They are:

• Having a designated house "check in" dinner where we go around and speak about where we are: if you're stressed because you have a huge paper to write, if you're excited because of news from home, if you're feeling like it's hard for you to focus with the mess in the living room, etc. It's helpful in community to have times where you can establish a context for everyone's actions, where you can understand where everyone is at.

• One final piece of advice on community living: I've found that the best communities at the farm are those where everyone feels like they're putting in more than they are obligated to put in. The times when everyone feels like they're doing what they have to do--and only what they have to do--are usually the times when it's most difficult to live at the farm.