Meet the Four Friends
Years ago, two friends began managing a community garden at a local church. Elena Cruz and Maria Lopez connected instantly after trading stories about their abuela’s gardens back home. After some time, they cooked up a plan to start a community garden to carry on this tradition and eventually convinced the pastor to let them convert a grassy, sunny side yard on the church grounds into a garden space accessible to community members.
The two raised funds and community awareness for several seasons, and the community garden blossomed into a neighborhood landmark. People would stop by the garden’s cooler on their way home from work to pick up some veggies, often offering monetary donations in exchange. After about two and half years, though, Maria and Elena realized that they were doing most of the work to keep the cooler stocked–weeding other folks’ plots and harvesting seemingly abandoned vegetables. They both were tired from trying to fit the garden in around their full-time jobs and keep community gardeners engaged.
One sweaty summer Friday morning, Elena had a crazy idea. She had come out to the garden right at daybreak to get a harvest into the cooler before she had to leave for her paying job. She had been working quickly for about an hour on her own plot and was about ready to finish up. Then, she looked up over the rest of the garden, watching the sun finish its rise over the church’s steeple, and surveyed the other plots. She sighed. There was still so much to do! And, she was pretty certain other gardeners weren’t going to show up that day to harvest all the ripe vegetables for the weekend rush on the cooler.
Wishing she could stay all day to keep veggies from going to waste, she began to pack up when it hit her. What if she could stay all day? What if the entire garden was hers and Maria’s, and they stopped trying to get other gardeners to engage? What if they really worked hard and started selling at the farmer’s market and getting more than donations from neighbors? What if they could turn this into a viable business!? Elena was so excited by this idea that she immediately texted Maria that they needed to talk.
That was the seed of what is today Granja Sol Naciente, LLC. The idea was born at daybreak on a random Friday when Elena was frustrated with the endless work of the community garden.
The path to going from a charity-based community garden to a for-profit business wasn’t linear or completely smooth. In the end, Elena did quit her full-time job first. After six months, they had enough experience to know that they should continue pursuing the farm as a for-profit business, and Maria went down to part-time at her off-farm job so she could start developing a CSA.
In the meantime, Alejandro, who lived down the street from the church, saw Elena and Maria changing and expanding the community garden with hand tools. He stopped by one day, offering them his tractor’s use. They happily agreed. Eventually, Alejandro also started working on the farm a few days a week for a small wage–mostly running his tractor and helping out with other equipment.
The three of them began to talk about finding land of their own–where they could expand and build more infrastructure than a cooler. The church was happy to host them, but they were feeling a bit cramped by the land the church had available. Also, as they were now fully committed to being a for-profit business, it didn’t feel right to be using the church property.
During this time, Maria started dating a guy named Mateo, who had taken an organic farming certificate course at the local community college and was looking for a place to test out his skills. The four of them began meeting twice a month to discuss what a collaborative farming business model could look like and what they envisioned for their lives in the next 5-10 years.
After many months of meeting and Mateo and Alejandro picking up more slack at the farm, the four of them concluded that they wanted to form an LLC and get a real estate agent to start looking for affordable, local farmland.
By this time, Elena and Maria had started the community garden four years prior, and Elena had been full-time on the farm for almost 2 years. Farmer’s market sales were steady, but Elena was getting a little burnt out because she had done most of the fieldwork on her own for almost two years. In her spare time, Elena had recently taken a few food safety courses through her local extension and had learned about the on-farm processing of jams, jellies, and dried herbs. She was interested in putting effort towards developing a value-added line of products for Sol Naciente but needed help with the fieldwork to be able to make that happen.
All four of them were interested in equal ownership of the farm and were discussing ways to split duties and contributions to the business in a way that seemed fair. All four wanted to work full-time on the farm, too. A lot of planning had to be done! The first step was to write up how they were going to govern themselves–how did they make decisions? Who contributed what to the business? What happens if someone wants to leave? How do they handle conflict?
Let’s explore how these friends moved forward.