How many times have you heard doom and gloom preached in the name of the environment, local food or green building? It often sounds like, “If you don’t do what I say, the world will end!”

So what other approaches are there? Two attitudes I’d like to contrast are the creative vs. the competitive mindsets.

A competitive mind believes in lack and limitation. The world isn’t big enough for everyone, and if someone gets a piece of the pie, that’s less for someone else. It’s a zero sum game where if one person wins, someone else has to lose. For sustainability, that means someone is competing for your attention by trying to take you away from something else; by telling you why what you’re doing isn’t good enough.

A creative mind believes in abundance and opportunity. There’s plenty to go around because not everyone wants the exact same thing. If we run out of pie, we enjoy baking another one. No one has to lose because we all win together. For sustainability that means we’re all doing what we can and working toward a better tomorrow each in our own ways. If you want to pick a different way, that’s okay, too. Even if sustainability hasn’t crossed your radar, we still love you. Maybe someday you’ll see our example and want to join in on the fun.

Another way to look at it was written up by marketing expert Perry Marshall. He calls it arbitrage vs alchemy. In arbitrage, you compete by trying to build a little bit better widget. A little tweak here, a little tweak there. Cut your costs and you can undercut your competition. Alchemy is about creating value where there was none before. While arbitrage often gets us better products, in the end it’s the alchemists that make the world a significantly better place.

What does that mean for Urban Patchwork? We’re not competing with local farmers. In fact, it seems to us that more people would eat local food if it were available. We want to create more abundance so more people can enjoy fresh produce and eggs. If there’s a way we can help another farmer, we’re all for it. We’re in this together.

Beginning November 1st (earlier if possible), we’ll either deliver or have ready for pick-up a weekly supply of fresh, local produce. We’re still in the pilot program, of course, so we’ve limited memberships to 25 for the first season. For the following season beginning in February, we’re opening up 100 memberships. All the memberships are on a first come, first served basis.

Since we’re still expanding our capacity, we’re rewarding early members with an early bird price of $18 per week for pick up and $20 delivered. That includes at least 15 generous portions of our seasonal produce. That would feed an average person 2-3 servings a day. If you’re feeding a family, you can get however many memberships you need while supplies last.

We generally plan to have a wide variety of seasonal items so you won’t be bored. We’ll offer mainstream staples as well as new tasty varieties and a few surprises. We also plan to include recipes along with our produce. If you have a favorite recipe for something we distribute, we’d be happy to hear about it.

If you haven’t gotten your membership yet, contact us soon. Every CSA we’ve researched is sold out and has a long waiting list.