This episode examines how a queer led cooperative farm in New York’s Hudson Valley has built a decade of shared governance, diversified revenue, and community rooted production on leased land. It focuses on: (1) the farm’s land tenure model, a ten year rolling lease negotiated to base payments only on infrastructure assets rather than land value, allowing Rock Steady to farm 5.5 acres while maintaining long term affordability and stability; (2) the evolution of the ownership team, from three experienced founding farmers to a four owner cooperative supported by a 13 member staff, with clear distinctions between hierarchical field operations and democratic ownership decision making; (3) the business model, which began with the purchase of equipment and customer lists from a previous farm and has grown into a mixed vegetable and flower operation supported by CSA sales, philanthropic funding, fiscal sponsorship, and consolidated loans through Seed Commons; (4) the governance systems that sustain the cooperative, including weekly owner meetings, quorum based voting, structured onboarding for new owners, conflict resolution protocols, and participation in the Webatuck Valley Farm Collaborative, a sociocracy inspired network of neighboring farms that share decision making through circle structures and ranked voting; and (5) the lessons learned over ten years of cooperative farming, including the importance of human resources support, the need for conflict management training in farmer education, the value of transparent decision making, and the benefits of combining cooperative governance with a flexible LLC and fiscal sponsorship structure that supports both business operations and nonprofit aligned programming.

• Transcript of complete interview
• Rock Steady Employee Manual
• Worker Owner Agreement Overview
• Owner Rights and Responsibilities
• Rock Steady Decision Making Matrix
• Rock Steady Farm website