FAQs

We are currently gathering interest for our 2025 CSA U-pick (in Afton, MN). Please complete this interest form: https://forms.gle/ZLjWqo3Fwdto6RT76

We are a Limited Liability Company operating as a social enterprise business. This means we apply commercial strategies to make positive inroads for social justice. For example, we reinvest our “profits” in the furtherance of land reparations, food sovereignty, and racial justice by donating back to the communities we operate in (including schools and Indigenous peoples or Native Tribes). We do not seek to maximize profits for the sake of ourselves, shareholders, or potentially selling off the business in the future.

Our Youth Program is fiscally sponsored by the PI Health Board of WA. This means that the PI Health Board of WA provides fiduciary oversight, financial management, and other administrative services to help build the capacity of this charitable project.

We accept donations for both the business activities (which helps us keep overhead as low as possible and return the highest margin back to our farmers), as well as for our Youth Program. Donations made to our Youth Program are considered charitable contributions and we / our fiscal sponsor can issue receipts for tax filing purposes. When you make a donation, please be sure to specify if you intend it to go the business (to offset administrative expenses, for example) or to our Youth Program (to help pay for meals, supplies, field trips, stipends for the youth, etc.)

Our farmers follow traditional and innovative farming practices that focus on natural soil amendments (compost & manure), extensive manual weed removal, and crop rotation. Our veggies, herbs, fruits are not sprayed with insecticides nor do we use synthetic fertilizers. Our flowers are grown outside (not in a controlled greenhouse environment) and thus sprayed occasionally to deter pests or address disease.

We typically harvest several days or so after any spraying, so there is little to no residue when they are crafted into bouquets. In general, our farmers minimize any and all chemical use because we are in the fields on a daily basis during the growing season, and we eat what we grow ourselves. We are especially aware that the soil we work on is our livelihood and wish to preserve its health. We care about your health, our health, and that of our planet.

The certification process is lengthy, expensive, and complicated. Most of our farmers lack the time, money, and English language skills to navigate the certification systems. Certification does not mean that a farm or its produce is chemical-free. You can read up more on this here.

When you place items in your basket and checkout, you will select your pickup location. About a week prior to pickup and the evening before, you will recieve a reminder email from us with specific address and pickup instructions. Please be sure to enter in your correct email address.

Unfortunately, we are unable to offer refunds for no-show pickups of preordered veggie boxes or bouquets. Any leftover boxes or bouquets are made available for other customers to purchase as walk up sales or they will be donated to essential workers, elders, or local non-profits, such as food pantries and mutual aid organizations. We operate on very small margins, and we rely on the revenue from your purchase to fund our youth program, payments of land rent to Tribes and others, as well as offer a high return back to the Hmong farmers we source from. Thank you for continuing to contribute and support the work, even if you do not directly or explicitly benefit from it when you happen to miss pickup.

Food sovereignty can be defined as "the right to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and a community’s right to define their own food and agriculture systems." We believe that residents of the Pacific Northwest should be able to eat local, enjoy local flowers, and make a dignified livelihood from supplying local food and flowers. We recognize that many communities and neighborhoods do not have food sovereignty, especially Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) and poor and fixed income households because of systemic racism, classism, and other systemic oppressions and forces. We seek food sovereignty because we believe it is one of the most immediate and effective ways to heal our communities and ourselves and to help dismantle white supremacy.

We recognize that there is no blueprint for how to work towards land reparations and land returns to the Indigenous Peoples of this land. Every tribe, region, and location is different in their history of colonization, and in the political landscapes of Indigenous struggle and organizing. We also recognize that the existing food system was not only built on the stolen land and labor of Indigenous Peoples, but on the stolen labor of Black, Latinx, Asian, Pacific Islander, and other people of color.

For us, land reparations encompasses, at its heart, righting the injustices that have been perpetrated against Indigenous Peoples and other communities of color in their pursuit to steward, conserve, and make or maintain any physical place or location as their home. The forced removal and displacement of Indigenous Peoples; bigotry, harassment, and intimidation against communities of color; and the systemic racism and structural discrimination in lending practices have all contributed to BIPOC communities owning less land and/or living on land contaminated with toxins and pollutants at a disproportionate rate. We seek land reparations through payment of monetary and in-kind donations of food and flowers to BIPOC communities (including non-profits, and individuals) as an acknowledgment that the lands we farm and live on were stolen from the Duwamish Tribe and other Coast Salish people - the traditional Indigenous inhabitants of our region - and that these lands remain unceded; to recognize and remember that slavery happened on this land and anti-blackness exists to this day, everywhere; and that as non-Native inhabitants of this land, we are committed to the healing work involved in settler colonialism and land dispossession that results from colonialism, gentrification, imperialism, and war.

Racial justice is the systematic fair treatment of people of all races and ethnicities that results in equitable opportunities and outcomes for everyone. A racial justice framework can move us from a reactive posture to a more powerful, proactive stance that recognizes the agency that we all have to transform our society.

There is a long history of racial injustice and racism in agriculture. Indigenous Peoples were often violently removed from their homelands for turnover into farmland, which was then further partitioned by federal laws. A series of federal Homestead Acts subsidized land transfers to mainly white male settlers and corporations. The massive agricultural system in the South was built on the backs of enslaved people from Africa and their children. Inequities that began from these violent roots have only compounded over time. Today, Latinx farmers comprise over 80% of laborers in the U.S., yet less than 6% of owners - well below their 17% representation in the U.S. Meanwhile, white farmers comprise over 96% of owner operators, generating 98% of all farm-related income from land ownership. In contrast, Black, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islanders, and other farmers of color comprise less than 4% of owners, own less land, and generate less wealth from farming than their white counterparts.

Given the pervasiveness of whiteness and white supremacy in U.S. agricultural and food systems, fighting for racial justice in farming is critical. A just and healthy food system for all people and future generations will only be possible once we reckon with the legacy of harm subjected on people of color in the U.S. That is why we confront and disrupt the structural racism that dominates land ownership and farming culture via what we grow, how we compensate our farmers, how we distribute food and flowers, and how we advocate and build power with other BIPOC led farms, businesses, and community members. Exemplifying and pursuing racial justice is our purpose.