Lessons Learned in Collaborative Farming with Love is Love Cooperative Farm

Ultimately, we want to get around to like how you guys work together, uh, as people and humans with potentially different goals on a day-to-day basis and things like that.

Is there a way to, to, to talk briefly about like bankrolling all these improvements?

We could try to be brief.

Yeah.

It is a long story.

[laughs]

I also think there's an, I think there's an element of like that was also a team building exercise.

Yeah.

That was kind of the first thing we did, we did together, you know?

Okay.

And so you have, you have, uh, Joe and Judith who own the LLC, uh, Monica and Russell who have worked for another farm, so they're able to have a salary.

Um, then you have myself who is pretty young, and I, I have work ethic and a, a little bit of cash.

But I think when we started to talk about the vision that we wanted, where we wanted to grow this business, it was very clear that we were leaving Love is Love LLC, where we had all the infrastructure and the buildings, and we were gonna have to put that here.

We had focused so much that all these things were gonna be there, and the conservation fund was gonna pay for this because they advertise it as we buy working farms, and then you guys move on to them.

So when it came to, well, you're gonna have to buy this from that farmer, and this from that farmer, and this, and we were like, "Well, that's slightly different than the plan we made." So it challenged us to think about how we're gonna raise capital, and like actually like how much capital we would need.

We were averse to going a traditional method if we didn't have to.

We talked to some SBA people and some outside people, so it wasn't just us on our own.

We, we sought out help from other people, and advice.

And really what we settled on is there's a kind of way in Georgia that you can file, uh, and you can raise a small amount of money through kind of friends and families, but you have to register with the state, and you kind of sell shares.

This also goes well in the co-op model because you can sell preferred shares, part of your co-op.

Then there's common shares, which are for members.

Uh, and these preferred shares are kind of like loans from the community that you pay back.

So we had this long wait list of CSA customers.

We had a good reputation of doing business and trying to do other things because, you know, Joe and Judith, and Monica and Russell in different ways, a- and a little bit of myself, weren't just inside the fence rows, right? We were out in the community, what we call like, uh...

And it was just kind of community service work.

Ultimately, we want to get around to like how you guys work together, uh, as people and humans with potentially different goals on a day-to-day basis and things like that.

Is there a way to, to, to talk briefly about like bankrolling all these improvements?

We could try to be brief.

Yeah.

It is a long story.

[laughs]

I also think there's an, I think there's an element of like that was also a team building exercise.

Yeah.

That was kind of the first thing we did, we did together, you know?

Okay.

And so you have, you have, uh, Joe and Judith who own the LLC, uh, Monica and Russell who have worked for another farm, so they're able to have a salary.

Um, then you have myself who is pretty young, and I, I have work ethic and a, a little bit of cash.

But I think when we started to talk about the vision that we wanted, where we wanted to grow this business, it was very clear that we were leaving Love is Love LLC, where we had all the infrastructure and the buildings, and we were gonna have to put that here.

We had focused so much that all these things were gonna be there, and the conservation fund was gonna pay for this because they advertise it as we buy working farms, and then you guys move on to them.

So when it came to, well, you're gonna have to buy this from that farmer, and this from that farmer, and this, and we were like, "Well, that's slightly different than the plan we made." So it challenged us to think about how we're gonna raise capital, and like actually like how much capital we would need.

We were averse to going a traditional method if we didn't have to.

We talked to some SBA people and some outside people, so it wasn't just us on our own.

We, we sought out help from other people, and advice.

And really what we settled on is there's a kind of way in Georgia that you can file, uh, and you can raise a small amount of money through kind of friends and families, but you have to register with the state, and you kind of sell shares.

This also goes well in the co-op model because you can sell preferred shares, part of your co-op.

Then there's common shares, which are for members.

Uh, and these preferred shares are kind of like loans from the community that you pay back.

So we had this long wait list of CSA customers.

We had a good reputation of doing business and trying to do other things because, you know, Joe and Judith, and Monica and Russell in different ways, a- and a little bit of myself, weren't just inside the fence rows, right? We were out in the community, what we call like, uh...

And it was just kind of community service work.