Hi Kate, Wow, do you have a big job in front of you. Welcome to the world of community gardening. According to the book 'City Bountiful, you are in the company of 94% of community gardens in North America. No land tenure! What is your deadline? Who are your partners (do you have charitable status)? You said that the arable land is about 22 acres and the total is 55 acres. If the developer owns the land wouldn't it be easier to try for the 22 acres? You said 'low quality housing'. It is probably not a good idea to use that term in public. We want to keep on as good terms with the property owner as possible. If you want the community to own the land you should start looking for a real property lawyer who will work pro bono. I would be very cautious about coming up with a 'blue sky plan', a greenhouse, for instance, they are expensive and very prone to vandalism. And if you have a big budget, officials will look at it and think, 'these people can not raise this kind of money. Make your plan a 5 year development plan or a 3 year plan. So you are not saying that you can do everything at once. Try to keep your budget as low as possible. Maybe think of cold frames instead of a greenhouse. You need to get some schools or churches or food banks in your corner, but I don't know if you have already. Is your city councillor aware of the development? Any support? This sounds like a very interesting challenge, and I wish you the very best of luck. Please keep the list serve up to date on your progress. By the way, how is the land zoned at the moment? And what is CSA? Karen Today's Topics:
1. Help! We need a CSA business plan & budget (Kate Kiefling) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2008 04:44:09 -0700 (PDT) From: Kate Kiefling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [Community_garden] Help! We need a CSA business plan & budget To: Community Gardens <[email protected]> Cc: Diana Sullivan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Hello Awesome Folks at Community Garden Forum! We have an urban farm project in the Inglewood neighborhood in Nashville, TN and we need your help.? We are trying to save a parcel of 55 acres from being developed into low quality housing and to be saved for community, education and farming (CSA & community garden) use. The goal is to have the land in trust in perpetuity, preferably owned by the community,? but we need to find some creative funding as the developer wants beaucoup bucks for the land. I have been asked to be part of is creating a business plan for a CSA, complete with a list of organic vegetables and a green house system. Right now we are grappling with figuring out the start up cost, the cost to maintain and the estimated income from a CSA. The arable land is about 25-35 acres. This information is needed in order to make a presentation to potential investors/benefactors. I was wondering if anyone here has any kind of information that would help us, or if anyone would know of someone who could help us to put together a farm budget, or at least point to the right direction. I have compiled a list of potential veggies and other types of products and services and have looked at the info available online for already existing CSAs. Also, if you have any info about funding, that would be very very welcome. Smiles, Kate Kiefling 615-336-4465 - The more you do, the more you CAN do! - Lucille Ball -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://list.communitygarden.org/pipermail/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org/attachments/20080913/75608453/attachment.html ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org End of Community_garden Digest, Vol 537, Issue 1 ************************************************ _______________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org
