By Kenzie Love
Chorus Frog Organic Gardens Cooperative formed in October 2024, the result of a conversion initiated by the farm’s founder, Daria Zovi. A native of Italy, Zovi was familiar with the worker co-op model from her country of origin, and decided that being a sole proprietor no longer appealed to her.
“We already had a good team of people who worked together,” she says. “I was the owner of the business, and I didn’t really want to be the owner of the business anymore, and so we decided to incorporate and share ownership.”
Located on BC’s Salt Spring Island, Chorus Frog is home to both a plant nursery and a farm. The Cooperative’s members have varied backgrounds and skill sets, but have come together using the sociocracy model, which devolves decision-making and accountability to interconnected working circles. The circles, in turn, are the people who are most directly affected by the issues in question, so that the ones who are doing specific work are those who make the decisions about that work. However, by holding monthly meetings involving all the members, the Cooperative ensures that information is shared between those working on the farm and those working on the nursery. Zovi finds this model has benefited Chorus Frog and would recommend it to other worker co-ops.
“It’s an inclusive type of governance system,” she says. “The shared structure of the meetings and the shared structure of the responsibilities is really helpful to maintain that cooperative aspect.”
Chorus Frog’s main challenges, Zovi believes, are due mostly to the unpredictable weather it faces, a growing problem as a result of climate change, and the resulting difficulty with issues such as keeping its nursery plants sheltered as they grow. The nursery, which recently opened for the year, offers a wide variety of vegetables, herbs and flowers.
The Cooperative’s community-supported agriculture program is coordinated through the Chorus Frog Neighbourhood Farm, which allows participants to indicate which vegetables they are interested in growing and pledge an amount of time or money they can contribute to that year’s growing season. Crops are then scaled according to the amount pledged.
The farm is also playing host this year to a Neighbourhood Farmer Training program, which is a comprehensive educational opportunity with a curriculum developed in collaboration with the Institute for Sustainable Food Systems at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU). Participants will learn about topics such as developing a neighbourhood group, crop planning and delivery, and soil and plant health while working on the farm from April to September.
While these programs will keep the Cooperative’s members busy during the growing season, Zovi is aware of the drop-off in work that happens at harvest time and would like to address this. In the meantime, however, she’s content with the direction Chorus Frog is taking.
“I think we’re pretty happy,” she says. “We have been steady in the volume of sales and steady in our workload, and I think there is room for us to grow a little bit and include and welcome new members.”