After 14 seasons of operating with a Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) program as the central model of our farm, we've decided as a cooperative to pause our CSA program starting this coming 2025 season.
Instead of running a CSA, the farming cooperative will devote our energy to expanding projects that have been already existing alongside our CSA program. These changes are consistent with the purpose of the CSA - of providing Winnipeg households with sustainably grown, local food - but the way we put this into practice is shifting. We're imagining the coming season will include some form of the following components:
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  1. Offering a small fall CSA of storage vegetables - including veg like squash, carrots, beets, potatoes, onions and garlic, with one or two big pick-ups in September.
  2. Opening up community gardening spaces on the farm with opportunity for intentional farmer gatherings; collective projects; sharing in farm tools, infrastructure, amendments, and bounty; and some level of volunteer commitment to caring for the farm space together. 
  3. Offering community members the opportunity to share in chicken and beehive ownership and egg and honey harvest.
  4. Growing vegetables for sale to CMU Cafeteria and folio cafe.

​Along with a this change in focus, comes a change in how the farm will operate:
  • We’re moving towards engaging the farm as a community volunteer organization, instead of as a business,
  • We as farmers will be working part-time as volunteers to organize farm programming and care for the farm space, and will no longer make this our full-time summer employment, and
  • Instead of looking for primarily “customer” style CSA sharers (you pay us money, we grow your food), we are looking for folks who are interested in getting more involved with us in building a more participatory urban farming community.
There will continue to be many ways that you can stay involved in and support the continuing work of Metanoia! Please stay updated by clicking the "stay updated" button and sending us a email, following us on Facebook and Instagram, and visiting us on the farm in Spring 2025!
This transition is accompanied by a mixture of emotions for us, including sadness. The CSA model of growing vegetables has been the model in which over 20 farmers in the past 14 seasons have learned and deepened their love for this acre of land, specifically for growing food for local households. We have had countless volunteers and friends participate in this journey, and we have had hundreds of households share with us the risks and uncertainties of farming; the support of our sharers has been the crux of who Metanoia has been and will shape who we continue to become. 

It's hard to let go of a model and rhythm that has brought so much joy, and we will miss the weekly pickups that gathered people together on this land which gifted them their food. We're pausing our CSA program not because it has failed us, but because it is time for the love we have had for it to shift and evolve - to become something we cannot quite imagine yet. We thank everyone who has shared in the joy of the last 14 seasons and invite you to join us in tending to what is next to grow. 

The specifics of how the farm will change in this next season are currently under construction, and will continue to emerge in the coming seasons with those who choose to join us in this ever-evolving project of farming as Metanoia.  We know, though, that this change will be guided by three interconnected commitments:

Livability

After 14 seasons of creative attempts to provide farmers with a livable wage, it is time to embrace the reality that Metanoia has always relied on cooperative members' gift of countless volunteer hours. Unfortunately, in such a fast-paced culture, the slow work of planting and weeding by hand rarely provides financial stability on its own. Cooperative members' previously full-time positions will become part-time volunteer roles, allowing farmers to engage the farm as the passion project it always has been while making space for farmers to pursue other livelihoods. We are seeking to maintain the passion and joy of growing and being on the farm together, while sustaining healthy and engaged energy.

Community Involvement

Until recently, Metanoia's cooperative members have provided most of the labour and all the management needed to care for the farm space - this is changing! In 2024, we invited some community members to grow their own food on parts of the land, and we liked this broadening of communal investment in the farm. Like soil, more diversity leads to greater fertility. This past year we were excited to begin to make space for the cross-pollination of farming ideologies and practices that occurs with the presence of more people growing food together, and we are excited to continue to expand this aspect of the farm in the coming season. With more people and ideas in the same space, adaptation becomes more feasible.

Urban Farm Space

We hope the farm can become a growing space for some of the many urban folks who don't otherwise have access to land nearby, within the supportive environment of established growing practices and co-farmers with many years of experience to share. Providing education in growing vegetables and caring for land has always been part of our orientation as farmers, and continues as we embody new forms of community with this land. We know land access is central to food sovereignty and the crucial work of adaption amid the continuing change of our planet.