Photo by Crystaline Randazzo.
Within the fluorescent-lit, sterile environs of a supermarket, restaurant or kitchen, it’s easy to forget that the fruits and veggies you’re eating started out as mere seeds in the soil. If you do your shopping at the local farmers market, you’re probably more aware of where your food comes from than most, but if you really want to gain an appreciation for your food’s origins you’ll go straight to the source and join a mob. A crop mob, that is. And odds are there’s one not too far from you.
Planting the seed
Born in the triangle region of North Carolina less than three years ago, Crop Mob now has nearly 50 chapters scattered across the United States, each one full of people eager to get their hands dirty in the name of sustainable agriculture. But while Crop Mob is still in its infancy, the concept behind it is really nothing new. As Stephanie Stewart, a long-time participant in that first North Carolina group, explains, “It’s really been going on for hundreds of years; it just fell to the wayside when industrial farming came over.” The idea is that naturally grown crops require extra manpower to raise as opposed to their chemically laden, conventional cousins. But as small, sustainable and organic farms regain their importance, the re-emergence of communities volunteering labor to support local farmers seemed only natural; Crop Mob was the logical extension. “It really functions on its own,” says Stewart, “because there’s a need and people want it.”
For Coburn, it’s a win-win. “Volunteers want to learn, and farmers need the help.” And help they get. Ashley Hawkins, one of the organizers of Richmond’s version of Crop Mob, Richmond Ground Up , recalls building a garden for a community center at one of her group’s first mobs. “We started from nothing and put in rows and rows of mulch,” she explains, “It was just a really inspiring, cool thing to see that we’d started with a blank plot of grass and were actually able to build something on it in two days.” Stewart relays a similar story when describing how her mob helped two farmers build rice paddies. “It was amazing. We started with a field of tall grass, dug out paddies and filled up the whole space…it was totally transformed.”
According to many of the people involved, farms and gardens aren’t the only things being transformed. Amy Rentenbach, a long-time participant in Atlanta’s mobs, was tired of big city life and considered moving before discovering the city’s group. “It’s growing the community in Atlanta,” she claims, “We’re turning into a small community again.” Stephanie, in North Carolina, concurs. “I’ve found some of my best friends through mobs; it’s like having your own support group.”
Photo by Crystaline Randazzo.
Lending a farmhand
Interestingly, many of the people active with Crop Mob have no farming background. In Atlanta, Kimberly estimates the majority of participants are office dwellers like herself simply yearning for a way to reconnect with the land. Kirsten, who started DC’s chapter with no farming knowledge whatsoever, has had the same experience. “There’s such a variety of people: policy wonks, corporate workers…people just wanting to get out and feel the sunshine.” Participants don’t need any special skills or talents to be able to contribute either. “Just enthusiasm and an interest,” she says.
And perhaps a willingness to break a sweat. Past mobs have done everything from planting onions and gleaning corn to clearing fields for sheep and building greenhouses. “And there’s always weeding,” notes Kirsten, “and then when you think you’re done, there’s more weeding.”
If weeding’s not your thing, though, perhaps you’d be enticed by a home-cooked meal, some good music and a beer or two. Kimberly fondly recounts a morning spent working on “one of the prettiest properties we’ve ever been on” topped off by an “awesome” fish fry, a float in the farm’s river, and a few sips of home brew. At another, a few bands came and played and a local paper donated beer. “It was just out of hand fun,” she reports. “Total hootenanny craziness.”
The typical mob gets started early to beat the heat, works for a few hours and then breaks for lunch. Some meals are potlucks, others are put together by the farm host or if you’re lucky, catered by an award-winning restaurant as is the case in Atlanta, where farm-to-table restaurant Miller Union volunteers to provide food for many of the group’s mobbing events. Then if you’re not totally exhausted after a day on the farm, a few people usually hang around chatting about the slow food movement, dancing to music, sipping home brew or just re-forging their connection with the earth.
Reaping the rewards
The farmers, for their part, are simply grateful for the help. It takes a huge amount of labor for a small farm to grow food without all the chemicals and herbicides running rampant on industrial farms, and one day of 30 to 40 people pitching in can provide a rare day of rest. At Cane Creek Farm roughly 40 miles north of Atlanta, farmer Lynn Pugh says mobbers completed in three hours what would have taken her and her husband three weeks. They put up a hoop house, planted strawberries (all 2,000 of them), dug sweet potatoes, took down trellises, planted garlic and picked beans. “I had a long list of things, and they kept working,” she says. “These were big fall jobs that take awhile.” Lynn indicates they were more than just hard workers, though. “I really appreciated the people that came out. They had such a good spirit and were so cheerful and willing; it was a pleasure working with them.”
Some crop mobbers, though, don’t seem to get what all the fuss is about. For them, Crop Mob is simply a natural extension of their beliefs in living and promoting a sustainable lifestyle for their own health and the health of the planet. For Kimberly, Crop Mob doesn’t even feel like work. Unlike diets and things, she explains, “slow food is one of the few things where doing the right thing is actually fantastic and awesome and delicious.”
In the end, perhaps Stephanie sums up Crop Mob best, “We are just a bunch of people committed to supporting one another and the local food systems we believe in.”
Jennifer Horton is a freelance writer living in Greenville, SC. She enjoys sharing her love for the outdoors with others by writing about nature and the environment and all the beauty and excitement they have to offer.
Don’t see a mob within driving distance? Don’t despair. More than 50 people have started their own version of Crop Mob and so can you. While the initial organization, signing of waivers and other minutiae might be tedious, once it’s off the ground it will practically run itself. Along with the “Getting Started Guide” on the group’s web page, here are a few key ideas from Crop Mob veterans
Don’t go it alone
Rope in another person to help get the ball rolling. Whether in the form of co-organizers or a farmer serving as a mentor to help with logistics, having someone to help shoulder the initial burden is a big help.
Use social media
Organize the group using a social media platform, ideally several. Word of mouth can only go so far, so stir up interest through Facebook, Twitter or a blog and keep it updated regularly so people know how to get (and stay) involved. To see if there’s a mob near you, take a look at
cropmob.org under “Get Involved” and scroll down to the map. Most groups keep people notified of upcoming events through a Facebook page, Twitter, Google groups, a blog, an email list or a combination.
Lean on other crop mobs…
Don’t be afraid to reach out to other Crop Mob chapters. People who have walked the road before you can guide you around any potholes they may have encountered, giving you tips for what works and what doesn’t.
…but not too hard
That said, don’t worry too much about making your mob just like everyone else’s. Depending on your location, the needs in your area may be slightly different and a tweaked version may be more appropriate. Richmond’s group, for example, tends to focus more on small community gardens while Atlanta’s gravitates to urban farms. There are as many different variations on the initial concept as there are flavors of tomatoes in summer. Make your own heirloom. They’re all delicious.
Coming to a farm near you…
To see if there’s a mob near you, take a look at cropmob.org under “Get Involved” and scroll down to the map. Most groups keep people notified of upcoming events through a Facebook page, Twitter, Google groups, a blog, an email list or a combination.
Photo by Crystaline Randazzo.
Within the fluorescent-lit, sterile environs of a supermarket, restaurant or kitchen, it’s easy to forget that the fruits and veggies you’re eating started out as mere seeds in the soil. If you do your shopping at the local farmers market, you’re probably more aware of where your food comes from than most, but if you really want to gain an appreciation for your food’s origins you’ll go straight to the source and join a mob. A crop mob, that is. And odds are there’s one not too far from you.
Planting the seed
Born in the triangle region of North Carolina less than three years ago, Crop Mob now has nearly 50 chapters scattered across the United States, each one full of people eager to get their hands dirty in the name of sustainable agriculture. But while Crop Mob is still in its infancy, the concept behind it is really nothing new. As Stephanie Stewart, a long-time participant in that first North Carolina group, explains, “It’s really been going on for hundreds of years; it just fell to the wayside when industrial farming came over.” The idea is that naturally grown crops require extra manpower to raise as opposed to their chemically laden, conventional cousins. But as small, sustainable and organic farms regain their importance, the re-emergence of communities volunteering labor to support local farmers seemed only natural; Crop Mob was the logical extension. “It really functions on its own,” says Stewart, “because there’s a need and people want it.”
For Coburn, it’s a win-win. “Volunteers want to learn, and farmers need the help.” And help they get. Ashley Hawkins, one of the organizers of Richmond’s version of Crop Mob, Richmond Ground Up , recalls building a garden for a community center at one of her group’s first mobs. “We started from nothing and put in rows and rows of mulch,” she explains, “It was just a really inspiring, cool thing to see that we’d started with a blank plot of grass and were actually able to build something on it in two days.” Stewart relays a similar story when describing how her mob helped two farmers build rice paddies. “It was amazing. We started with a field of tall grass, dug out paddies and filled up the whole space…it was totally transformed.”
According to many of the people involved, farms and gardens aren’t the only things being transformed. Amy Rentenbach, a long-time participant in Atlanta’s mobs, was tired of big city life and considered moving before discovering the city’s group. “It’s growing the community in Atlanta,” she claims, “We’re turning into a small community again.” Stephanie, in North Carolina, concurs. “I’ve found some of my best friends through mobs; it’s like having your own support group.”
Photo by Crystaline Randazzo.