Tomorrow, November 29th, is this year’s Giving Tuesday, a growing global movement celebrating generosity and partnership. Whether it’s giving someone a compliment, visiting with a friend or neighbor, or donating to your favorite cause, there are endless ways to do good and make others smile.

As a small farm, we rely solely on CSA share sales and our annual seedling sale to make up our operating budget, and we nearly always just break even. This is typical for farming, especially small scale farming like we do at Stearns. Rising costs for everything from seeds to compost to fuel, combined with this year’s drought, have put pressure on our budget more than ever before. In such uncertain times, we want to make sure we are able to push forward even in the face of extra, unforeseen costs while also understanding that our community faces this same struggle. 

For this year’s campaign, we’d like to ask for your help in increasing our “rainy day” fund to give us the cushion we need in the face of rising inflation and in case of emergency expenses. We use our “rainy day” fund to cover unexpected expenses, like this year’s $9,000 water bill, more than double what we budgeted for, due to the drought. We also turn to that fund when we have large, unexpected equipment repairs. 

Your gift will increase our reserves so that we are able to meet our essential expenses without the worry of needing to pay for unexpectedly large water and fuel bills or in case we need sudden equipment repairs. We recognize that many in our community are also struggling in the face of rising costs: This is why we didn’t raise our share costs this year. But if you are able, please give generously to support the farm and ensure its sustainability. Thank you.