Community Supported Agriculture
By Karina | March 24, 2008
I keep posting about how it’s *almost* spring, even though here in the north-east it seems kind of iffy that it will ever actually start. (This weekend I participated in a 4-mile run in 30 degree weather. brrr!) But it is, I promise! Even the calender says so! Plus, this is the time of year to join a Community Supported Agriculture group!
Joining a CSA is one of my tiny choices that I’m most excited about. Every year I join a group that supports a local farmer. We pay for a summer of vegetables up front, which is takes some of the risk out of farming. Farmers often are involved in a debt-cycle where they take out loans to pay for machinery and seeds, and have to hope that the season will be productive so they can cover the money they owe their bank. (This debt cycle is seen as one of the contributing factors to the Dust Bowl, by the way.) Wikipedia has a good summary of CSAs for reference.
I first decided to join a CSA because I was trying to eat more vegetables. It was in 2001ish, and I was working a desk job and dealing with a surprisingly sedentary lifestyle. My doctor told me I needed to work on better health habits while I was young and malleable.
But as I stayed a member of that CSA and of several others afterwards, I learned a lot about local foods, organic foods, and the business of small farmers. And everything I learned made me like CSAs more. I loved the opportunity to go on farm visits, and to get to know my farmer personally. I loved organizing potlucks with the others in the CSA and sharing our favorite recipes. I loved getting food as it ripened and seasonally. I loved meeting other CSA members at the pickup location. And I really loved getting all the vegetables - some of which were totally new to me, and ones that I wouldn’t have tried if I’d seen them in the grocery store. There’s a big challenge to eat everything up, too. You don’t want to waste food that you’re invested in, especially not when you know the person who has produced it.
This is how a CSA generally works: around this time of year, you find a farmer and give them a check for a few hundred dollars. You’re buying into the farm - you assume the risk of a poor harvest, and you also agree to receive vegetables on a seasonal basis, and according to what the farmer plants. This means you receive vegetables that are adapted to your location, and may not be what you’re accustomed to. After you write the check, you have to wait a few months. In the Northeast USA, the CSA season generally starts in the first week or two of June, and continues on for 16 to 20 weeks. And once the season starts you stop by a pick-up location to get a box of vegetables once a week. You may need to volunteer to set-up or clean-up the pick-up location, or you may not. There may be farm visits, potlucks, and talks with the farmer as well. It’s incredibly rewarding, and quite a challenge to eat the quantity of vegetables you get during a good year!
I’m excited about next year at my CSA: Farmer John has arranged a fruit share, and my CSA group is also looking into a way to get organic eggs. Last year I had a wicked hard time eating all of my vegetables, but contributing to that was also an inclination to work way too late, and I hope that those days are over and I’ll be much more efficient at my day job than I had been.
Here are several resources for finding a CSA near you - try all of them, these listings aren’t inclusive:
- The Robyn Van En Center
- Green People
- Local Harvest
- National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service
- Eat Well Guide
Do you belong to a CSA, or frequent any local farm stands? Did you have a hard time eating all of your produce last year (too)?
Photo of my Week 12 CSA share last year - check out the variety!
Related posts:
- Easy Peasy Tip: It’s CSA Sign-up Time!
- Tiny Choices Book Review: Plenty
- Crop Mobs Descend
- Guest Post: Gardening in Florida
- How To Build Community
- Urban Window Farms
- CSA Dilemna
Topics: Food |
Yes! I am SO EXCITED about CSA time! We joined our first one last year and this year we’re moving up to a full share from a different farm. I keep opening the excel spreadsheet of seeds they planted, trying to figure out what I’m going to get first, and drooling, a little.
My CSA group had an opportunity for a winter’s share of potatoes and onions, and we took advantage of that, since I have a really hard time finding local stuff in the winter in Chicagoland. They are also going to have a pick your own herb garden, I think, which I’m excited about.
I am still going to go to the market on Saturdays, though, so I can get fruit and meat. Also because I figured out I really enjoyed going.
I love winter shares! I still have a bunch of winter squash, I should eat them up!
We do the farmer’s market thing here, and through that, there is some branching out into other things too. We are “sponsoring” a free-range turkey for this Thanksgiving, and we are lucky enough to be near Sequatchie Cove Farms, who are a wonderful source of organic, humanely-and-sustainably-raised beef and pork. Their motto is “our cows are made of nothing but grass.”
check here to see if you have a locallygrown.net group operating near you:
http://www.locallygrown.net/markets/list
one of my goals is to find a local dairy near me, so I can get milk straight from the cows teat. (sort of.)
I love the idea of the CSA, but it just doesn’t make sense for me. It would be way too much food and way too expensive. The weekly price of the CSA adds up to the same price of all the food food I buy per week from the farmers market. So if I was in a CSA I would be paying twice as much, because I’d still have to go to the market to buy meat, cheese, milk, etc. And half the CSA vegetables would go bad before we could eat them all. I much prefer to just amble around the farmers and get what I need on a given week.
it takes a huge amount of work for me to eat all of my veggies - last year I had a terrible run but usually I can finish them off. the local farmers market is during work hours and I can’t get to it, so I am thankful I get a chance to have local veggies with my csa!
We just signed up for a CSA (so excited!) due largely to the efforts of 2 women in our neighborhood (I call them our locavore fairy godmothers) to get a delivery drop nearby. Just by shooting some emails on our local nhood listserv, they gathered a group large enough to persuade a CSA program to add another stop. Anyhoo, in the past we’ve gotten produce from a weekly organics delivery service, the farmer’s market and the big old store. I’m looking fwd to sending more of our dollars right to a farm. Curious to see if we can eat it all!
that’s so exciting! you’ll do fine probably with the CSA, but it takes an entirely different approach to cooking and meal planning! it’s really fun, actually, to have to fly by the seat of your pants each week.
In San Diego we get year-round CSA. I just picked up my first box last Wednesday. It’s really exciting and I’m looking forward to finishing up the veg before the next box comes. Yeah chard!!
One year we split a membership with another couple, which worked out well, especially for the things one couple didn’t like so much (they took the collards, we got the cantalope). Unfortunately the summer we did it was one of the rainiest we’ve had and we ate a lot of greens, tons and tons of them, and not so many tomatoes, melons or other things I love.
Now I prefer to go to the farmers market and shop, but I wish they would offer a “market basket”, with veggies, herbs, bread, milk and cheese, flowers and maybe a meat option. I’d love that!
Every spring I dread the start of the greens. SO MUCH lettuce. I end up just bringing a head of it to work and shoving it into my mouth all day long.
This is the funniest image I’ve had in a long time. Must *sigh* eat *ugh* more *gag* lettuce…
We joined one for this year. So we’ll see! I’m going to try to find recipes for us to try everything. Hopefully we’ll find some new tastes we like. And anything that we have in abundance, I’d like to try to preserve. Since we’re a family of 4, I think we’ll do pretty well in using most of it up each week. It’ll really just depend on what we get!
Thanks for this great reminder! I did a CSA share two years ago, and it was fun to improv the meal plans for the week, but it really did help us eat more veggies, and things that I would not normally buy on my own…though by the end of the season, there were certainly things left in the fridge at the end of the week, as I was tiring of the fall offerings. I left messages with a couple of CSAs with drops in my area, and I hope I can still get in on one. I’m also hoping that they might take “special” orders for bushels of tomatoes, cukes, peppers, etc. to feed my canning projects!
Hi Karina,
Thanks for mentioning the Eat Well Guide as resource to find local CSAs. The Eat Well Guide also lists restaurants, bakeries, organizations, stores and many more sustainable food outlets across the US and Canada. Feel free to let us know of listings in your local area that you think should be added to the Eat Well Guide. Check out our new and improved site where you can sign up to stay updated, search for local events, or download widgets for your blog (http://downloads.eatwellguide.org/widgets/search/). Stay tuned for the launch of our travel tool, an interactive feature that will allow users to map out their route and find local, sustainable food along the way.
-Erin
[…] Karina shares her love for the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA); she also discusses how DIY will save us […]
[…] when I am trying desperately to eat all of the locally raised organic vegetables that I get from my CSA, and I have to cook for hours and hours every night just to keep up. And I’m so glad I […]
[…] CSA will start in a few weeks, and I’ve been sort of vaguely preparing for the imminent bounty. I’ve cleaned out my […]
[…] find and sign-up for a CSA (community supported agriculture group)! For more information check out our post about it last year. Also, another post from when Karina was prepping like mad to welcome tons of fresh vegetables into […]
[…] what is turning out to be an annual posting event since we first started writing TinyChoices, I wanted to remind you that it’s CSA sign-up time again! we are sending a check in this week […]