They introduced me to Lijiang Cheng, one of the 20 villagers, skilled farmers who work on the farm with the university graduate managers and interns. He told me he is 62 and had been farming all his life. Looking at me, he exclaimed, “She still has a braid!” The farm staff includes 5 managers, 20 villagers and ten interns. In its third year of production, in 2011 Little Donkey includes the 240 families who have garden plots and 430 who receive farm crew produced shares that include vegetables, eggs and pork. The farm is much more than a CSA – it is a training center, serves as a model for cooperative work between village peasants and university educated organizers, the site of a farmers market, and hosts literally thousands of visitors.
Nearby we came to a larger building where the crew eats lunch and where they cook for visitors. A group of 7 or 8 young people, college age, was sorting the waste from the Farmers Market into compost and recyclables. One young man complained that the people who came to shop were not very aware.