"Our life is the farm and farming is our life"

Abstract

We present a qualitative study of 13 farm families who intentionally merge their home and work lives. This is in contrast to most families studied in CSCW, who are urban/ suburban, white-collar and often dual-income, where the goal is to balance separate home and work spheres. We analyze the farm families' coordination practices along three dimensionsspace, time, and roles -and contrast their experiences to what is known in CSCW about family coordination practices. Through this, we reveal blind spots in CSCW's study of and support for family coordination toward building better tools to support such activities. We emphasize considering colocation rather than assuming geographic distribution across life spheres, the value of natural rhythms in understanding and supporting family life, and how taking on simultaneous roles can be viewed as a life goal rather than a source of conflict.

Implications of Grassroots Sustainable Agriculture Community Values on the Design of Information Systems

“…There was a similar sentiment among the permaculture communities to present themselves and information in an appealing light, which they dubbed "making permaculture sexy." The focal values of the farm families in Leshed et al's research [44] overlap with the peripheral values of our participating permaculture communities, including merging home and work life in such a way that supports the natural rhythms of family life, unmediated face-to-face interaction, being outside, and a person's ability to multi-class in their roles.…”

“…In context of their mapping [17], this research falls under "formative user studies" genre and explores problems in local, collective contexts. This work is adapted from and builds on qualitative research techniques used by previous formative user studies within S-HCI to report on and champion special consideration of practices by people who lead alternative sustainability life styles [8,28,58,90] and people who grow food [3,10,44,48,63,93]. Our work extends this area of research by engaging in observant participation, a qualitative research method that anthropologist João H. Costa Vargas [92] differentiates from the traditional participant observation to underline the importance of participation rather than observation.…”

“…HCI and CSCW research also demonstrated that food-growers have unique requirements for information systems that support their work. For example, small-scale organic farming families uniquely merge their work and home life, yielding unique values for technological support including supporting the natural rhythms of family life, unmediated face-to-face interaction, being outside, and a person's ability to multi-class in their roles [44]. For another example, a collection of small mid-western farmers working to form a local food network had a value set characterized by balance require information systems that support selective transparency, socialization of newcomers with seasoned farmers, and the equity of disadvantaged newcomers [82].…”

“…Much of the work by the permaculture communities overlapped with the work by the communities introduced in the related work. For example, many members of the permaculture communities were planning homesteads-a variant of a family farm such as those Leshed et al [44] researched. Some of the unusual conditions of Leshed et al's farming families, specifically the nature of the laborious outdoor work and the importance of natural rhythms (e.g., seasons) [44], were shared by our participating communities more broadly.…”

“…For example, many members of the permaculture communities were planning homesteads-a variant of a family farm such as those Leshed et al [44] researched. Some of the unusual conditions of Leshed et al's farming families, specifically the nature of the laborious outdoor work and the importance of natural rhythms (e.g., seasons) [44], were shared by our participating communities more broadly. Most digital technologies are sensitive to the weather and rough handling encountered during manual labor on the family farm [44].…”