Joining a CSA

Since there aren’t enough pictures of CSA boxes on the internet I thought I’d post ours from last night. Actually it isn’t even our box it’s a friend of Jeremy’s share but she was going out of town and said we could go pick up her box.

She told us not to expect more than potatoes and onions this late in the season (though that does make some great hash browns) so we were actually surprised by the variety of produce available for the second to last week of the CSA for the year.

CSA, short for “community-supported agriculture”, sometimes goes by “farm share” or other names. They all work a little differently but the basic idea is it’s a subscription service where you pay the farm and they provide you with bi-weekly baskets of produce. So you get food that is local, and in season, and get the benefit of knowing your farm, farmer, and their practices. On the other hand the farm gets the benefit of knowing that it has a steady stream of income coming in without having to look at shipping their food longer distances or struggling to work with companies with a larger distribution model than the farm can support.

While we were there we got on the mailing list for joining the CSA next year. Honestly–we didn’t know that there was a CSA in town, not to mention a mere four minute drive from our house. But achieving real meaningful change in our lives is often a slow process. If we try and change too much at once (Like a complete overhaul of the family diet after reading In Defense of Food for example) then we often face burnout, and don’t end up following through with our changes in the long run.  So instead we travel the slow road as looking for new opportunities as we find a place for them in our lives.

We’re excited for the prospect of joining a CSA next year.  We love experimenting in the the small-scale gardening that we can do on our own city front and back yards, but appreciate the skill and, experience, and larger tracts of land that can support the additional needs for produce that we have.  And we also value supporting the local business model and helping build up the local communities that are currently so grossly undervalued.