Food for Time

Shortly after I started graduate school at the University of Maryland, I found the local food co-op (called the Maryland Food Collective).  While quite cool as a place to get food, I was even more struck by its openness to the community. You see, several of the people working were volunteers paid in food ($7 in food credit per hour worked, to be exact). And it’s not like the volunteers were just sweeping the floor, either. They were cooking and taking orders just like paid staff. There were no set schedules – volunteers could more or less show up when they wanted to work … and eat.

While the concept was new to me, the Maryland Food Collective is hardly the only food co-op to offer this kind of arrangement.  Interested in exchanging your time for food (and perhaps learning more about food or to cook new recipes)? You can start with this (non-exhaustive) directory of food co-ops to find one near you.

It’s not just food co-ops that allow one to work for food. I talked with a number of local organic farmers in Maryland over the years (I have had a sustained interest in sustainable agriculture), and almost of all of them offered to reward help during harvest time with liberal produce compensation. Establish yourself as a productive and regular volunteer, and perhaps you can get a share of a CSA as compensation. Not only do you get fresh-from-the-farm produce, but you connect with where your food actually comes from.

For a list of organic farms, you can check out WWOOF USA, which has farms that are actively looking for labor.  The awesome Local Harvest website has a searchable directory of both family farms and CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture – a system in which one gets regular shipments of produce from a given farm).

A disclaimer – the tax implications of this kind of arrangement are not entirely obvious. Neither I, nor Community Ladders, is recommending you engage in any of the activities mentioned in this blog entry or associated newsletter.

Bill Varettoni is a financial planner and the founder of Community Ladders.