Dear Oma maa membership,
Dear all!
So much good – beautiful foodbags, a couple of farm dining dinners, meeting, doing and learning together – has happened once again also in our Oma maa’s 2021 year!
Together we continued to take care of the land of Lassilan and Kauko tila farms in order to increase its vitality : to strengthen its upkeep of biodiversity, which importantly includes also its capacity to offer for insects and birds a safe place to live and feed; to strengthen its capacity with regards to carbon sequestration, and to strengthen its efficiency with regards to the recycling of nutrients.
And based on this caring for our land, whilst learning and doing together, we continued to produce our food bags throughout the whole of 2021, catering importantly also to our objectives of food sovereignty and self-sufficiency.
The weather conditions in the spring of 2021 could be said to have been even more challenging this year then that they were in the previous year, with extensive rain in May delaying works on the fields, followed by a very dry period. We had some challenges this year to collectively carry out the necessary tasks as weeding and harvesting on the farm, as Oma maa cooperative as a whole and because of the need to strengthen our core team on the farm. These are the challenges we will continue to work on also as board and farmers in the coming year.
A countering force to these challenges was this year’s increased machinery capacity, which was also the result of our wonderfully successful community loan circle process! Next year this process will continue in the form of the giving out of Oma maa shares, and with this with the creation of a new relation towards Oma maa coop, that of investor! (more info on this soon). New machines allowed us to do more planting, and we had yet again a more diverse vegetable content in our food bags this summer season. For instance our cabbage and cale were a new produce.
This year we also worked further with our Plan of Action 2021-2025, please see the current draft which has been edited by our member Anu Karvinen here. The document should be seen as a living document, supporting us on Oma maa’s road (This is the Finnish version, we try to get the full English version in place asap too).
In our Plan of Action we importantly were more explicit as to what we are seeing as Oma maa’s Vision and Mission, putting to the forefront that community processes as Oma maa are core to systemic (social and ecological) change in society, and with this ultimately to justice. Oma maa was also this year on several occasions asked to talk in different venues exactly about this empowering envisioning. Read more on this also in this blog written by Ruby van der Wekken for the Kumpanuusmaatalous blogi.
Summa summarum, challenges notwithstanding, it is due time for us to say also almost at the end of this year – Bravo Oma maa!
And with this we are about to walk into a new year, with the full intention to further realise our Oma maa potential for (food) systemic change, for which we continue to need the full support of our coop as a whole. Therefore, at the end of this little report on 2021, we are putting forward different ways in which you can currently support Oma maa, with the objective of raising the food bag order into the new year, and towards a new harvest season.
The current numbers are pointing to some 60 whole bag orders for January 2022, which is roughly the same as last year. We are grateful for each one of these orders, but we are also very aware that this number needs to significantly rise in order to strive for sustainability in our coop, to be able to continue our daily operations and also to pay decent remunerations to our producing members.
We therefore want to make the following suggestions with regards to the getting in of more orders for these coming months now :
Order a food bag from January!
(If you haven’t done so already or are not continuing automatically from December)
Gift a friend with a Foodbag or Farm Dining dinner gift card!
(for an every other week food bag order in January, or a Farm Dining dinner at some point in the new year. The link leads you to our website’s main page, please scroll down to read more on the gift card option). You could also spread the word on the possibility of buying these gift cards to your friends on social media.
Consider working towards a new distribution point for Oma maa beautiful food bags in 2022!
(in the document you can read more on the ways in which this could be happening, as well as on the support you would receive from us on this)
Spread the word!
We will be putting out more social media posts now towards the end of the year and beginning of next year on our fb closed group and public page. You are welcome to share them!
We will also be getting more flyer and poster material ready, which everyone will be able to spread in their neighbourhoods. More information on this soon.
We thank you very much for being with on this! All of your efforts are appreciated, and, if you like, can be seen as an important talkoot contribution to your coop.
With very best wishes to everyone for the last month of this year, with wishes for independence and sovereignty to all of us friends of Our Land on this 6th of December! – whilst we on the farm together with several of you, will be soon gearing up for the production of our last food bag week’s 113 xmas bags!
Oma maa hallitus,
Jon Dunn
Maja Lieveska
Merita Miftari
Emmi Skyten
Ruby van der Wekken