'Crop mobs' pitch in on the farm

BEAUFORT, Mo. - Spring arrived at Sam Wiseman's little farm with a huge to-do list. The fences were collapsing after a long winter; the chickens running amok, laying eggs everywhere. The weeds popped up in every possible spot, and trays of seedlings sat in the greenhouses, waiting for someone to plant them.

Until the "crop mob" rolled in.

On a recent weekend, a group of about 30 people flooded the 22-acre property, with shovels, wheelbarrows and goodwill, to help Wiseman as she tries to whip the farm into shape. The volunteers cleaned the chicken coops, planted cabbage, weeded strawberry beds and cleared away broken fences. With a day's work, they got the place ready for the growing season. Or at least close to it.

"It's back to the old barn-raising thing," said Nicola Macpherson, a mushroom farmer who lent a hand at Wiseman's farm near Union in Franklin County, Mo. "You can't do all this stuff by yourself."

Sometimes, you need a mob.

The basic notion is almost as old as farming itself: People join together to get a big job done. And crop mobs are contemporary incarnations of this old-fashioned concept.

The first group calling itself a crop mob launched in North Carolina about a year and a half ago, and thousands of work hours later, the idea is spreading.

Pat Quigley, a carpenter from Jefferson County, Mo., heard about crop mobs earlier this year and decided Missouri could use its own. He got in touch with the North Carolina Crop Mob, which gave him its blessing to use the idea and name, then launched a "Jefferson County Crop Mob" Facebook page. Within weeks, he had 200 would-be volunteers. "People want to know about their food," Quigley said. "They want to be in contact with the earth."

Many crop mobbers are landless urban types who just want to help out, getting their hands dirty for a day or two and plugging into the farming community in the process. Unlike the barn raisers of the past, crop mobs have the added tools of social networking sites and e-mail, forming a virtual community of volunteers scattered across regions. The crop mob at Wiseman's farm gathered most of its volunteers through Facebook.

"I e-mailed Pat, and one thing led to another," said Gretchen Morfogen, a farmers market manager. "And now here I am with my wheelbarrow. It's just one day, and we pool our resources. It can get you weeks ahead of where you'd be without the help."

In recent years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more people have started small-scale farm businesses buoyed, in part, by demand for produce from farmers markets, produce subscription programs, and co-ops. For crop mobbers, helping a small farm is their way of supporting this growing small farms movement and helping ensure a supply of locally grown food.

"We definitely want to support the smaller sustainable farmer. We're not going out to the guy with the big combine," Quigley said. "We want to help the diversified farmer."

And, by some accounts, that farmer could use the help.

Often new to farming, this new generation of small-scale farmers has a huge learning curve to face.

"It's really isolating. A lot of people don't know how hard it is," said Katie Nixon, a small farms specialist with the Innovative Small Farmers Outreach Program at Lincoln University. "It can be really overwhelming."

The Lincoln and University of Missouri extension programs co-launched the Grow Your Farm program three years ago to help new farmers develop solid, sophisticated business plans. As interest in the course has grown, organizers have realized that some budding farmers are struggling to get experience in the field.

"You can find all kinds of Web-based information, but nothing beats getting your hands dirty," said Dean Wilson, of the University of Missouri's extension office in Jefferson County. "With that in mind, finding spots where people can actually work on farms is important."

Libby and Randy Tempel of Webster Groves, Mo., are hoping to start their own farm. In the meantime, they are racking up experience by volunteering through the crop mob. "We're interested in the community aspect," Libby said, "and eventually we'd like to have our own farm."

When Nickie Burge of Maplewood, Mo., decided to spend her Saturday at Wiseman's farm, she had her future in mind, too. "We're looking for property right now, and I'd like to get hooked into the community," Burge said, joking, "This isn't altruistic."

But mostly it is.

"It's a really great thing for any community to have that support," Nixon said. "It's worked for the Amish. That's how they've done things successfully for hundreds of years."