I sit in a toasty French Quarter apartment, having experienced the largest snowfall ever recorded in the city yesterday which is (unofficially) 9.5 inches in one day.

I know many of you see much higher accumulations in your area on a regular basis, but for little subtropical New Orleans, it was quite a day.

Of course because of my market work, I was thinking of our growers and producers out there, many of whom saw more snow just north and upriver of the city. The next market on Thursday will likely be called off (just as Tuesday was) with the snow turning to ice with temps not coming out of the 20s for a few days. That also means tarps and tunnels will not come off until Friday or Saturday when damages will be assessed and calculations from lost sales now a reality.

So many stories like this every season. The best we can do is to be their voice and tell our shoppers and partners to be patient, and to gently remind them of this event in a few weeks or so when they see lower amounts on the tables. In other words, our work is just beginning when the weather emergency is over.

Winter also means fewer markets and more conferences and meetings for growers and market operators. In most years, I attend 8-15 conferences for markets, although this year it will be only a few, between FMC’s staff furlough and projects that are not quite ready for dissemination.

Getting out is vital because sharing examples of replicable pilots and programs is the core work we (I) do. The longer I am away from actually managing markets and instead spending my time working to create, collect, and implement replicable resources by partnering with markets and academics, the more I see how to help markets build their operations sustainably can be a tricky business. I often talk about the 4 levels of competence with markets to illustrate how it is so difficult to move to the final stage which on the graph is called unconscious competence, but could also be called organizational competence. See an earlier post about it here:

https://darlenewolnik.com/2017/03/23/the-four-stages-of-market-management/

Winter is a perfect time to focus on organizational competence by attending to some of those long term projects that cannot be completed in the busy market months.

One version of this is a multi year project I am working on for NOFA-VT/VTFMA (doing this as my own consulting entity, Helping Markets Grow as this is not large enough for FMC-level work) around implementing the Legacy Folder that FMC, NOFA-VT and VLGS built out in the Farmers Market Legal Toolkit years back. The entire Legal Toolkit was a massive undertaking and we moved fast to create a significant number of resources with the grant funding we had, and then expected to work with state leaders to build implementation projects for each of the areas we had covered. That latter part has taken longer than expected (blame COVID, changes at each of our 3 organizations, more emerging risks needing to be covered in the Toolkit, state leaders’ priorities and so on) but now I find myself thinking more and more this year about how to help markets use this toolkit to implement organizational competence around risk management on market day. (And then after this one, on to an implementation plan for the 4-6 other toolkits FMC offers, see bulleted list below.)

The VT Legacy Folder* project is a perfect example of how it is difficult to move to organizational competence without a plan or without help. The NOFA-VT/VTFMA project is focusing on only this one resource, selecting a new cohort of market leaders each year, convening via Zoom over winter months. It has been rewarding to help markets collect their legacy documents, and think through how and where those are collected, stored, explained and shared. Even though it is focused on only this one resource, it helps market leaders also deal with their larger organizational weaknesses and strengths and also builds new networks around shared competencies. And even with this help, these hardworking market leaders struggle to get this done, often not completing everything they want to do to check off their Legacy Folder as done in one season.

I am hoping the next 4-5 years will offer lots more opportunity to provide direct support so we can help market leaders move from individual development to organizational competence in all of the areas we have tackled with major resources (all found on FMC’s still unwieldy website, either through links or housed on it directly:)

-Risk management

-Messaging

-Evaluation/Analysis

-Food Access

-Anti-Racism/System Change

-Disaster Recovery (still needs to be finished – any funders out there want to help FMC?)

-Appropriate Technology

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(And maybe we have to build Human Resources Toolkit as the final one?)

So this is how I am digging deep over the winter. I hope to hear some of you have this work in your Winter Plan and have ideas as to how I can help and how FMC can as well.

*Legacy Binder was its pre-digital name which will be updated to Legacy Folder on the site soon

By the way, there will be a new case study on the development of this VT cohort published on the Legal Toolkit site later this winter. Check the Toolkit in the coming weeks or ask the VLGS (who manages the Toolkit) to let you know when it is up via the Toolkit’s contact page.