Oh, not me! I do not need funding!

So this is a terrible picture of Farmer John’s market. As you can probably tell, it is tomato season at FJ’s farm although he also has asparagus (in the spring), sweet corn, green beans, peppers of all sorts, cucumbers (for pickling, he doesn’t like cukes in general), raspberries, summer squash, potatoes, winter squash (just starting to get those), flowers, and I fergit what else. FJ is a sweeeeeet man who has been a software developer at my company for a long time. He refers to himself as “just an old farm boy”. He charges for his produce but he certainly doesn’t do it for the money. In fact, by his calculations, he makes about $2/hour running his market and we LOVE his market. We love his market and wait impatiently for asparagus to appear every spring.

Something terribly sad happened yesterday. FJ reported that the cup he puts out to collect money (honor system) had $36 in it at lunch time and $13 by 4:00 PM. This has apparently happened a couple times recently but it is a first, at least in my memory. In the NINE(!) years I have toiled at Cubelandia, I have never *once* felt unsafe about leaving my purse or my iPhone or even the very occasional bit of cash sitting around in my cube. It’s hard to describe my workplace and the people who work there but my company doesn’t just go ahead and hire any old schmo. (Well they did hire meeeee. I’m not sure but what the Benevolent Despot may harbor some second thoughts about that from time to time… OMG Oi hired Kayak Woman? Oy. [wink]) But people are trustworthy at my work and many of them have worked together for umpteen bazillion years and survived multiple corporate upheavals of various sorts together. We care about each other.

No one replied to Farmer John’s email yesterday afternoon. I think people were pretty shocked. This morning the emails started to come in. “How sad is this? And what can we do to help?” One: move the cup over to Building Mom’s desk. She will watch it like a hawk. And then. “Go Fund Me! Everyone donate 50 cents to the cup!” I thought something like, “I can do better than 50 cents and took a fiver over to Building Mom to put in the cup. Then the replies to the Go Fund Me thingy started coming in. “I’ll put $10 in!” Even one of our Indian colleagues who has never been over here offered to send in $10. No I didn’t run over and try to match the $10 donations. I’m just reporting that the point was made over and over again by old and new colleagues that Farmer John’s wonderful market is a major perk at Cubelandia. WE CARE and we are happy to pay for fresh produce!

And then Farmer John weighed in on the whole thing to say no no no no to the “go fund me” campaign. Too late. I bet he doesn’t “need” whatever money has been collected and I certainly don’t want my $5 back so maybe he can either use it to fund some mini-prodject related to his garden farm or maybe it can be donated to some other good cause for feeding people who don’t have enough to eat.

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