The main educational product will be a Farming Club Handbook. It will be divided into three sections, with chapters in each. Two perspectives will be addressed, those of members and those of farmers and farmland managers, laying out scenarios for different kinds of ownership, rewards, and responsibilities of each. The Handbook will be a “starter kit” with detailed resources for crop planning, tool and equipment sets, bylaws and contracts, models for Club processes like survey templates, within Club role specializations, work party planning, frequency, duration and flow, and discussion of the rhythm of gatherings for socialization and reaching agreements. Complex topics such as finance, group dynamics, and social cohesion will be included. It will be professionally edited with quality graphic design, and will be promoted with a well-honed media plan.

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Section One will address why Farming Clubs are needed for sustainable food systems. It will report on the surveys of Club members to understand their motivation and benefits and share representative anecdotes. Jason will explain how the Club has made a difference for him as a farmer and farm owner, and will suggest how other farming professionals may benefit from engaging with a Club. We will also explain how Farming Clubs are distinct, legally and practically, from other opportunities on farms, such internships and Work Share CSAs, and how they solve an unmet need.  

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The second section will provide the “starter kit” materials. The handbook will be a narrative that explains resources that will be available for download. Crop planning will serve as an example of the kinds of details that would help others begin their own Farming Club. A club could plan to grow complete diets, and we can certainly lay out how this might be done. However, most groups will choose a less ambitious set of goals, especially when beginning. 

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One of our goals with our 2025 crop plan was for each member to have their produce needs met for the year (aside from exotics we can’t grow such as avocados, bananas, etc.). Although we haven’t gone through the winter yet, it looks like we will meet this goal through solid planning and execution. To understand how we have done this, we can look at our Heirloom.ag account. The crop plan was set in early winter 2025 to feed 20 people, and we have completed 165 plantings this year, beginning in late March and ending in mid October. Forty-one of these plantings were direct-seeded, and the others were by transplants started in a greenhouse. Within a particular crop species, much care went into variety selection to cover seasonal ranges, different storage abilities, or culinary uses. For example, there were twelve lettuce plantings, roughly divided between tolerance for spring, summer, or over-winter periods, and then types of lettuce (e.g., butter, loose leaf, romaine). We grew four kinds of cabbage, two for summer and two for fall and winter, with different dates of maturity so that cabbage is available for several months. We sowed two intermediate day varieties of onion in the fall that will be ready to eat fresh or cured the following June, as well as three varieties in May that finish in August, two of which are great keepers, so there are onions year-round. We grew multiple varieties of melon, winter squash, tomato, and potato. There are large areas dedicated to frost tolerant and late maturing brassicas, and successions of arugula and spinach in the spring and fall for year-round greens. For each of these we needed to decide how many plants would go into the ground, how many seeds we would need to offset uncertain germination rates, how much space each plant required, and how all would fit into the areas we had to work in. Now that we have done this work, we can share it with others and offer advice on how to adapt it to their situation. 

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The final section will broaden the discussion from the details of startup materials and the particulars of Confluence Farming Club, exploring scenarios that others may encounter and how they may go about dealing with them. We are aware of the difficulty of accessing land for those who want to farm, and the business risks that come when one actually becomes a farmer. Clubs have the advantage of mitigating these risks, but volunteer-based organizations with little financial capital can encounter upsets as not all members will be equally committed and issues of fairness and power dynamics can fester. The scenario development section will tease out a range of ways Clubs may exist; we expect this to be illuminating for both prospective members and interested land owners and professional farmers. Member interests may be best served in the long run by having private Clubs that own all forms of capital and can hire professional staff, but this is unlikely to be a starting point in most situations. Clubs that start small and with few resources may struggle with group cohesion as people join with different needs and expectations. The Handbook will address these thorny topics in final chapters. 

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We will create diverse media from the book, which will include freely available internet-archived print materials, worksheets, podcasts, and on-line workshops. Hard copies of the Handbook will be available through a print-on-demand service. We can reliably get many thousands of listens and views as our products are released, reaching a global audience, and we expect these products to maintain relevance for years to come. 

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Jason is familiar with participating in farm conferences and workshops in the region, such as those held by watershed councils, soil districts, universities, and other associations. He has already spoken about the Club on podcasts and for the local watershed council and has been positively received. We expect our short documentary video will be a convenient way to introduce the Club when giving presentations, allowing people to see the land, food, and people involved.